Single Issue Voting

If 2008 is remembered as the year of the “bailout,” when the federal government spent billions to rescue the nation’s financial system, it should also be recalled for another kind of bailout—Christians with impeccably pro-life records who suddenly abandoned what they declared to be a sinking ship.

Abortion seemed to be one of the few issues on which Senator Barack Obama had an unambiguous and unchangeable position during the campaign, as he promised that “the first thing I’d do as president is to sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” something that would nullify all existing laws restricting abortion...

The role of “pro-lifers” in the Obama campaign was not to persuade the candidate to moderate his stand on abortion (there is no evidence that they even tried to do so) but to persuade pro-lifers to forget about the issue.

But if social conservatives follow this advice over the next four years and beyond, they will be required to overcome their “narrow” outlook on more than just the issue of whether abortion should be legal. The Obama administration can be counted on to initiate systematic government funding of abortions and embryonic stem-cell research, to support efforts by international agencies to promote (and sometimes require) abortion in Third World countries, and to endorse efforts in the United Nations to define abortion as a “right” that must be recognized by all nations.