I’m a Chris­t­ian and I’m vot­ing for Barack Obama on Tues­day (in large part) because of his stance on life issues.

I had intended to write a longer post about how I think a pro-life stance must be holis­tic, incor­po­rat­ing not only the issue of abor­tion, but I have not. So I will be bor­row­ing words.

Tim pointed me to an arti­cle by Jim Wal­lis from Sojourn­ers Mag­a­zine talk­ing to James Dob­son. Dob­son takes a very con­ser­v­a­tive (and nar­row, in my opin­ion) Chris­t­ian view­point on the elec­tion. Wal­lis responds on the issue of abor­tion and what it means to be “pro-life”:

You [Dob­son] make a mis­take when you assume that younger Chris­tians don’t care as much as you about the sanc­tity of life. They do care — very much — but they have a more con­sis­tent ethic of life. Both broader and deeper, it is inclu­sive of abor­tion, but also of the many other assaults on human life and dig­nity. For the new gen­er­a­tion, poverty, hunger, and dis­ease are also life issues; cre­ation care is a life issue; geno­cide, tor­ture, the death penalty, and human rights are life issues; war is a life issue. What hap­pens to poor chil­dren after they are born is also a life issue.

And there was an inter­est­ing point from the arti­cle to which Wal­lis links:

While many Chris­tians dis­agree on the legal ques­tions sur­round­ing abor­tion, together we can and must pur­sue prac­ti­cal steps that actu­ally reduce abor­tion rates. Three-fourths of women who have an abor­tion say a pri­mary rea­son is that they can­not afford to raise a child, so reduc­ing poverty and sup­port­ing low-income women is a good place for our can­di­dates to start.

I became Catholic this year and while we dis­cussed pro-life issues in RCIA, I was never told (nor in Mass today) which way to vote in this election.

I advise every­one, of any moral back­ground, to vote with your con­science on Tues­day. Each of us must make an esti­ma­tion of which can­di­date will do the best for our coun­try and every­one therein — and such deci­sions are dif­fi­cult and are hardly cut and dry. In my opin­ion, on every mat­ter other than abor­tion, it is clear that Obama has (and I would argue Democ­rats in gen­eral have) more respect for life, and that plays a very big part in my upcom­ing vote on Tuesday.