I have heard this refrain from more and more Christian Americans in the last several months and tonight I went to a talk on this very topic. They also say, "Fool me once shame on you."
That is what happened during the last election campaign. George Bush gave just enough Bible quotes and talked about the "unborn" often enough, that many people assumed that Bush was pro-life. Now with his four-year term to look at and learning a little history about the president, people can see that Bush has little if any respect for what it actually means to be pro-life in the Biblical way.
It doesn’t matter if you are Catholic, Lutheran, or a nondenominational Christian, believing in the sanctity of life is pretty much the same.
The Catholic Church and Pope John Paul II, in 1995 published the Evangelium Vitae or the Gospel of Life. The Gospel of Life is said to be at the heart of Jesus’ message. Jesus said; "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." John 10-10
Real Pro-life people believe in the sanctity of all life. They believe that it is wrong to even use capital punishment as a tool of the State, because it puts the State in the place of God in deciding who should live and who should die.
Pope John Paul II said "End the culture of death!" In 1979 John Paul wrote his first encyclical titled, Redemptor Hominis, concerning the dignity of the human person. He said that this dignity is not derived from any worldly power or achievement, but it must be recognized that "each man receives within himself that breath of life that comes from Christ."
If a Christian believes that each person on earth was put here by God, then what right do we have to remove any one of them? While George Bush was Governor of Texas, there were 152 executions, while in other states some governors stopped all executions. A real pro-life Christian would find it abhorrent to kill even one human being, Bush set a new record for the number of executions done while he was governor.
George Bush has sent our military off to not one, but two wars and has sent combat troops to many countries. Bush’s wars have killed and wounded tens of thousands of innocent civilians. No one knows the exact number, because the Bush administration cares so little for innocent life, they won’t even keep a count.
No one knows how many innocent pregnant women have been killed by our bombs and bullets.
The religious right in America will tell you to vote for George Bush because he has dazzled them with some Bible quotes and Christian sayings. They will even tell you that Bush is anti-abortion, but George will never come right out and say he is. Yes he did sign the "Partial Birth Abortion Bill," but only after a poll said 80 some percent of Americans agreed with it.
George Bush has never sent any anti-abortion legislation to Congress nor has he used his bully pulpit to push for abortion reform. That is because George Bush is not pro-life.
George Bush is pro-power, he is pro-money, he is pro-war, and he likes to be commander in chief of the greatest military in the history of the world, but George Bush can never be called pro-life.
