David Daudelin "To Vote or Not To Vote"
With the possibility of Rudy Giuliani winning the Republican nomination, pro-life voters may soon have a critical
decision to make. Can and should they vote for a pro-abortion candidate? Some believe it would be a grievous sin to
vote for any pro-abortion candidate under any circumstances. Others do not believe it is immoral to vote for such a
candidate, but think it is better not to. Still others believe they should vote for the lesser of two evils. This essay carefully
considers each of these three viewpoints.
Before starting, it should be noted that this essay is written with the understanding that the reader views infanticide
as morally unacceptable and that there is no difference whether a baby is killed inside or outside of his mother’s womb.
Abortion is murder and should be viewed no differently.
With this understanding, would it be sinful to vote for a candidate who doesn’t believe this? Before this question can
be answered, another question must first be addressed. Who defines what is sin? The answer is emphatically and
exclusively, God. As he has created all things, he alone has authority to set moral standards on his creation. The
question that arises next is how can we know what God says is sinful? While God has rarely given specific instruction to
certain individuals (either directly or through prophets), he has given us general instruction about what is sinful or
righteous in his written word, the Bible. It is the basis for absolute morality. As it is written in Proverbs, “Do not add to His
words, lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar.”
With these two issues addressed, the question becomes, does the Bible show it would be sinful to vote for a
candidate who doesn’t believe abortion is wrong? The answer is no. While it would certainly be wrong to vote for a
candidate because you liked their immoral beliefs and wanted to advance those sinful ideas, nowhere does the Bible
indicate it would be sinful to vote for someone in spite of their wrong ideas in order to prevent a much worse person from
leading the country. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for someone to claim it is a sin when God has not shown it is
sinful.
However, if a person is not “fully convinced in his own mind” that it would be acceptable to vote for a pro-abortion
candidate, they should not do it. For, the Bible says in Romans 14 that if someone has doubts about whether something
is a sin or not, they shouldn’t do it, because for them, it would be a sin.
The second position often taken is that even though it is Ok to vote for a pro-abortion candidate, it is better to vote
for a third party candidate or not vote at all. The belief is that by voting third party, they are making a statement – if the
Republicans nominate someone who is pro-abortion, he will lose because the pro-lifers will not vote for him. In theory,
this is better in the long run because it’ll mean future Republican candidates will be pro-life. Unfortunately, because of
two major factors, the theory doesn’t work. The first factor is that voters have incredibly short memories. By the time the
next Republican primary comes around, people will have totally forgotten that the last time they nominated a pro-
abortion candidate, he lost because of that issue. The second reason this theory is doomed to failure is because of the
bias of the main-stream media. If enough pro-lifers were convinced to vote third party or not vote at all, the media would
either ignore it all together or portray it as a result of American’s dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq, tax cuts, Bush’s
nominations to the Supreme Court, or whatever else they felt like blaming it on. So, because the statement would be
entirely wasted on the American people and would come at the cost of four years of savage advancement of abortion
rather than simply passive approval, it is ultimately more detrimental than beneficial.
When it comes to considering who to vote for, one must make a decision based on all the information he has – not
just the issue of whether a candidate supports abortion or not. One of the most important things to take into account is
the fact that our country has a firmly established two-party system that has never been broken since 1853 with the
election of Democrat Franklin Pierce. For example, in 2004, Bush got 50.73% of the votes and Kerry got 48.27%. The
next place candidate, Ralph Nader, only got .38%. So bearing in mind that the only two people with a realistic chance of
winning are the Republican and Democrat candidates, the decision that pro-lifers face is whether to choose between the
Democrat and Republican, or to simply throw away their vote.
An analogy that is helpful in considering this is a situation where one is forced to see one of two movies. One of the
movies has a PG rating with some objectionable content in it, and the other is an X-rated production packed with junk.
Just like in the analogy, there are really only two choices for President. And even though a pro-abortion Republican
might be bad, a Democrat would be far worse. In this analogy, a group of people is allowed to vote on which of the two
movies to see. Or, if they’d rather, they could choose not to vote at all. Wouldn’t it be their responsibility to put their vote
to the best possible use to make sure they didn’t have to see that X-Rated movie? To simply not vote is, in essence,
casting a half-vote for the X-Rated movie. That is clearly the wrong choice to make.
Hopefully, pro-life voters won’t face this dilemma. Hopefully, Republicans will wake up now, during the primaries, and
rally behind a genuine pro-life candidate with a real chance of beating Giuliani such as Fred Thompson (recipient of the
National Right to Life endorsement). But if the decision must be made, may they choose responsibly and wisely. The
fate of America may depend on that choice.