What is Political and What is Not

This time it is Vermont. Other states are staging to establish their position on human rights.

The question being determined is this: Do I have the legal right to kill a child?

The Vermont House voted overwhelmingly in favor of this unrestricted right to abortion at any time during pregnancy. The Senate now has their day regarding the prospective law.

What to do?

Here's how I'm thinking about this matter. While Democrats and Republicans are politicians dealing with political issues, the right to kill a baby is not a political issue. It is a human values issue. Nor is this an abortion issue, even though it is called by that name. By 25-26 weeks or so, most babies can survive outside the womb. If the Vermont law passes, they will legalize killing viable children all the way to normal gestation of 40 weeks. This is not politics. This is murder.

Foreign policy is a political issue. Border security, election fraud, taxation--these are each political issues.

Killing a child is not a political issue—even though politicians are leading the discussion and making the rules.

But here's the deal: Because the people thinking about politics are the same people passing laws that make killing a baby legal, I don't have the luxury of assessing their politics.

A politician can represent everything I believe politically--and oh how I am tempted to vote for that person--but if their position is to legalize infanticide and late-term murder of infants, I am against them.

At the ballot box, I am not faced with a political decision. I am faced with a moral decision. I wrote about this earlier in “Infanticide Tuesday,” but I was not as clear then regarding what to do, and why, as I am now.

Social scientists call me a one-issue voter. The implication is that I'm narrow minded, a shallow thinker, unwilling to make complex judgements.

Politics is important stuff about which I have strong opinions. The point is, killing babies is not a political issue. It is a human rights, human dignity, human value issue.

Politics and morality are different subjects. (Please be certain you grasp what I just wrote. It is the key to my thinking.) Politics is a secondary issue. Morality is a fundamental issue.

The world is filled with differing views of politics. The morality of child sacrifice, even on the important altar of choice, is barbaric!

Many wrote to me after reading “Infanticide Tuesday” asking, “What should we do?”

My recommendation is to think categorically and hierarchically: Killing babies (infanticide) is a different category from politics. Killing babies is more important in the hierarchy than politics.

Let me verbalize this two ways: First, if you (politician) are in favor of killing babies, I will not vote for you. Second, if you (politician) are in favor of killing babies, I could never live with my conscience if I voted for you just to advance a secondary cause that is truly political.

The quicker we let our politicians know that killing babies is an unequivocal "no" vote from us as a human society, the quicker we can get back to considering the important political issues facing us. Here's today's news story.