Abortion Is The Horse On Which Our Presidential Elections Ride

Despite all of the other issues of religious liberty, immigration, and size of government, the abortion issue is still the central issue in our elections. My speculation tells me that the hard-line positions each major political party takes on abortion is the #1 deal breaker that determines for whom many voters cannot vote.

Perhaps the largest base of the Republican Party is the religiously conservative Christian voting block. And while many in that block would easily consider a more moderate platform than  what the Republican Party provides on other issues, the comment I have read and heard the most from those I am in contact with is that they could not vote for a candidate that supports abortion--the murder of unborn babies.

On the other side of the tracks, the Democratic Party has taken such a hard-line position in support of Roe v. Wade and making abortions legal that the few pro-life Democratic candidates and office holders must feel significantly marginalized by their own political party at big events. They must feel marginalized because it seems that they are censored and prohibited from sharing their pro-life views on any moderate or big sized stage. Perhaps if the Democrats allowed for more diversity in views on abortion by their candidates, they could significantly chip away at the Republican Party's Evangelical base.

What is tragic for my fellow religiously conservative Christians (a.k.a., my fine fellow flaming fundamentalist friends and family) is that they have let their hard-line position on abortion be used to allow a host of anti-life sins against those who are born to become acceptable to fly in under the radar. They have allowed attacks on the environment in the guise of the elimination of environmental regulations, attacks on social safety nets, support for an economic system that continually increases wealth and income disparities, access to affordable healthcare, our ever growing militarism and assumed right to wage war and interventions wherever and whenever our President chooses, a renewed nuclear arms race, and support for foreign tyrants, issues all of which involve quality and/or length of life to be relegated to being invisible.

Here I am not talking about those Christians who want to see some level of Christian rule over the nation. Rather, I am talking about those Christians who are sincerely interested in preserving the lives of the unborn and who are heartbroken over the number of abortions that occur each year. So despite the offenses of the President and his misguided Trumpublicans, their consciences cannot allow them to vote for candidates who are not pro-life candidates.

 Thus, because of the abortion issue and the hard-line positions that the Republican and Democratic Parties take on them, what should be a shoe-in election rejection of the current President, who is mentally, morally, and intellectually unfit for office, tomorrow's election is a toss up. And if we drift into some autocratic rule, whether it is Christian Fascism, as Chris Hedges has been understandably predicting, or we become like Russia where the head of state exploits the predominant branch of the Church in Russia by tossing them enough bones, the hard-line positions on abortion which the Republican and Democratic Parties have taken will be more to blame than any other reason.