Abortion & The One-Issue Party

Today I read this Huffington Post article about how the Republican party keeps successfully using the abortion issue (as well as gay rights, guns, affirmative action aka "Stop those Blacks from taking our jobs.") election after election, and the American public is complicit in letting them get away with it.

It is quite disingenuous that the Republican party has nothing to offer over 90% of us but continuous war(s), an increasing $500B federal debt and counting, an economic climate resulting in some of the largest corporate layoffs in history, taxes that take more and more out of the little guy's pockets, conspiring with big insurance, health management and big oil to severely limit our choices for competitive alternatives (in Florida for ex, the insurance industry is famous for buying the Republican lawmakers so that pro-consumer laws are not passed in the state), deregulating the financial industry to such a point that it's players feel no shame about a record number of home foreclosures, under-performing schools, supporting our troops in the form of giving them 3-5 consecutive tours of duty without adequate R&R with family, and the list goes on and on.

Has anyone ever considered that in all the years that Republicans have held the White House & even in the years that Republicans have controlled Congress, abortions have NEVER been reduced? (Since 1980, Republicans have been President 20 out of the last 28 years). It's more rhetoric over substance, and as long as the American voters continue to let one party hold one or two issues over us while screwing us on every other issue we care about, then all we have is our own ignorance to blame (refusing to see the truth). The greatest example I can cite is the 2004 election fraud. We KNEW that George Bush was a sorry President made possible by his father having stacked the Supreme Court. But instead of going with the guy who was smarter, had a more accomplished record, a REAL war hero with command experience (not someone who dressed up and posed by fighter planes like GW), we collectively (especially Christians) chose to be hoodwinked and distracted from those issues most important to us by the Gay Marriage amendments which were introduced state by state by the Republican party for this exact reason. Our resulting disenfranchisement has continued until this day.

I certainly don't condone abortion except in cases where the mother's life is in danger or in extreme cases of health-related complications. As an example, I once had a neighbor named "Mary". Mary was physically limited due to several chronic illnesses & health conditions which she had suffered with her entire life. She and her husband tried for a child, and the Drs. warned her that she was literally risking her life if she tried to birth a child. Well of course they went ahead anyway, and now her quality of life has deteriorated in such a way that I'm not sure how she makes it from day to day. Additionally, Mary's child is severely handicapped as well. Mary herself is to all intents walking dead. In this case, clearly I believe that Mary did the wrong thing by having a child. This situation I cite only as an exception, and it is an exception nonetheless.

The bottom line, though is that we as voters must educate ourselves and find out our local and national candidates platforms and whether they just spout this rhetoric at election time when it counts the most (politically) and whether this matches up with their track record when it really counts (morally). Ask yourself, how is it that we can claim to care so much about a baby before it is born (I myself am pro-life), but yet we stop caring about that baby after birth (the farce of No Child Left Behind which guarantees that schools in better neighborhoods will continue to get state funding while the failing schools in predominately poor neighborhoods who actually NEED the financial assistance will not receive such, no cost-effective health coverage for millions of youth, etc).