couldn’t agree more that there are things we can all do to help reduce abortions, regardless of whether we are pro-life or pro-choice. I think this ESPECIALLY hold true for those of us who call ourselves Pro-Life. We better be doing more than just voting for a presidential candidate with similar views every four years. George W was in there for 8 years as a Pro-Lifer and abortion is still around and still legal. So vote the way you want to vote, but what else can you do?

Find a local organization that helps single moms and single moms-to-be get educated our their pregnancy and provides them with housing and or other supplies once the baby has been born. We have one in our area called House of His Creation, and they are always in need of supplies, money, and volunteers.

The only place I’d challenge you Josh, is calling out people who rank abortion above racism. Personally, I’m not going to sit here and rank injustices from 1 to 10…that’s only asking for an argument. But to those who believe life begins at conception, you have to understand why they feel abortion is so abhorrent. You may not agree with their stance or science on where life begins, but you have to see why them putting abortion up there with racism is not trivializing racism in any way.

I like what Obama said during the Saddleback Q&A a couple weeks ago, that he realizes he’s not going to be able to change the minds of folks who feel that life begins at conception, but that we should all come together and try to reduce the number of abortions.

As for the religious right not deciding the election, i think its great. There shouldnt be a “Religious Right” voting block that is in the pockets of Republicans or Democrats. There should be individuals examining all the issues and coming to a decision on who to vote for that THEIR OWN conscience is ok with.

but yeah, thanks for chiming in Josh…i love having your input.

And Bryan, man … if you’re going to push for these longer comments, you need to make this comment box bigger.

I’ll summarize my position from my other comments: I am pro-life for all of life, and I now vote for candidates who are striving to minimize violence for everyone. Therefore, abortion is only 1/4 of that issue for me. Their desire to also protect the life of a mother, their stance of the death penalty, and stance of a candidate’s propensity for war are the other 3/4’s of that issue for me.

Let’s start changing the tone of this discussion away from just abortion. If you are for life, then let’s take about them all, not just abortions. If you want to stop abortions, then we better be willing to pay more in taxes to assist health care for mothers to go full-term to give their baby up for adoption. Or better instead of taxes, maybe our churches can start providing health care for mothers in this situation. That seems more like the gospel.

My hope is that we can talk about pro-life with all of these perspectives and stop with just saying it is about abortion. It’s quite simple: if you are pro-life, are you consistent with that in all these areas?

Also, then trying to equate the unborn with an animal also fails, because then just as the question of “When does life begin?” is answered in various ways, so, too, would be the question of, “When does a fetus stop being an animal and start being human?”

Buddy Watts said it well in a comment on your last post: “If a person is willing to support the issue of taking innocent life, what does that state about their character and integrity?”