On Being (and Voting) Fully Pro-Life

I am pro-life. Fully pro-life.

• Because I am fully pro-life, I want to prevent babies from being killed while still in their mothers’ wombs.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want to stop 8600 children from dying today and tomorrow and the day after and the day after that from poverty-related diseases (that’s 3 million a year).
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want to enable people fleeing war and violence, who fear their sons being conscripted into vicious armies or their daughters turned into sex slaves, to find a safer life in another country, including mine.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want to ensure all children, no matter the income level of their parents, receive a great education in a school with proper equipment and qualified teachers, so they can thrive.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want everyone to have access to the health care and medicines they need to find healing—without losing their homes or their lives trying to pay for it.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want people everywhere to breathe clean air to prevent asthma and other issues caused by coal-fired power plants and trash incinerators.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want no parents punished for pursuing a better life for their children.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want to see those with physical, mental or developmental disabilities treated with care and enabled to reach their highest potential in a life of purpose.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want all people to have access to water not polluted by microbes or lead (here’s looking at you, Flint) or chemicals from fracking.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want the 27 million slaves working in sweatshops (so corporations can make more money and we can buy cheap clothes) and in brothels (to meet the desires of a sex-crazed culture) to find freedom and work with dignity.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want every person on the planet to have access to enough food to nourish a healthy body, without parents going hungry so their children can eat.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want justice to be administered fairly, without special benefits (or more severe punishments) based on social class or race.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want adequate housing for each person on the planet.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want every unwanted, displaced, or orphaned child to find a forever family, or be healthfully reunited with his or her own, and receive the love, care and services necessary to succeed.
• Because I am fully pro-life, I want every person to be treated with respect as a cherished creation of God.

People ask me if I am voting
pro-life in November.

Unequivocally, yes.

In this election, as in every election—local, state, federal—I will vote pro-life, fully pro-life. Unfortunately, no candidate is perfect. But I will examine the candidates’ rhetoric and policies as they pertain to affirming life for every person born and unborn on the planet. And then I will vote for value of life, all life.

Because I am fully pro-life.