Friday, April 10, 2015

Abortion and the Democratic Party

Joe Carter has a very good article over at The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission blog entitled It’s time for Christians to tell the truth about abortion politics.  Here are the concluding thoughts from his piece:
Too many Christians refuse to directly criticize the Democratic Party’s position on abortion because of a fear of being considered “partisan.” The assumption is that any direct pushback of the Democrat’s abortion policy is considered a tacit endorsement of the GOP. This is not just wrong, it is dangerous. While we may align with a political group, Christians should not be beholden to any party. We should hold all political parties accountable when they are espousing unbiblical and anti-human ideas. If this gets us called “partisan,” then that is the price we must pay. The American church has a serious problem if we are more worried about being mislabeled as “partisan” than we are in protecting innocent human life.
By refusing to speak up we are not only failing the weak and vulnerable, but also failing our fellow believers. The reality is that there are a large number of committed pro-life Christians who are still completely unaware that the Democratic Party not only supports third-trimester and partial-birth abortions but that the party expects us to pay for them as well, regardless of whether it violates our conscience.
The reason our brothers and sisters in Christ remain unaware is that even when pastors and leaders speak out against abortion they often refuse to acknowledge who is enabling this policy. The reality is that the reason unrestricted abortion continues in American is not because of Planned Parenthood or the National Abortion Rights Action League but because of the Democratic Party. And they do so with both the direct and indirect support of the Church.
It shouldn’t have taken a partisan politician to inform the public that one of the two major political parties supports the right to kill a seven-pound baby who is days away from being born. That information should have come from the mouth of every pro-life Christian leader. But now that more Christians know, we need to ask what we plan to do about it. What are we all, as the Body of Christ, going to do to limit the radical abortion politics of the Democratic Party?