What If Catholics Opposed Abortion?

I have an idea.

There's what? 60 million Catholics in the U.S.? That's enough to win a presidential election, even if everyone else opposed us.

What if we opposed abortion? All of us, I mean. What if all American Catholics opposed abortion rights, and their exercise? Instead of only half of us, with the other half supporting abortion?

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. None of us support abortion, yeah, right.

No, really, I mean it. What if we all got together, and called a time out? No more abortion. No more infanticide, no more more euthanasia, no more recreational embryo-destructive stem cell research.

What if, somehow, we could make our voices heard?

What if, somehow, we could make both parties understand that abortion is a priority issue for us, and if they want to compete for our vote, they need to get the abortion issue right?

What would happen then?

Would either party be willing to lose elections in order to defend abortion rights? I rather doubt it.

For the last nine presidential elections, the Democrats have banked on the fact that, contrary to their rhetoric, Catholics don't really oppose abortion. Not all of us. They've won three of those elections, and they're pretty confident of winning a fourth here in a couple of days.

But what if all the Catholics were to suddenly unite, and actually really oppose abortion? Not just say they do, not just promise to oppose abortion later, after Obama has solved the problems of war and poverty and global warming, but now, today.

If we did that, the solution wouldn't take long.

What if Barack Obama polled less than, say, 10% of the Catholic vote, and we let the world know that Catholics will no longer support pro-abortion candidates? In 2010, would there be a single candidate for any office who wasn't pro-life? Not many.

And when President McCain appointed anti-Roe justices to the Supreme court, would they be confirmed? I'm thinking they would.

Would the Democrats nominate a pro-life candidate for president in 2012? They would if all the Catholic Democrats worked and voted for that.

And if that happened, would the Republicans be a bit more careful about issues like war and capital punishment, knowing that those would be next on our list? I rather expect so.

If all Catholics opposed abortion, how long would it take to ban it? I believe it could happen in a month.

But what if we don't all oppose abortion? What if we continue on as we are, with about half of us, going by prior elections, perfectly content to vote for the pro-abortion candidate?

Well, McCain had the weakest pro-life record of all the Republican candidates who had pro-life records. And a lot of people were excited about the pro-abort Catholic Giuliani. Even today, most pro-lifers who believe anything McCain says about abortion believe it because of his choice of a real pro-lifer, Sarah Palin, for his running mate.

What if running a pro-life candidate doesn't win the Catholic vote?

Will the GOP run a pro-life nominee ever again? Possibly not. President Obama has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, a law that would sweep away every restriction on abortion in the country, and for the first time enshrine in statute a "right" to abortion throughout pregnancy, and even after birth, for any reason or no reason (including eugenic and sex-selective abortions, as well as just for "birth control") by every method including partial birth and live birth abortions.

The goal would be to take the abortion issue off the table once and for all. And it might. Do you trust the GOP to undertake the come-from-behind effort that would be required in the abortion fight then? Honestly, I don't.

It is possible that this election could decide the abortion issue once and for all? If all of us Catholics made it a priority, we could do it. And if we don't decide to do that, then maybe we will find that we've lost our chance to ever do it.

What if this week, all of us Catholics got together and opposed abortion? Consider it.