A Vote for life?

By Crystal Broyles
August, 12, 2004

Last week during a passing conversation with a woman, I realized that she held the life of a U.S. soldier higher than she did the life of an unborn American child. This realization came to me when she told me who she was going to cast her presidential ballot for this year and why. She said that she didn’t trust Bush and was going to vote for John Kerry. Her reason was that she had already seen what Bush could do and she was sick of young American men and woman being killed in the Middle East. She feels as though her vote for John Kerry opposed to George Bush is a vote in favor of saving life.

When I heard her reasoning a pang struck deep into me. This dear woman along with a lot of other Americans value the life of a U.S. soldier more than they do the life of an unborn American child.

Yesterday as I spoke on the phone, the conversation that I just told you about came up. The person on the phone said, “And what people don’t realize and forget is that the guys that are over there right now in Iraq, half of their generation didn’t make it – they were aborted…”

John Kerry has asked the American people “to judge me by my record…” So now let us take him up on his word and judge him by his record.

Thanks to modern day technology judging a candidate by his/her record is easier than ever. Just go online to Project Vote Smart (www.vote-smart.org), type in the last name of the candidate you are researching and voila, everything you want to know! Or you can just go to this URL: http://www.vote-smart.org/bio.php?can_id=S0421103 that will take you directly to John Kerry’s record. I urge you to click on “Voting Record” – then you will be able to effectively judge him by his record.

When I explored his abortion voting record I discovered, from his record, that by voting for John Kerry I would not be voting to save life. He has consistently voted in favor of the legal destruction of unborn humans.

President Bush, on the other hand, has consistently fought for the rights of the unborn. On April 23, 2004 the Family Research Council’s website reported, “President Bush has never wavered on the abortion issue. From reinstating the Mexico City policy (which bans U.S. funding of foreign abortions), to allowing states to provide government-subsidized health care to fetuses, to signing the Partial Birth Abortion ban and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act into law, the President has consistently fought for the rights of the unborn.”

In John Kerry’s democratic presidential nomination acceptance speech he talked about freedom, restoring democracy, and the choices involved in elections. “They should remember the great idea of freedom for which so many have given their lives. Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself. We are here to affirm that when Americans stand up and speak their minds and say America can do better, that is not a challenge to patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism … My fellow citizens, elections are about choices. And choices are about values. In the end, it's not just policies and programs that matter; the president who sits at that desk must be guided by principle.”

In other words John Kerry thinks he is just the man to bring our country back to what it was founded to be. There's only one problem. Our founding father’s valued human life. What is human life?

Sadly today human life is something to be treated as entirely expendable and entirely a matter of convenience. However it wasn’t always this way. There was a time, not long ago, when human life was valued. When the founding threads of our nation were being drafted – human life and preservation were precious principles. In 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned our sacred Declaration of Independence, he wrote “all men are created equal” and “endowed … with certain unalienable rights” and among these rights “life” was the first listed. Why was life the first listed? Because life is essential for us to enjoy and exercise any of the other rights we are most humbly granted as American citizens. Thomas Jefferson also wrote “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” As you can see – our nation was rooted deeply in the belief of human life being something valuable and worth protecting.

Nothing happens over night – all of this is the result of a domino effect. I wonder, how will my children view human life? We can make a difference now; we can change how our generation views human life, therefore preserving the sanctity and value of God’s gift of life – for our future generations. How can we do that? What actions can we take? As voting American citizens – we have a voice. When we consider a candidate and go to the polls – we need to evaluate more than just whether or not this candidate will boost our economy. We need to know what value the candidate places on human life

Did You Know?
Abortion deaths each year outnumber American casualties in all our wars combined.More than a million abortions every year is a staggeringly high figure, especially when one considers that the number of unborn babies who die every year from abortion is higher than all American casualties from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I & II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Persian Gulf Wars, and Operation Iraqi Freedom combined.

Abortions 1.5 million/year
Operation Iraqi Freedom - Less than 1,000
Gulf War - Less than 200
Vietnam War - 58,151
Korean War - 54,246
WW II - 407,316
WW I - 116,708
Civil War - 498,332
Revolutionary Wars - 25,324
Total War Deaths: 1,044,569

I am not saying that a U.S. Soldier is more or less valuable than an unborn child. What I am saying is, if you value human life, then let us value all of life - born and unborn. I think Dr. Seuss summed it up quite well in his book Horton Hears a Who, when he said: “Because, after all, a person's a person, no matter how small.”

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Please feel free to send this to all your friends.
You can contact Crystal Broyles via E-mail: Heyou54@aol.com