In preparation for the upcoming midterm elections, Priests for Life is redistributing a brochure that attempts to convince Catholic voters to be single-issue voters on abortion by comparing voting for a candidate who supports abortion rights to supporting a candidate who is pro-terrorism.
Priests for Life’s Father Frank Pavone shared the brochure—a version of which the group appears to have originally circulated in 2006—in an email on Tuesday, writing that a “major obstacle to our winning victory over abortion is the Catholic vote” because in every election “millions of Catholics fail to vote in accordance with Church teaching.”
Pavone wrote in the email that “good Catholics cannot disagree” on abortion rights:
On most public policy issues – whether the economy, health care, war, the Middle East, immigration … and so forth – there can be many different policy proposals that satisfy Catholic moral teaching. In other words, good Catholics can disagree on the details.
But when it comes to ABORTION, there is only ONE RIGHT POSITION. Good Catholics cannot disagree on this. There is only one true Catholic position; namely, that the unborn are to be protected.
And it’s up to us faithful, pro-life Catholics to make sure our fellow Catholics – especially those Catholics who are ready to abandon long-held political allegiances – know the truth about what the Church actually teaches on non-negotiable issues like abortion and marriage.
In the brochure that Pavone encouraged his supporters to distribute, Priests for Life says that voting for a candidate who supports abortion rights should be an automatic no-go since abortion is “no less violent than terrorism”:
Suppose a candidate came forward and said, “I support terrorism.” Would you say, “I disagree with you on terrorism, but what’s your health care plan?”
Of course not. Rather, you would immediately consider that candidate as disqualified from public office. His position, allowing the killing of the public, is radically inconsistent with public service.
So it is with abortion. Abortion is no less violent than terrorism. Support for abortion is enough for us to decide not to vote for such a person.
The brochure also argues that a candidate’s position on abortion rights should outweigh their positions on issues such as capital punishment:
The bottom line, in other words, is that support for war and capital punishment do not automatically or necessarily violate fundamental moral principles; support for abortion and euthanasia always do. Therefore, supporting these latter policies is worse.
