Charlotte Allen explains "Why Catholics Should Vote for Bush"

The article begins thus:

As a Catholic, I'm voting for President George W. Bush on Nov. 2. The reason is simple: Although Bush isn't a Catholic, and not all of his positions are always consistent with Catholic teaching, it is he, not his nominally Catholic opponent, John F. Kerry, who promises to foster and defend the Catholic ethic of life.

At the core of that ethic--and I'll say it bluntly--lies abortion, the life issue that most sharply divides Bush and Kerry. Bush supports at least some restrictions on abortion; Kerry supports almost none. Related to it are the Catholic Church's positions against euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research.

Opposition to these three practices is not an idiosyncratic Catholic "tenet" (as Kerry put in a speech this past weekend)--a specifically Catholic doctrine like the immaculate conception of Mary that Catholics might affirm in private but should refrain from imposing on their fellow citizens. Rather, the sacredness of each individual human life is a moral proposition: every human entity, no matter how small, unformed, weak, disabled, or decrepit, deserves to be treated with dignity as a member of the human family. We were all once "dots," as Sen. Thomas Harkin calls human embryos, and we are all destined to die in helplessness.

Amen, Charlotte.

Read it all.