The short answer is each believer is accountable to God on these sorts of issues. Thus I am not here going to say that those believers who vote for Obama are out of the will of God or living in sin. People who love Jesus will for various reasons find themselves going for the Democratic candidate.
But I will say I am concerned about Christians who seem to have uncritically jumped on board the Obama bandwagon. There are even Christian pro-Obama websites. One is called The Matthew 25 Network. It is full of gushy admiration for the man, and is full of praise for his "Christian" credentials. It even praises Obama for his wonderful pro-life record. I kid you not: http://www.matthew25.org/
It actually states that a pro-lifer can "unequivocally" support Obama. Now it goes without saying that abortion is not the only important issue which believers should consider when choosing the next President of the United States. But it is certainly a very vital issue indeed, especially for those who claim to be Bible-believing Christians.
I have written elsewhere about my concerns about Obama. But here I want to look a bit further at Obama's views on abortion. I hope to demonstrate that there is no way in the world a pro-lifer could support Obama. And given the importance of the right to life, a Christian really should think twice before voting for Obama.
To help me out here I refer to a very important article written by Robert George. Entitled "Obama's Abortion Extremism," it very carefully documents the pro-abortion zealotry of Obama. I urge readers to have a look at his entire article (see link below). Here I will simply highlight some of the key points made in the article.
He begins with these sobering words: "Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States. He is the most extreme pro-abortion member of the United States Senate. Indeed, he is the most extreme pro-abortion legislator ever to serve in either house of the United States Congress."
He lists far too many examples of this, but let me mention a few:
"For starters, he supports legislation that would repeal the Hyde Amendment, which protects pro-life citizens from having to pay for abortions that are not necessary to save the life of the mother and are not the result of rape or incest. The abortion industry laments that this longstanding federal law, according to the pro-abortion group NARAL, 'forces about half the women who would otherwise have abortions to carry unintended pregnancies to term and bear children against their wishes instead.' In other words, a whole lot of people who are alive today would have been exterminated in utero were it not for the Hyde Amendment. Obama has promised to reverse the situation so that abortions that the industry complains are not happening (because the federal government is not subsidizing them) would happen. That is why people who profit from abortion love Obama even more than they do his running mate."
He continues, "But this barely scratches the surface of Obama's extremism. He has promised that 'the first thing I'd do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act' (known as FOCA). This proposed legislation would create a federally guaranteed 'fundamental right' to abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, including, as Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia has noted in a statement condemning the proposed Act, 'a right to abort a fully developed child in the final weeks for undefined "health" reasons.' In essence, FOCA would abolish virtually every existing state and federal limitation on abortion, including parental consent and notification laws for minors, state and federal funding restrictions on abortion, and conscience protections for pro-life citizens working in the health-care industry-protections against being forced to participate in the practice of abortion or else lose their jobs. The pro-abortion National Organization for Women has proclaimed with approval that FOCA would 'sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies'."
"It gets worse. Obama, unlike even many 'pro-choice' legislators, opposed the ban on partial-birth abortions when he served in the Illinois legislature and condemned the Supreme Court decision that upheld legislation banning this heinous practice. He has referred to a baby conceived inadvertently by a young woman as a 'punishment' that she should not endure. He has stated that women's equality requires access to abortion on demand. Appallingly, he wishes to strip federal funding from pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that provide alternatives to abortion for pregnant women in need. There is certainly nothing 'pro-choice' about that."
Obama the "Christian" has even worked hard to in effect legalise infanticide: "In an act of breathtaking injustice which the Obama campaign lied about until critics produced documentary proof of what he had done, as an Illinois state senator Obama opposed legislation to protect children who are born alive, either as a result of an abortionist's unsuccessful effort to kill them in the womb, or by the deliberate delivery of the baby prior to viability. This legislation would not have banned any abortions. Indeed, it included a specific provision ensuring that it did not affect abortion laws. (This is one of the points Obama and his campaign lied about until they were caught.) The federal version of the bill passed unanimously in the United States Senate, winning the support of such ardent advocates of legal abortion as John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. But Barack Obama opposed it and worked to defeat it. For him, a child marked for abortion gets no protection-even ordinary medical or comfort care-even if she is born alive and entirely separated from her mother. So Obama has favored protecting what is literally a form of infanticide."
Amazingly, Christian supporters of Obama claim his policies will reduce abortion. Not at all, says George:
"We know that the federal and state pro-life laws and policies that Obama has promised to sweep away (and that John McCain would protect) save thousands of lives every year. Studies conducted by Professor Michael New and other social scientists have removed any doubt. Often enough, the abortion lobby itself confirms the truth of what these scholars have determined. Tom McClusky has observed that Planned Parenthood's own statistics show that in each of the seven states that have FOCA-type legislation on the books, 'abortion rates have increased while the national rate has decreased.' In Maryland, where a bill similar to the one favored by Obama was enacted in 1991, he notes that 'abortion rates have increased by 8 percent while the overall national abortion rate decreased by 9 percent.' No one is really surprised. After all, the message clearly conveyed by policies such as those Obama favors is that abortion is a legitimate solution to the problem of unwanted pregnancies - so clearly legitimate that taxpayers should be forced to pay for it."
George concludes with these words:
"What kind of America do we want our beloved nation to be? Barack Obama's America is one in which being human just isn't enough to warrant care and protection. It is an America where the unborn may legitimately be killed without legal restriction, even by the grisly practice of partial-birth abortion. It is an America where a baby who survives abortion is not even entitled to comfort care as she dies on a stainless steel table or in a soiled linen bin. It is a nation in which some members of the human family are regarded as inferior and others superior in fundamental dignity and rights. In Obama's America, public policy would make a mockery of the great constitutional principle of the equal protection of the law. In perhaps the most telling comment made by any candidate in either party in this election year, Senator Obama, when asked by Rick Warren when a baby gets human rights, replied: "that question is above my pay grade." It was a profoundly disingenuous answer: For even at a state senator's pay grade, Obama presumed to answer that question with blind certainty. His unspoken answer then, as now, is chilling: human beings have no rights until infancy - and if they are unwanted survivors of attempted abortions, not even then."
"In the end, the efforts of Obama's apologists to depict their man as the true pro-life candidate that Catholics and Evangelicals may and even should vote for, doesn't even amount to a nice try. Voting for the most extreme pro-abortion political candidate in American history is not the way to save unborn babies."
As I mentioned at the outset, many Christians have come out very strongly supporting Obama. Interestingly, the emerging church movement has many supporters of Obama. Thus we find Brian McLaren, a leading emergent, telling us how great Obama is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eUkc9GCMEQ
Ah, you might say that being weak on abortion, or being strong on Obama, is not the end of the world for a believer. Unfortunately there is more to it than that. McLaren has also made it clear the he rejects some key biblical doctrines, including the penal substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, and the doctrine of hell: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=8SOUfsX2fbk&feature=related
The emerging church movement is sadly a group that has become far too cosy with postmodernism, and has therefore taken a very light view of the importance of truth and moral absolutes. It downplays doctrine and biblical morality, and instead is keen on doubt, uncertainty, and not being judgmental.
But with such vital issues as the killing of the unborn, we do not need sloppy sentimentality, or situation ethics, or moral relativism: what we need is a strong pro-life stance which will result in many babies' lives being rescued from the slaughter.
At the end of the day, each believer must prayerfully consider who they should vote for. But if the issue of abortion was the only thing that we had to go on, then I would wonder why any biblical Christian would support Obama.
http://townhall.com/Columnists/RobertGeorge/2008/10/15/obamas_abortion_extremism