A Single Issue Voter

By Fred Vilbig

I think that most everyone would agree that if is wrong to kill an innocent person against his or her will. This definition is broad enough to allow for both capital punishment and for assisted suicide. I am opposed to both of those, but I want to start with a definition that is broad enough to encompass almost everyone’s understanding of murder.

This definition, though, raises the question about what is a person. We as human beings are an interesting lot. We are not just a physical body or a spiritual soul. We are a composite of the two, an en-souled body. It is pretty clear that the body is not the soul and the soul is not the body.

The reality of the difference between the soul and the body was brought home to me at the funeral of a young woman who died of cancer. They had only discovered the cancer when her C-section hadn’t healed properly. Her beautiful daughter was only a few months old, and there the mother was lying in her coffin.

The funeral home had done a great job. The mom looked great. I kept expecting her to open her eyes and say something, but of course, she didn’t.

In looking at her, I thought about the fact that before she was prepared for burial, all of the physical, biological requirements for life had been present. She had all of her tissues. She had all of her blood. She had all of her DNA and all of the other building blocks for life - except she was dead. She was missing something.

What she was missing, of course, was that spark of life – the animating principle of all living things. She was missing her soul. But the question is, what exactly is a soul?

The soul is that force that drives the otherwise inanimate body through life. It is the force that makes an adult grow old; that makes an adolescent mature (hopefully); that makes a child grow into adolescence; and the baby grow into a child. It is the driving force that in conjunction with DNA takes a zygote, develops it into an embryo, making it form tissue which then forms into organs which coalesce into a fetus to become a baby. Without the soul, the mass of cells would simply be a tumor of some sort. But with the soul, the zygote is a human being. And this has a bearing on the whole abortion debate.

Years ago I was asked to debate the abortion question with the president of the Missouri chapter of NARAL, the pro-abortion advocacy group. I did not want to argue with her. I just wanted to ask one question: When does life begin? I never got the chance to ask my question. About a week before the debate, she withdrew. She offered no explanation.

I’ve never had a pro-abortion advocate answer that question and be able to defend it without ending in some problematic conclusions. If they say that a fetus is human only after birth, then I ask what is different with the child before and after birth that makes the born child human and the pre-born child something else. If they say that it is because they can breathe on their own, then that means that anyone who needs assistance breathing is not human. What about an asthmatic?

If they rest their case on viability, then that means that babies in the NICU are not human. And it means that people requiring dialysis are not human. In the extreme case, it means that anyone who requires medication or any artificial means of sustaining life is not human.

There are some that argue that children are not human until they are able to reason, say around two. That is a truly extreme position. And some might argue that the professor making that argument is not able to reason, and so he is not human.

We need to agree on what makes a person human in order to define what we mean by murder. It seems to me that any position other than that life begins at conception ends in some fairly barbaric conclusions. In the end, it seems that all other positions really are based on a convenience principle. A baby is a human when it is convenient but not when it is inconvenient.

Yes, a woman has the right to decide what she does with own body. However, the amazing thing is that once a woman is pregnant, she has another person in her body. That changes things completely. It is a completely unique situation, but doesn’t change the fact that a pregnant woman has another human being inside of her.

With regard to the inconvenience issue, I would argue that we are not doing enough to support women in that situation. I know that there are non-profit groups trying to provide support, but it seems that the government is letting those women down by spending money on abortions and birth control rather than fostering and supporting them. Our focus is all wrong.

So, notwithstanding the existence of a myriad of other issues confronting the American electorate, I am a single issue voter. But I’m not sure thats so bad. We should keep in mind that Hitler was at least initially elected. He pulled Germany and its people out of a horrible economic depression. He gave them jobs. He built beautiful buildings and roads. In addition, he was isolating a small segment of their society preparing for his “final solution.” What was happening wasn’t invisible. The Catholic Church saw it and spoke out. As a result many priests, nuns, brothers, and bishops were arrested and sent to the camps along with millions of Jews and other Catholics, the undesirables.

I am reminded of the quote from Richard Niemoller:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Is there no one to speak for the unborn?

So sometimes, it’s okay to be a single issue voter. When that single moral outrage is so great that it outweighs the other things the government is doing, then that single issue should be the only issue. That was the case with Hitler, and in raw numbers we have something much worse than the “final solution” here.

I am a “Pro-Life” voter.