As questionable cognitive ability goes, riding with a roadkill bear carcass in your car that you forgot to field dress, then dumping it in Central Park so you don’t miss your flight – that’s a contender.
Yet, I know many well-meaning Christians who think voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or any third-party candidate, is the answer to their growing moral dilemma.
These are people who recognize Donald Trump as a characterless buffoon and worry he will trample the Constitution for his own benefit if reelected. They view Project 2025 as un-Christian, un-American and openly hostile toward women, public education, a free society, etc. But, for them, voting for a Democrat means voting “pro-abortion,” and they simply can’t.
Voting third party, on the other hand, makes them good citizens because they went to the polls. No matter who wins, and no matter how bad things get after the election, they can look at their fellow citizens, Pontious Pilate-style, and claim, “I didn’t do it.”
In the same vein, some Christians disgusted by Trump will vote for him anyway. For them, voting Republican is always the right choice because even Trump is better than abortion or whatever non-starter “liberal issue” they have identified as worse. Besides, they’ll say, Trump is “just talking” on the campaign trail. He’s not really going to do all the stuff he says if he’s reelected. Right?
To both of these groups, I’ll offer a thought exercise and an argument that voting for Kamala Harris/the Constitution positions Christians better in their fight against abortion than a vote for Trump or a third party ever will.
As I’ve written before, I am Christian. I’m also against abortion. It irritates me when people flippantly refer to Roe v. Wade as “Roe.” I feel it’s a deliberate attempt to apply a cutesy, unthreatening nickname – in manner of “friend I went to high school with” – to a court decision that allowed women to terminate pregnancies.
By the same token, strident conservatives looking to capitalize on the overturning of Roe v. Wade now openly discuss restrictions to contraception and ending in-vitro fertilization. They propose the government track health care for women of childbearing age and call for a federal abortion ban with criminal penalties for the mother. The Republican nominee for vice-president has even floated the notion that women who don’t have children are lesser citizens.
While the left tends to dehumanize babies who die in abortions, the right, especially the “Christian right,” increasingly dehumanizes women – questioning what, if any, agency women should have over their bodies and in society. A lot of good discussion got lost between those two extremes.
So, to the hypothetical.
Trump wins. A national abortion ban follows (he’s lying when he says he won’t sign it). The ban establishes criminal penalties for women who get abortions.
It’s not a stretch to see states begin to add language or emphasis to mandatory reporter laws – which require people in certain professions to report to authorities reasonable suspicions of child abuse and neglect – to include reporting women who have had abortions or are threatening to have an abortion.
Pastors are mandatory reporters, so anything that falls under that statute is exempt from confidentiality.
So, let’s say a woman comes into a pastor’s office, and she’s grieving over recently having an abortion. She doesn’t know if God will forgive her, and she’s seeking counsel on how to move forward in her faith. In this scenario, instead of ministering to her, the pastor would have to notify the authorities and report the woman as a criminal. If the pastor chooses his calling over his legal mandate, he could face civil or criminal penalties.
If that’s not government overreach into the role of a church, I don’t know what is.
Likewise, health care workers are mandatory reporters.
So, let’s say a woman walks into a faith-based pregnancy care center, an act that by its very nature indicates she is open to keeping her baby. During her visit, she tells a nurse she has seriously consulted someone about having an abortion. By law, in this scenario, the nurse might have to report that.
As a consequence, it would be easy to see how illegal, and unsafe, abortions would rise as faith-based pregnancy care centers shutter and churches become less effective as a refuge.
A vote for Kamala looks pretty “pro-life” by comparison.
When the fate of the Constitution is on the ballot, nothing else should matter. A vote for a despot could tremendously hamstring the legitimate faith community’s ability to function – not to mention upend everyone else’s basic civil rights. A win for Harris, even if she is pro-choice, will uphold the Constitution and work within the strictures of our institutions.
In short, Harris keeps Christians in the ballgame to minister to the poor, needy and heavy-laden without fear of government interference, not riding the bench wondering what happened.
Zack Plair is managing editor of The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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