President Bush narrowly won a second term in the 2004 election against Democratic rival John Kerry. This victory was largely due to the support from the Christian conservatives, who firmly held that Bush was God’s selection to run this country…Well the only response I have to that is the same Christian leaders more recently threw their support behind Rudy “pro-choice” Giuliani, who dropped out of the campaign after losing every primary. Although hindsight is 20/20, one would think that spiritual leaders claiming to have a direct connection with the Lord would demonstrate foresight when making decisions that indirectly affect the entire world, like who to endorse for President of the United States.
I had a friendly debate with an internationally recognized minister of the Gospel shortly after Bush’s first election. He sang the party-line that Bush was God’s man and that he would advance Christian principles while in office. Although I can’t claim to have had a conference with the Good Lord on this subject, I gave this minister numerous reasons why Bush was most likely not God’s choice to run America. After about 30 minutes, I concluded my discussion by saying “If George Bush is God’s man who will support Christian principles, then let’s see if he fights for an anti-abortion law the same way he fought for tax breaks for the wealthy.”
Bush did sign the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act into law on November 5, 2003; however, there is no record of him actively promoting the Pro-Life cause in more than whispered tones. He campaigned on a Pro-Life platform, but he did not sponsor or promote this limitation on abortions. The chief sponsors of the bill that he signed were Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Ohio). Unlike President Clinton who vetoed a similar bill when it was passed by Congress in 1995, I’ll give Bush credit for signing the bill into law. This law surprisingly describes the heinous nature of the partial birth abortion procedure:
The Congress finds and declares the following…A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion--an abortion in which a physician deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living, unborn child's body until either the entire baby's head is outside the body of the mother, or any part of the baby's trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother and only the head remains inside the womb, for the purpose of performing an overt act (usually the puncturing of the back of the child's skull and removing the baby's brains) that the person knows will kill the partially delivered infant, performs this act, and then completes delivery of the dead infant--is a gruesome and inhumane procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited (emphasis mine).
President Bush’s support of this bill should not be mistaken as the campaign of a Pro-Life President who is on a crusade to outlaw abortion. This medical procedure is so grotesque, that many Pro-Choice physicians refuse to perform it. If Bush was out to ban abortions, certainly he would have given the issue more than the lip service that he offered. It would have been much more meaningful to the Pro-Life lobby if President Bush had campaigned for an abortion ban. Despite his support of the partial birth abortion ban, this abortion procedure is only performed between 2,200 and 5,000 times per year, while the traditional abortion procedure is performed more than 1 million times per year.
Perhaps the partial birth abortion ban will rescue a few children from the abortion mills of America; however, all the law really does is put women on notice that they must seek to terminate their pregnancy at an earlier stage. But for sake of an argument, let’s say that this law does save the lives of all 5,000 children whose lives would have ended through partial birth abortions. This hypothetical example still leaves more than 995,000 unborn children whose lives will be ended by abortion. Real protection against the rights of the unborn will only come when this country sees abortion for what it is – state sanctioned murder.
What was implied in Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, but has not been delivered was a Pro-Life President that will fight for the rights of the unborn. One should not expect a leader to champion the Pro-Life cause who doesn’t embrace it. However, President Bush claims to be a defender of the unborn, and many of his followers claim that he is Christian; therefore, he should be judged on the effort he made towards banning abortion.
If you use yourself as a focus group, how often have you heard him defend his tax cuts? or stubbornly pursue his war aims? or discuss his “Roadmap” of the Middle East? Now compare his enthusiastic defense of these three issues with the number of times you have heard him advance the anti-abortion theme.
Other than the campaign promises Bush made concerning his stance on abortion, I’ve never heard him promote the Pro-Life agenda. Now that is not to say that he has never mentioned the issue away from the campaign trail; it simply means that he certainly is not pushing it with the same enthusiasm as he has his other domestic and foreign policies.
…to be continued
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