“America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past.“ So said Sen. Barack Obama at his June 3 speech declaring his victory in the Democrat primaries.

Yet, Obama is hardly the advocate of new policies as he claims. His economic policies, consisting primarily of increasing the tax burden on the wealthy and corporations and further regulating the economy, are straight out of the past. They have been proven not to work and are chiefly a cheap attempt to pander and blame our society’s woes on the wealthy, instead of laying responsibility at the doorstep of government and individuals making bad choices.

Another issue on which Obama is hardly an original thinker is abortion. The only thing original about him is that he is probably the most extreme proponent of abortion that has ever been a presidential candidate. But his policies and rhetoric on the issue are straight out of the radical pro-abortion movement of the past 40 years.

He has a 100 percent rating with both NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood. He has repeatedly, both in Illinois and in the U.S. Senate, voted against bans on partial birth abortion, or related issues. In his perhaps most shocking vote, as an Illinois state senator, he voted against the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” which would have required abortionists to not kill an infant accidentally left alive after an attempted abortion.

So, in spite of all the high-flying rhetoric about “change” and sticking up for the little guy, Obama is about as same-old same-old as you can get on this issue and many others. And he fails to stick up for the littlest of guys, the unborn child.

Of course, being the great orator, Obama seeks to disguise his policies and true beliefs with vague rhetoric about his position and bizarre justifications for them.

For example, Obama claims, “A woman’s ability to decide how many children to have and when, without interference from the government, is one of the most fundamental rights we possess. It is not just an issue of choice, but equality and opportunity for all women.”

If Obama were only talking about contraception, I could agree with this statement. After all, one of the most onerous and evil aspects of the Chinese government is its insistence on interfering in a family’s right to choose when and how many children they have.

But what he’s really talking about here, since there are no laws against contraception, is abortion. What he’s also saying is that abortion should be protected as a means of birth control, and not just as a last resort in an unfortunate situation. He claims it is a “fundamental right,” which again if applied to the planning of when and how many children to have, I agree. But the problem is that we’re not talking about choosing when to bring new life into the world; we’re talking about when to end new life in the womb.

If that were a “fundamental right,” it would have been discovered before the Supreme Court’s flawed 1973 decision. Most fundamental rights are those which allow an individual to exercise his conscience in a free and responsible way. The right to vote, the right to believe or not, the right to speak your mind. No fundamental right gives an individual the ability to destroy, except the so-called “right to choose.”

So let’s all look past the kumbayah, feel-goodism of Obama and begin looking at his actual policies before we hand over the reins of the most powerful country in the world.

One final note: for all those Catholics who believe it is okay to vote for Obama because of his advocacy for the poor, please remember that there is a hierarchy of values. Just as jay-walking is a vastly less serious crime than murder, so is abortion a vastly more serious issue than food stamps. Abortion involves the intentional taking of innocent life for largely selfish motives. The Church has therefore always and throughout its entire history condemned it as evil.

Before you throw up the canard of war or the death penalty, remember this: the Church has always upheld the principle of “just war” and affirmed the state’s right to execute heinous criminals. There are strict limits on those principles, but war and capital punishment are allowable in certain circumstances, and we can agree to disagree on exactly when and where they can be applied.

No such allowances are made for abortion. The Church therefore calls on us to put that issue at the top of our list. Obviously, on that note, Obama is an unacceptable choice.

Trey Hoffman

Peachtree City, Ga.

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