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Tuesday, October 12th, 2004

Open Letter to Single-Issue Voters

There’s a guy in my office is a single-issue voter. He is morally opposed to abortion, and he will vote for George Bush. There is nothing that Bush can do that is so wrong that this guy would not vote for him. He simply shrugs off any political arguments around the office. He is an intelligent, kind, educated young man, but he places the issue of abortion above all else.

I’m sure there are many others like him. And I have been wondering something. Allow me to engage in a little hypothetical thought experiment.

If you are morally opposed to abortion, where is the line at which you’d say “This is more important?” For instance–starting at the most extreme end of the social scale–would you be satisfied living in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia so long as abortion were outlawed? (If you answer “yes” to this question, then you can save yourself time and just skip the rest of this post.)

How about the Darfur region of Sudan? Would genocide be a good tradeoff for no abortion?

No? How about Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan? Abortion is illegal there. Of course, women can’t leave the house without a male guardian, and they are regular traded and sold like livestock. They are still forced to cover themselves from head to toe so only their eyes show. If a woman accidently exposes an inch of flesh, she can be beaten by authorites. And as recently as as two years ago, Saudi schoolgirls were forced back into a burning building because they weren’t wearing the proper dress. Would that be worth it?

Maybe Liberia, where an estimated 21,000 children–some as young as seven years old–have been drafted as soldiers? Those that weren’t sent to the front lines to die were used as servants and sexual slaves for the older soldiers. But hey, no abortion, right? So it’s okay, right?

If you’re still reading this, I have to guess that you have decided that there is a line after all. Next you have to decide where to draw it.

Me, I draw the line at throwing people in prison without a trial, legalizing torture, and officials who “disappear” people who later turn up dead.

I’m not sure what single issue would be worth living in a country like that.

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