Give the voiceless a voice

By Tom Quiner

I have a question for you. When is the last time someone starved to death in America?

I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I suspect if it did, it would be front page news with screaming headlines.

By the same token, a million plus human abortions are performed in this country every year. It is not news.

And yet good people will vote for Barack Obama despite the fact that he and his party allow human abortions to take place any day of a person’s first nine months in the womb.

Any day … even if it is a mere twelve seconds before the person were to leave the womb by natural means.

These good people include millions of Catholics. Their rationale goes something like this: Obama cares more about the poor and the little people.

To be more specific, they think Obama is kinder and gentler than Mitt Romney because he will spend more of taxpayer’s money on programs for the poor.

Keep in mind, we’re spending more on the poor than ever and poverty isn’t being alleviated. The case could be made that it is breeding dependence.

The mindset of the Obama supporter also discounts the remarkable charity work being done by Catholics, Lutherans, Evangelical Christians and so very many other compassionate groups serving the needy using largely, or in many cases, exclusively, private donations.

For example, I heard a riveting speaker just this past weekend named Magnus McFarlane. Mr. McFarlane started a remarkable global movement simply called “Mary’s Meals.”

He is feeding the world’s poor, 600,000 children per day, through the charity he started with his brother using private donations. And he is but one of so many wonderful private charities at work in the world.

His website recounts a watershed moment in his life when he encountered a woman dying of AIDS in Malawi:

The mother was dying of AIDS and lying on the floor of her hut surrounded by her six young children. She said that all that was left for her was to pray for her children, that someone might look after them after she had died.

When Magnus asked her oldest son what he hoped for in life, his stark reply, “To have enough food to eat and to go to school one day,” was not easily forgotten.

He desired to attend school for a single day of his life. That was as large a dream he could possibly muster in light of the impending death of his mom and potential abandonment by the village.

I must contrast poverty in third world countries to poverty in America. There is no comparison.

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector used government data to compile a report, “How Poor are America’s Poor?”

All have access to free, public education.

He discovered 43% own their own home, and that the average size of this home was three-bedrooms with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.

Contrast this with the dying mom in Malawi living on the floor of a one room hut.

Here, eighty percent have air conditioning.

Here, only 6% of the houses are overcrowded.

Here, three-quarters own a car, and 31% own two cars.

Here, the overwhelming majority of our poor have cell phones, DVD players, micro wave ovens, color televisions and more.

We consider someone to be poor if their cash income is less than $22,000, and that does not even count the additional income and support they receive from the 127 federal poverty programs we offer at the federal level alone, not to mention a myriad of programs at the state and local level.

Our poor are rich by international standards. Our poor are richer than the middle class from days gone by.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have no intention of taking a sledge hammer to these programs. Congressman Ryan took a tweezer to them in his “Roadmap to Prosperity” and the Left roared. Keep in mind, his proposed budget still exceeded George W. Bush’s final budget, the same one Barack Obama excoriated for its “unpatriotic” excesses.

The difference is this. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have pledged to stand up for the preborn, to give a voice to the voiceless.

By contrast, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have pledged to stand up for Planned Parenthood and give taxpayer money to these powerful interests to expand human abortion. Human abortion will expand if they successfully implement their party’s platform calling for taxpayer funded abortions.

Even more, they insist that Catholic business owners and organizations (and other people of conscience) provide abortifacients, surgical sterilizations, and contraception to their employees in violation of their religious conscience.

Perhaps that is why Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia came out so strongly on this issue in a recent interview:

“Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don’t help the poor, we’re going to go to hell. But Jesus didn’t say the government has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to take care of them. Those are prudential judgments. You can’t say that somebody’s not Christian because they want to limit taxation. To say that it’s somehow intrinsically evil like abortion doesn’t make any sense at all. I certainly can’t vote for somebody who’s either pro-choice or pro-abortion.”

Killing a baby in the womb is not a prudential judgement. It is a violation of a fundamental Catholic/Christian principle, that thou shalt not kill.

No one is starving to death on the streets of America. But babies are dying in their moms’ wombs by the millions.

It must stop.

Give the voiceless a voice.

Cast a vote for Life.

2 Comments

  1. Shawn Pavlik on September 26, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    How many American “poor” own more than one vehicle, more than one TV, own a smartphone, have cable television, smoke cigarettes, dine out more than once a week? Often, it comes down to choices. There was a time in my life when I was supporting a family of 4 on a teacher’s salary, while my wife attended pharmacy school. We lived pretty thin, and I did accept free health care for my children through the SCHIP program. But we lived within our means, in a mobile home that cost less than my last car, dined out VERY infrequently, no cable television, and the cheapest cell phones we could find. Now we’re doing much better, but the point is, you can make it in America on a meager salary if you make good choices in other areas. Too often we look to Big Brother to try to “even things out”. Excellent post, Tom.



    • quinersdiner on September 26, 2012 at 3:11 pm

      Thanks for writing and for the kind words.