Tim Wildmon

AFA president

October 2008 – Some very interesting – and provocative – comments were made by both major presidential candidates when they were interviewed in August by Pastor Rick Warren, well known for his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life.

From what I saw, Warren did a very good job with his questioning. I must admit, I was somewhat skeptical that he would ask any hard questions precisely because he is a pastor and not a hard-nosed journalist like Bill O’Reilly or Chris Matthews. But the one question that received the oddest answer was for Sen. Barack Obama about abortion. Here is the exchange:

Pastor Warren: At what point does a baby get human rights?

Sen. Obama: I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.

In other words, Obama is saying, “Beats me.”

That is the answer from a man who wants to be president on the most debated moral issue of our time?

Here is what Warren said about this non-answer after the interview session: “I think he needed to be more specific on that. I happen to disagree with Barack on that. To me, I would not want to die and get before God one day and go, ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t take the time to figure [that] out’ because if I was wrong, then it had severe implications for my leadership if I had the ability to do something about it.”

Warren said he wished Obama had stated clearly that he did not believe life begins until point X or that it is a human being at point X. Warren continued:  “But to just say ‘I don’t know’ on the most divisive issue in America is not a clear enough answer for me.”

Well, if you don’t know when a baby becomes a human being deserving of protection by the law, wouldn’t you want to err on the side of life? After all, every abortion does stop a beating human heart. There’s no debate about that.

Obama went on to say that America has had a pro-life president for eight years and the number of abortions has not gone down. I have not checked the statistics on that to see if it is true or not, but what does that have to do with Obama’s position on abortion? He also said that pro-life and pro-choice people could work together to reduce the number of abortions which begs the question: If you don’t have a moral problem with abortion, Senator, why would you care if we reduce the number of abortions in America? 

Make no mistake, Sen. Obama is the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in our history. He has received a 100% rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League for his voting record all three years he has been in the Senate.

Sen. John McCain, on the other hand, was very forthright about his record and about his views on abortion. Here is how that went:

Pastor Warren: At what point does a baby get human rights?

Sen. McCain: At the moment of conception.

Any more questions?

McCain went on to say: “I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies.”

National Right to Life endorsed McCain in April with this statement: “Sen. John McCain has consistently taken a strong pro-life position against abortion, has a strong pro-life voting record against abortion and opposes Roe v. Wade.”         

Now let me tell you what I really think. I believe Barack Obama is an intelligent man. He knows that what is growing inside a woman after she gets pregnant is a baby. He knows that. We all do. It’s Biology 101. But he doesn’t care and doesn’t want to have to answer the hard questions related to that truth, so – he doesn’t. He passes it off as “above my pay grade.” He is being intellectually dishonest with himself and with the American people. 

But he also knows that he is beholden to the abortion-rights crowd who controls the Democrat Party at a national level. To give Pastor Warren a specific time along the gestation period of when an unborn baby should be protected from abortion, would have opened him up to arguments of logic and reason which he did not want to get into.

As someone who is passionate about life issues, I also understand that there are multiple important problems that face us as a country. The economy, energy, national security, terrorism at home and war abroad – just to name a few. To be a responsible citizen and voter we must take all these issues into consideration when casting a vote. But what a person believes about innocent human life – in this case unborn babies – tells me a lot about that person’s soul.