Les
Femmes Endorses
Pro-Life Team
The November 6th election offers Catholic voters of Virginia a striking contrast. The Republican team for Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General comprised of Mark Earley, Jay Katzen, and Jerry Kilgore announced their strong pro-life convictions from their nominating convention in Richmond last spring. They have unwaveringly stood by them throughout the campaign. Their Democratic opponents Mark Warner, Tim Kaine and Donald McEeachin favor unrestricted abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
Warner in his Action Plan for Virginia promises to "fight efforts to chip away at a woman's right to choose." He disingenuously claims to oppose "post viability abortions" but supports a "health" exception, continuing the hypocrisy begun in Doe v. Bolton, the companion decision to Roe v. Wade. Doe defined health to include the mother's mental state, her family situation, and her age, loopholes big enough to allow even the gruesome partial birth abortion method used in late pregnancy.
Virginia Democrats continue a terrible electoral tradition begun in 1993 by nominating a pro-abortion Catholic. Timothy Kaine, the forty-three year old Mayor of Richmond who sings in the choir at St. Elizabeth's Church in the city is running for Lieutenant Governor as an advocate of unlimited abortion. Unfortunately, he's not the first. In 1993, pro-abortion Lieutenant Governor candidate, Don Beyer, and Attorney General candidate, Bill Dolan, both cradle Catholics, enthusiastically endorsed abortion on demand. Beyer defeated Mike Farris in a nasty, negative campaign that played on religious bigotry against the devout Protestant head of the Home School Legal Defense Association. The current Governor, Jim Gilmore, soundly defeated Dolan in the Attorney General's race that year.
Dolan tried again for Attorney General in 1997 facing off against Mark Earley, a pro-life father of six children. It came out during a campaign debate that Dolan had defended pro-life activists in the 70s as part of a pro-bono team of Catholic lawyers. His flip-flop, reported in the press, aided in a huge 59-41% victory for Earley. Dolan has since disappeared from public life. Gilmore ended Beyer's political career the same year by winning a decisive victory for gov-ernor over the former Gonzaga High School valedictorian.
This season's Catholic embarrassment, Tim Kaine, was raised in Kansas City, Missouri and graduated from Missouri and Harvard law schools. As Richmond mayor he has no record on abortion, but his campaign website states he "is pro-choice" and supports Roe v. Wade, even opposing the 24 hour abortion waiting period passed in the last General Assembly session.
For Catholics to support the pro-abortion team of Warner, Kaine, and McCeachon is a grievously sinful matter. Some issues are so serious the one who holds them renders himself unfit for public office. Most Catholics would never consider voting for a member of the KKK or a neo-Nazi. Their repulsive views disqualify them from consideration. A person who advocates killing the most helpless members of our human family is likewise unfit to serve. The first right is the right to life. Better health care, smaller classrooms, and improved roads are no help if you're dead.
Sadly, Catholics who publicly defy the teachings of the Church are seldom challenged. When a pro-abortion candidate can declare in her campaign literature that she "teaches Sunday school" at her parish, as Patti Morrissey recently did, [See the Twilight Zone.] you know she fears neither God, her bishop, her pastor, or her director of religious education. Pray for her.
Les Femmes endorses the pro-life Republican ticket of Mark Earley, Jay Katzen, and Jerry Kilgore for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General. We also enthusiastically endorse our good friend, Dick Black, for Loudoun County Delegate. We exhort Bishop Loverde and all the priests of the diocese to remind the Catholic people of Virginia of their serious obligation to disqualify from consideration those who endorse the murder of the innocent. "For this command which I enjoin on you today is not too mysterious and remote for you. It is not up in the sky…Nor is it across the sea…No, it is something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out…I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live." [Deuteronomy 30]