Parallel: Overlooking a Candidate’s Stand on Abortion or Concentration Camps

“Litmus test” issues have been denigrated by the press for so long that most citizens are reluctant to suggest that some legitimate ones exist.

There is one foundational right without which all other rights cannot emanate.  It is one which the Supreme Court tied itself in knots in 1973 using bizarre logic regarding privacy to take away the Right to Life and legalize abortion.

Without protecting life at its very beginning, every other cause is irrelevant.

“It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.” –Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life¹

A certain way to raise a liberal’s ire is to say a particular judge should not be considered for the Supreme Court unless he/ she is pro-life.  They would rail against such a “litmus test.”

But suppose a candidate for Congress was asked for an opinion about the concentration camps in Germany during World War II.  What would the Left say if that individual passed on that by saying those killing camps were the business of the Germans and we should not have taken a stance at that time because their legal system allowed it?  Would the secular news channels have enough hours in a broadcasting day to declare that this candidate was unqualified?

Both the right to life and concentration camp issues are legitimate “litmus tests.”  It defies logic that only the second one is acceptable.  The only conclusion which can be drawn is that, to most “progressives”, all lives are not created equal.

 

¹ – http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/abortion/living-the-gospel-of-life.cfm