Who is the party of life?

Good job, Isabelle, you have pointed out that there is quite a lot to consider when it comes to voting for a political candidate. I mean, there are hungry people to feed, diseases to cure, violent conflicts to settle....There is a planet to preserve for our posterity; discrimination, genocide, and nuclear proliferation to deal with....And God forbid two consenting adults (who happen to be of the same gender) want the right to get married, and unconscious, first-trimester fetuses (or embryos or blastocysts or morulae or zygotes or whatever) are dying painless deaths, often in order to spare their mothers' lives, or alleviate the suffering of children with, say, spinal chord injuries. I guess if you agree with the Catholic Church, and you want to define yourself by your views on abortion and gay marriage, then the Republican Party is the one for you. But if you want to do what Jesus (who never talked about abortion or gay marriage) would do, then there is no doubt that you should support the Democratic Party. Jesus cared about the poor and vulnerable, and wanted to redistribute the wealth. I would even argue that he was the first socialist. I would also argue that the Democratic Party is more "pro-life" than the Republican Party in that, for example, it works more to aid the poverty-stricken, those who are most likely to get abortions, thereby reducing the number of abortions had annually. Abortion is certainly a moral problem, albeit one that should rank very low on your list of concerns if you care at all about human and animal suffering, but an effort to reduce the need for abortions does not consist of harassing women outside of abortion clinics, it consists of working for advances in contraceptive technology, adopting children, and helping women and girls get through their pregnancies and support their children both emotionally and financially.

Karina, as usual, I understand what you are trying to say and I agree with most of it, but you are thinking of this much to black and white. Republicans aren't trying to create a bad quality of life for some people, they are just trying to go about it differently than Democrats. Its important to see the shades of gray that exist in both parties platforms.