Life: Priority One 
By Meg Barnes

The fight to restore the right to life of all human persons, born and unborn, will reach fever pitch in the days and months to come. Because pro-life people have continued to speak up, abortion will be a much-discussed issue leading up to the 2008 elections and will impact the outcome of elections all across the country.

A great deal hangs in the balance….and not just the makeup of the US Supreme Court and the US Congress, but the next President, and the Vermont Legislature.

Once again, pro-life voters can expect to be labeled ‘single-issue’ voters--a term intended to marginalize and stigmatize, and when used to describe those who passionately believe in the sanctity of human life, one that misses the point entirely.

First, pro-life concerns span issues ranging from abortion and infanticide, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia to embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and much more. Pro-lifers cannot plausibly be called ‘single issue’ voters due, quite simply, to the scope of their concerns.

Second, it is not a matter of ‘single issue’ voting, but a matter of prioritizing the most fundamental of our rights and the very reason our form of government was established in the first place.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." --Declaration of Independence, 1776.

"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government." --Thomas Jefferson to Maryland Republicans, 1809.

Our founding fathers laid out our rights and then placed them in the right order. Our Right to Life is the First Right.

Politicians and candidates for office can and will believe in different approaches to resolving pressing issues ranging from war to taxes to education and more – and do so with all sincerity.

But when elected officials or candidates align themselves with the pro-abortion agenda, that becomes another matter entirely. There are issues that transcend the politics of the day – issues that touch on our very humanity – slavery, racism, human rights, sterilization and eugenics, anti-semitism, and, today, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.

This is why pro-life voters do not vote straight party line. Rather, they seek out those men and women, of any party, who know the real cost of abortion, both to unborn babies and to the mothers whose lives are forever changed by it. Pro-life voters want to be represented by those who will cast their legislative votes to protect human life.

A candidate or elected official who can disregard his or her unborn constituents does not understand the most fundamental principal of all – that Life is the First Right.

Pro-lifers are not ‘single-issue’ voters. We are priority voters.

Life is priority one.

Meg Barnes
Chair, Vermont Right to Life Political Committees