I read the following on Huffington Post and found it inspiring…. if only Pro-Life were framed more in this way:
Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Nigeria put it nicely in an October 11 interview with National Catholic Reporter. The archbishop said that, if he had a vote, he would support Sen. Barack Obama for President. Interviewer John L. Allen, Jr., asked how the archbishop could support a pro-choice candidate, and Onaiyekan responded thus:
Let me put it this way: The fact that you oppose abortion doesn’t necessarily mean that you are pro-life. You can be anti-abortion and still be killing people by the millions, through war, through poverty, and so on…If my choice is between the person who makes room for abortion but who is really pro-life in terms of justice in the world, peace in the world, I will prefer him to somebody who doesn’t support abortion but who is driving millions of people in the world to death.
Deeper in me than I 
Yeah…things that make you go hmmm. This was one for me recently too!
Thanks friend… sorry i been AWOL so long; its been a crazy month.
The American bishops (and many others) have responded to this suggestion many times. I can only guess that Archbishop Onaiyekan hasn’t studied the facts in terms of the numbers of innocent lives that have been killed and will continue to be killed through abortion on demand, not just in the US but across the world. And if Obama has his way and pushes through FOCA w/ the Dem congress, hundreds of thousands more will likely be killed than are even now due to the lessening of restrictions. In number, it is more than comparable than those killed through the various means the Archbishops mention.
Further, abortion is always and inherently a grave evil and sin. It is the deliberate killing of defenseless, innocent life. Sometimes war is justifiable. Sometimes upholding justice involves the taking of life. We can and will disagree on when such things are and aren’t justified, but the taking of innocent life in abortion, with very few, extreme exceptions, is *always* wrong. It is different in kind.
Lastly, it is not clear at all that Obama will be a better choice in defending justice around the world. There are plenty in the US who voted for him who anticipate him bringing about a withdrawal from the world scene–he supports bringing our troops home as soon as possible. His response the the injustices in Georgia was not firmly on the side of justice. In fact, he seems more concerned with saving face and making the US more popular abroad than with any kind of international justice.
I only mention this last because it is, in my estimation, unsupportable to justify a vote for Obama based on some suggestion that he would be the best choice for international justice. At least, it is very, very debatable. However, his clear stance in support of abortion on demand and making it more widely accessible is not debatable, and in voting for him, while we may or may not end up with a more just world in other terms, we most definitely will not be a more just society as far as those millions of unborn are concerned if he has his very clear and firm stance on abortion seen through.
The Archbishop is right in one sense–being pro-life is more than being anti-abortion. The vocal pro-life bishops as well as the USCCB have made this clear. But using that premise to suggest that a vote for Obama is justified is untenable at best.
And just so you know, I found your post because it was shared by a friend–I’m not out seeking for stuff like this. 🙂
Thanks for the post… I personally am not inclined to go the way of fighting over who is politically better in terms of international justice, and furthermore the election is over so I don’t really have to. However, I think that it is worth mentioning that Obama, as far as I can understand, seems to be pro-choice, which is very different from being pro-abortion, and his reasons for being pro-choice are inherently pro-life choices—life of the mother, that is. Furthermore, I appreciated Obama’s hesitancy to jump to any conclusions in the Georgian conflict….. and as more information has filtered out in regards to that, it seems more and more likely that he was right to wait.
Thanks for visiting, and I hope to hear from you again.