Pro-Choice Catholic Politicians Who'll Do ANYTHING to Get Elected

I ran across this quote in the article Kennedy dispute reveals divide among Catholics on Forbes.com this morning. "Church Observer" and author Michael Sean Winters was again referenced as an apparent "authority" on the matter:

"Michael Sean Winters, author of "Left At The Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats," said he found the public dispute unseemly, even though he opposes abortion and thinks Kennedy is wrong. He said bishops are not making appropriate distinctions when penalizing people over abortion.

There's "a difference between being an abortion doctor, procuring an abortion for yourself or your spouse and saying, 'I don't think abortion should be illegal,'" he said."

What Mr. Winters doesn't seem to understand is that while there is a difference between having an abortion, being an abortion doctor and saying "I don't think abortion should be illegal" there is yet another category to add to this list. It is the category of "politician fighting to make sure unborn children can still be torn piece by piece from their mother's womb." The Church doesn't go out looking for people who say "I don't think abortion should be illegal" to bar from the communion line but if you're a Catholic politician who has chosen to be in the public eye, advocating abortion, you have freely placed yourself in a scandalous position. More than that you are working to ensure that more women can kill more children. Because of their influence in lawmaking and policy that means that Catholic politicians who support abortion are responsible for the deaths of the children that their policies allow to be murdered.

The article quotes another politician, former Democratic New York Gov. Mario Cuomo as saying: "If you're required (by the church) to make everybody follow your Catholic role, then nobody would vote for Catholics because it's clear that when you get the authority, you're going to be guided by your faith."

Mr. Cuomo also seems to be missing the point. Abortion isn't simply a "Catholic role." It's a matter of life and death. And recent polls have shown that the majority of Americans recognize that abortion is wrong. However the quote also makes it pretty clear that, like many politicians, Mr. Cuomo can separate moral issues from political expediency in order to get elected, although it doesn't seem that it helped him stay in the public eye.

What many "pro-choice Catholic politicians" don't seem to understand is that abortion isn't simply a Catholic issue. It's a very cut and dry matter of morality. Murder, that is the taking of an innocent life, is wrong. Even country and religion in the world recognizes this. The idea that a life is not a life simply because the child has not taken it's first breath is absurd.