PRO-LIFE GOP OR NO GOP

Absolutely not. Never.

I'll never knowingly vote for a pro-choice Republican. As important as other issues are to me, the issue of human life trumps them all. I am firmly in favor of lowering the capital gains tax, in reducing the size of government, in returning more autonomy to the states, and in balancing the budget. But not if it means killing the unborn.

Indeed, I am an ardent Republican, but not subservient. I will never let the Republican party do to me what the Democratic party now does to America's black voters--take me for granted. I will be heard.

Pro-choice Republicans need to recall that pro-lifers too have a choice and that they will use it. When pro-lifers choose, however, the only thing that dies is the political viability of those who lack the insight or courage to protect the lives of the weakest and most defenseless among us. The Republican party needs to remember that without the pro-life vote it can never win. It won't get the pro-life vote if it countenances abortion or if it nominates those who do. Human life, not lower taxes, is the bottom line.

Pro-lifers like me would sooner vote for a third party candidate, one with no reasonable expectation of victory, than to squander our votes on those who compromise even life itself. We know that a Democratic victory at the polls is not necessarily bad for conservative values and beliefs. Quite the opposite. As horrible and inept as is a Democratic presidency, Bill Clinton made possible in only two years what the Republicans on their own failed to achieve in forty: a Republican congress.

Pro-lifers would gladly sacrifice a current election in order to secure the next if it meant the protection of 1.4 million lives a year, the number of persons slaughtered annually in the nation's abortion mills. In politics as in the rest of life, sometimes you must endure what you like least -- a Democratic victory -- in order to get what you want most -- safety and security for the lives of the unborn. The fetal holocaust must stop.

The Republicans need to know that the pro-life vote is not for sale, not at any price. The pro-life vote cannot be bought with balanced budget amendments, block grants to states, free-trade agreements, or Contracts with America. Pro-lifers are not political prostitutes. The Republican party insults us deeply by thinking and acting otherwise. Pro-lifers know, even if party officials do not, that if you have a price, someone will meet it. We're not selling out. If the Republican party ceases to be pro-life, we'll find one, or start one, that is. Without us, the Republicans can never win. Without us, they never shall.

By going to a third party, pro-lifers do not become irrelevant; the Republican party does.

Pro-lifers do not have infinite political patience. We will not be presumed upon. And we shall not wait patiently forever for the Republican party to make good on its platform promises of the last 20 years. We want the party to be pro-life and we want its pro-life stance to be translated into policy and into law. So far, it has not. We're waiting, and we're not happy.

In the last election, the Republicans made a contract with America concerning the party's first one hundred days in office.

Those promises will be kept. By that I am impressed and for that I am grateful. But my gratitude is not unbounded and not unalloyed. As quickly as the first hundred days of this Congress will pass, they pass exceedingly slowly for those who are pro-life. More than four thousand persons die each day from abortion. More than 400,000 persons will expire before the Contract does. We can turn back the tide of ill-conceived Democratic policies, but we cannot raise the dead. They are dying every day, by the thousands.

In this case, patience is not a virtue.

Even if it were, the Contract with America makes no promise about ending abortion, or even curtailing it.

Yes, Newt; we noticed.

If we wanted to vote pro-choice, we could be Democrats. As it is, however, one pro-choice party is more than enough. Obviously, in a race between two pro-choice parties, one pro-choice party must lose. We'll see to it that it's the Republicans. Like the old saw says, if you give the people a choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, they'll pick the Democrat every time.

Listen to me, Haley Barbour: The Republican party is pro-life or it's out.

Michael Bauman is professor of theology and culture at Hillsdale College in Michigan.