A year ago, I did something I thought I would never do. I officially changed my party affiliation to Democrat by voting in my first Democratic primary. I was asked, “Julie, how can you be a Catholic and do such a thing? It’s for the same reason 60% of the American Catholic Church, 76% of Hispanic Catholics/Christians, and 95% of Black Catholics/Christians are Democrats and don’t vote Republican, because we believe, especially at this point, that the current far-right of the Republican party abuses and takes more life than an abortion rate which has declined steadily over the last 50 years. Please note that this does not include all conservatives and all Republicans but a small minority of them. I am also changing my party affiliation because the right-wing of the Republican party has taken a small number of Bible verses which speak about women being quiet, sexuality, and allowing women to make choices, and they have waged war on the poor and the disenfranchised who are supported and defended by 2000 Bible verses and Catholic Social Teaching. So, let’s look at the moral examination of conscience I went through to come to this conclusion. And no, I did not get my information from liberal media but by watching all of this unfold over the last seven years.
Is it possible to end abortion without?…………….
If it’s possible to end abortion without resorting to the actions of January 6th, without destroying the lives of the mothers in poverty who carry the unborn babies, without destroying lives at the border and ripping children away from their parents, without withholding healthcare for decades from vulnerable people, without withholding maternity and family medical leave, without flippantly handling COVID in a deadly way resulting in over a million deaths, without spreading deadly conspiracy theories and misinformation through sources like Fox News, without destroying the environment, without increasing gun violence, without harming our education system resulting in harming children, without deliberately fighting against scientific and historical facts resulting in harm and death, without withholding a living wage, without elevating racism to dangerous levels, without increasing the death penalty, without destroying the lives of the disabled, LBGTQ people, and their families, without legislating against the right for transgender children to exist, without wreaking the witness of the Church via Trumpism, without increasing the abortion rate from 2018-2021, without destroying our democracy, without demonizing anyone who is unlike most Americans and most Christians/Catholics in the country, and without abusing people into voting for all of these evils collectively in place of fruitlessly ending abortion, then I might listen.
But see, the hard-political white right married to parts of the American white Church has proven over 50 years of power that they cannot abolish abortion without damaging and destroying the lives above. And in addition, the hard right calls the basic Common Good of society socialism and communism. This is why I’m a Democrat now, why I attend a Hispanic Catholic Church which is more Democrat than Republican, and why I am wholistically pro-life instead of just pro-birth.
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