As we enter into the home stretch of the most important election season the U.S. has experienced since 1778, we are dealing with the same old confusion, misdirection, puffing, slandering, and plain old propaganda, with which we have grown accustomed over the last fifty years or more.

However, the landscape has changed significantly since Ronald Reagan promised not to, “exploit, for political purposes, [Walter Mondale’s] youth and inexperience.”

We now have an entire party which treats the support of abortion as a fundamental requirement to qualify to a leadership role in society. This, after years of that same party claiming that abortion should not be a litmus test on election day. This election, much like the 2016 election will ultimately come down to abortion. This is pretty phenomenal given the fact that the abortion advocates thought they won this battle 47 years ago. It is true that for many years, it looked like they had won the battle, but dedicated pro-live advocates never gave up, and eventually, the science and reality of human reproduction and development caught up with the faith and convictions of the pro-lifers. Now, the abortion issue leans in favor of pro-life advocates, if ever so delicately.

Poll after poll shows that the country is still fairly divided on whether abortion should be available in some situations. While a small percentage of Americans seem to believe that abortion should be available in every situation, it is that radical group who currently benefits from powerful laws, yet it is that radical group which calls for more and more benefits, protection, and taxpayer money for abortion. One of those radicals is Joe Biden (who is not a radical himself, but who has submitted his life to the radicals so he can have a chance to become president), who has promised to codify Roe v. Wade, meaning that regardless of what the Supreme Court may do in the near future, abortion access and funding would be protected by laws passed by Congress, maybe even the Constitution.

Joe Biden used to be a lot more conservative on the abortion issue. He supported the Hyde Amendment which prevented the federal government from using taxpayer funds to fund abortion. He has now flipped on that issue in order to remain in the good “graces” of his political party which requires that their candidates and leaders fully support abortion in all circumstances. He also stated he would prosecute The Little Sisters of the Poor, for declining to provide coverage for abortifacients in their health insurance plan.

The line is drawn. We have many candidates who are decidedly pro-life, and they are largely opposed by candidates who are simply pro-abortion. These pro-abortion candidates like to obscure the truth and call themselves “pro-choice”, but the only “choice” they can support is the choice to support abortion, so let’s stop kidding ourselves.

The office of president is one of these offices where a decidedly pro-life candidate is opposed by a blatantly pro-abortion candidate. Donald Trump is pro-life. He promised to support life when he was running for the office, and once elected he did the unheard of thing in politics, he kept his promises. He has a longer list of pro-life decisions, moves, and accomplishments than any president since 1973, and he promises to do more. Some of these accomplishments are:
• He has allowed healthcare workers to conscientiously oppose providing “services” such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide in the course of their work.
• He canceled a large government contract for taxpayer-funded experimentation with body parts of aborted babies.
• He established the federal Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.
• He reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which prevents approximately $9 billion of foreign aid from being used to fund abortions internationally. This has been done by various presidents before him, but President Obama and President Clinton had rescinded the policy during their terms.
• He took action against California for violating the Weldon Amendment by discriminating against organizations that do not cover abortion in their health care plans.
• He joined twenty-four countries in joint statements before the United Nations General Assembly and other international bodies stating that there is no international right to abortion
• He ended the State Departments participation in the United Nations Population Fund which engaged in activities such as coercive sterilization.
• He called for defunding abortion providers through Title X funding.
• He overturned the Obama regulation which would have made it illegal to defund abortion providers who want to access federal funding.
• He has appointed two Supreme Court judges who are expected to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (which remains to be seen), and has appointed dozens and dozens of pro-life judges to the federal bench.
• He was the first President to participate in the National March for Life. No other President has lifted a finger to participate in the largest pro-life event in the country.
• He restricted the use of human fetal tissue procured from abortions in medical research.

Some are alleging that Trump is not pro-life because he has mistreated immigrants, minorities, the LGBT community, women, and popular television celebrities. Granted, Trump is abrasive, often unpleasant, and in the past it appears that he may have engaged in some very inappropriate behavior with women, but it has been a long, long time, since the U.S. has had a gentleman as a president, and neither candidate on the current ticket comes to us with a pristine record. There is something about politics and the culture these days which drags us all into the pig sty.

Yet, you tell me: How has Trump mistreated immigrants that is any different than any recent President? Holding areas, family separation, deportation, poor living conditions, and other problems we see on the border with Mexico, existed long before Trump was elected. Immigrants have been murdered, raped, enslaved, abandoned, robbed, and swindled for decades, but not by a U.S. President, and not by Donald Trump. Keep in mind that it is Trump who wants to fix the immigration system, which numerous past Presidents and presidential candidates have admitted, is broken. Unfortunately, certain members of Congress have made reform and improvements difficult, if not impossible, by blocking laws and budget provisions which would help living conditions for people stuck at the border and by improving and speeding the process up.

Also tell me how Trump is racist. And don’t simply point out that he’s a white, wealthy, male. Using that as your basis to claim someone is racist simply proves the fact that you are racist. Provide me with some concrete and verifiable proof that Trump has acted with prejudice against someone based on the color of their skin or their ethnicity. Maybe you are thinking of the travel ban. Isn’t it interesting that we have seen very little terrorism from radical Islamic terrorists since Trump was elected? But go ahead, explain how the travel ban makes Trump a racist.

I could go on. But the real reason for this article is to help educate you as to why as a Christian, you cannot vote for Joe Biden.

Joe Biden is Catholic. He’s Catholic because he received Catholic sacraments as a child. That’s all it takes to be a Catholic. And it takes a lot more to be a practicing Catholic, and even more to be a faithful Catholic, and even more to be a “devout” Catholic, which is kind of like saying you are an extremely holy (nearly saintly) Catholic. Don’t get me wrong, Joe may be trying. He may go to Mass each Sunday, and pray each day, and he may be doing other pious things we Catholics do, but there is one enormous barrier which prevents him from being an actual practicing, faithful, or devout Catholic. This fact is his open and notorious advocacy for legal abortion (not to mention is open embrace of same-sex “marriage”). You see, Joe has clearly and consistently said that he believes in the woman’s “right to choose”. As I said earlier, this is just a veiled way of saying he believes in abortion.

All of us have stumbling blocks in our lives which damage or sever our relationship with God. But for most of us, these are private issues, and sometimes few people are influenced or impacted negatively by our sins and sinfulness. There are certainly situations and occasions when our behavior or flawed beliefs do cause others to fall into sin as well. Scripture contains an ominous warning for us in such a case. It would be better to have a great millstone tied around our neck and to be thrown into the sea. (Luke 17:1-3, Mark 9:42)

Think of it this way. Let’s say there is a person who has a problem with dishonesty and tells lies in order to sometimes obtain money, things, or praise, he would not otherwise receive. That is certainly sinful, and it does impact others and may even cause others to join in with him or lie on their own in order to gain advantages. That is a bad thing. If the man’s lies were so small that no one noticed and no one decided to try it on their own, it would not be as serious.

What if the man were a prominent person in the community? He might be influencing more people, causing more people to stumble. What if he announced that he was a Christian? What if he then announced that Jesus had a few things wrong?

Let’s take a step back and say the man is a well-known doctor who is respected among his peers. Let’s make him the chief surgeon at prominent hospital. One day, he decides that he is going to begin killing patients who have done bad things in the past. Whether the patient is an inmate from the local prison who comes in for an appendicitis, an injured suspect brought in right after arrest, or a perpetrator whose past acts are made known to the surgeon by one of the perpetrator’s victims or a family member, the surgeon is going to kill the person on the operating table instead of performing the surgery which could save the person’s life. He decides things like murder, child molestation, rape, assault, pandering, armed robbery, burglary, kidnapping, and repeat offenders as examples of acts which would be considered as just cause for death instead of treatment.

Let’s say that the doctor is on-call for emergency surgeries, so no one really knows who or when he’ll be the surgeon on any given case. However, some staff members can manipulate the schedule and call order to make sure that those who have committed heinous crimes are more likely to be this doctor’s patient. Let’s say other emergency surgeons like the idea and begin doing it as well.

That is certainly much more serious than secretly cheating on your 8th grade history test, right? It is more serious because of the gravity of the sin (murder) and because the sin has a direct impact on others, such as the victim, the staff members who assist in it, and other doctors and staff members to begin to do it as well. Sounds like abortion, right? Most people would not call that doctor a physician, they would call him a murderer, or at least the judge, jury, and executioner.

Just as this killing doctor’s evil acts are evil beyond the doctor himself, the evil acts of a political leader have a very broad and significant impact, and I’m not talking about their personal, private sins, I’m talking about the evil they promote and enshrine.

With Joe Biden, the harm extends to the spiritual realm because he has promoted what he characterizes as very deep Catholic faith. To people who do not know better, this could mislead people into believing that Catholics can support abortion or cowardly remain silent regarding abortion and thereby allow it to take place. There are actually organizations out there who feed on vulnerable Catholics and Christians in this way. One such organizations is called Catholics for Choice. I suspect Catholics for Choice has endorsed Joe Biden and would love to guide his decisions if elected.

This is why I am very disheartened to read articles which make reckless claims such as one I recently read in Our Sunday Visitor: “That abortion is completely wrong doesn’t mean a Catholic has to vote for the pro-life candidate (assuming there is one) and against the pro-choice candidate.”

Such opinions are fine if you have two candidates who are all over the place on a multitude of issues and the pro-abortion candidate would not have the power and desire to codify abortion in American law. Such is not the case with November’s presidential election. Why do our Catholic writers (and in many cases more than a few of our Catholic bishops and priests) appear to be numb to the fact that the abortion advocates are scared to death that abortion will soon be up to each individual state, and that some states may decide not to legalize abortion in their jurisdiction? This possibility enrages radical feminists and other liberal progressives, and they are pulling out all stops to entrench Roe v. Wade and abortion into the U.S. Constitution as deeply as they can.

Joe Biden has promised to codify Roe v. Wade, and Nancy Pelosi (another lapsed Catholic who has excommunicated herself) has now promised federal tax dollars to fund abortion in 2021. How is she going to come through on that promise? She won’t unless Joe Biden wins in November. Interestingly, Pelosi recently stated that she does not think Biden should debate Trump before the November election. It is obvious why. Biden is not mentally competent. But I digress.

The need to send Joe Biden into retirement is much greater than many of our Catholic leaders realize. The need to overturn Roe v. Wade before a liberal progressive can codify it is absolutely essential. The need to eliminate all possibility of federal funding for abortion is urgent.

Therefore, armchair theologians, and actual theologians, can sit back and look at reality through opaque glass and come up with all the middle of the road comments their learned minds can muster, but the rest of us need to see reality clearly and cast our vote for the most pro-life President the country has seen in our lifetime. It is bizarre that Donald Trump is that man, and it is bizarre that a Catholic opponent would be the most pro-abortion president in our lifetime, but God works in mysterious ways. Some Catholic bishops, priests, deacons, writers, and bloggers also work in mysterious ways when they poo poo the idea that one cannot vote for an aggressively pro-abortion candidate who is running for the most powerful leadership role in the country. Smart people are not smart on all issues and at all times.

The fact is, the abortion issue is preeminent in Catholic moral teaching right now because it takes place within the sanctity of the family, it is a voracious consumer of lives (over 60,000,000 since 1973), and because it attacks life itself. These three truths are unique to abortion. These three facts also mean that other moral problems, although important and worthy of our attention, prayers, and charitable donations, are not as high on the list of priorities at the voting booth. No other moral ill in American society has taken anywhere near 60,000,000 lives since 1973. Many moral ills attack the quality of life, or the length of lives, but they do not snuff life out. Few of today’s moral ills take place within the sanctity of the family, though child molestation and child abuse and neglect do at an alarming rate.

However, Joe Biden has no solutions for the other ills in society which are any different or promise to be any more effective than any previous president, including Donald Trump. In fact, Joe Biden promises more lock downs, which would likely destroy the economy, limit more (if not all) freedoms, and create a financial and emotional depression which will make the 1930’s seem like a practice run. If you enjoy the fact that many large U.S. cities are embroiled in violent riots and protests on a nightly basis, Biden is probably your guy, because he will make sure the show comes to your downtown soon.

However, the most important (the preeminent) issue in this election is abortion, and the two presidential candidates could not be more clearly aligned with one side or the other on this issue. Trump is blatantly, unapologetically, and irrefutably, opposed to abortion. Joe Biden is blatantly, unapologetically, and irrefutably, in favor of abortion. In order to pander to ill-informed Catholics and others, he claims that he is not personally for abortion, he just feels like he can’t impose his personal beliefs on others. That is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever said, by the way. And that is a tough list to top. As a professional politician and policy maker, Joe Biden has imposed his personal beliefs on every member of this country for decades. He cannot now run and hide from the fact that he is afraid to take a stand on the abortion issue. Trump has taken a strong stand against abortion and will continue to do so. With four more years, the country will be able to wash itself of the blood of Roe v. Wade, clean up the smoldering downtown business districts of the filth left behind by Antifa and BLM rioters and criminals, and set the stage for peace going forward. Maybe the Democratic party will even realize that their platform, which is the culture of death, needs to reject Marxism, communism, and socialism, and return to the Constitution. Something tells me they won’t.

So here is my final bit of advice with regard to reading Catholic opinions on how to vote in November. If the writer suggests that there are ways to follow your conscience and vote for Joe Biden or for any pro-abortion candidate, stop reading and never read from that source again, unless the source sincerely and thoroughly apologizes for his or her ignorance and admits that they were wrong.