The Choice is Crystal Clear

This is what he wrote to me:

Obviously, we are on different pages on this issue.  I have become very pro-life and that point is very clear in this election between the two sides, so my choice is crystal clear. Your view is very different. I will not send political info to you anymore.

Maybe I should go back to the beginning of the exchange. It started when he forwarded some bizarre viral spam to me about how much JohnMcCain loves his country and how much “Barack HUSSEIN (his real name!) Obama”does not. At the end of the ravings, accusations, and snide remarks, there was counsel to live simply, love generously, and trust in God.

How could I not respond? I felt I should at least ask him to take me off that particular mailing list.

I should mention, too, that he is a nice man, an educated person in a respected profession who hails from immigrant working class roots much like my own. I know a lot about him, you see, because once upon a time he was my husband. It was a very long time ago, but a fact is a fact.

And I don’t know what kind of kool-aid he’s been drinking in the decades since, but his message was dissonant on so many levels. First, that he considers the presidential election to be nothing more than a referendum on abortion, well, that’s pretty disturbing right there, and I realize there are others who share this peculiar sense of mission, but I never knew I knew one (although I suppose I don’t). Then, there is the notion that the hateful drivel he was passing around constitutes “political information”. Finally, there is the smug implication that I am somehow anti-life.

Because isn’t that essentially what he is saying?

Heck, I am passionately in favor of life. Which might be why I hate unnecessary war and the rape of the environment, why I care, in fact, about what happens to generations beyond our own.

And I may be wandering into irrelevance here, but for the record, I am not gung-ho on abortion, and I am grateful never to have had reason to consider one. But I also came of age in the 1960s, and I can tell you with certainty that the illegality of abortions was not a life-affirming reality or a deterrent to anything. I recall one of my best friends desperately flying to Puerto Rico to meet a stranger who drove her in silence to a secret location for a crude, unsanitary abortion that left her weak and traumatized, and this alternative was available to her only because she had quick access to cash; I am sure that others faced even scarier ordeals. 

Perhaps I would not have made the same choice, who can say? But having a belief does not give me the right to impose that belief on everyone else or make it difficult or impossible for them to take action not consistent with it. No one opts to have an abortion on a whim. Why are so many self-professed lovers of life so determined to add more danger and anguish to an already agonizing personal decision? And why has this assumed such disproportionate significance on the political agenda if not as a nod to the so-called religious right? And isn't that more than a little worrisome?

How much more sense it would make to address the quality of our schools, try to overhaul our nation’s shameful health care system, acknowledge the environmental crisis and seek real solutions, create more jobs, and work to eradicate hunger and poverty so that parents and potential parents would be more likely to make decisions based on hope and the children born into this world would have opportunities for the kind of lives all children deserve. These are the issues. Life issues.

And why, when we express our outrage that U.S. soldiers were sent with insufficient resources, no strategy, and a rationale that kept mutating, to invade a country unconnected to the attacks of 9/11, in which five years, thousands of deaths, and billions of dollars later, we are still embroiled, are we accused of not supporting our troops? The Bush administration violated the most sacred trust of all by dispatching our soldiers in such an irresponsible and unconscionable manner, neglecting the front that might have mattered, and continuing to shortchange the many veterans who are returning home to very hard times. This, too, is an issue. A life issue.

Our nation faces serious and daunting challenges today,and my choice is crystal clear: Barack Obama, because he is committed to unification rather than divisive politics as usual, diplomacy rather than anachronisticposturing, and judgment rather than recklessness. (Yes, we actually want leaderswho blink and think.) He is a man of vision, inclusiveness, and intelligence, a man who sets a different tone and a higher standard and inspires that in others. 

I realize that there are deep undercurrents in this country of racism, fear, andirrational hatred, but how heartbreaking it would be if we allowed those forces to prevail. I believe that if we do not elect Barack Obama, we will have missed a shining moment in the history of this nation, the turning point we so desperately need. 

As for John McCain, I have to admit I have been skeptical of him all along; he's a long-term Washington insider whose loyalty to lobbyists, ties to big business, and disturbingly hawkish world view were already enough to give me pause. 

In naming Sarah Palin as his running mate, however, he revealed himself to be even more despicable, cynical, and dangerous than I ever imagined. 

Sarah Palin? She is a perfect storm of ignorance combined with chilling hubris, a "true believer" whose finger I would not want anywhere near a trigger, let alone a nuclear switch. 

But she seems to have her fans.

And so history will remember how the Republican National Convention turned into a guns-and-God, drill-and-kill hate fest. Service to community was disparaged, lies were perpetrated shamelessly, and decent people were mocked with a mean-spiritedness I haven’t seen since high school. 

They have certainly given us a bleak version of the future: endless war, unmitigated ravaging of the earth’s resources, a disrespect for life, both animal and human, and a blurring of the lines between church and state that should be alarming to thinking people everywhere. 

And after eight devastating years of the Bush administration, they honestly think we’ll just trust them and dig the hole deeper.

But as Gloria Steinem said somewhere,“I’m a hope-aholic.” Even despite the 2004 election, I simply cannot stop believing that the majority of voters is not that gullible or intolerant, that people really do want true change and better lives for their children and grandchildren, that they learn from experience and recognize Trojan horses with or without lipstick.

I love my country, yes. But I also love the world. And I don’t think we have ever faced a more important vote.

I suppose you could say I am very pro-life.