Some Catholic bishops pressuring Catholics to vote for “pro-life” candidates, tout Mitt Romney as such. Simple?

Nicholas Carfardi, in a National Catholic Reporter article asks, “Which presidential candidate is truly pro-life?” Romney was pro-choice as governor of Massachusetts and as a U.S. Senate candidate. Obama’s health care law does not pay for abortions; in Massachusetts, Romney’s law does.

Obama’s plan includes $250 million supporting vulnerable pregnant women and alternatives to abortion. The Romney/Ryan budget plan cuts millions from plans that support these women.

Carfardi asserts that Romney profited from the abortion industry while head of Bain Capital. Owning shares in Stericycle (a disposer of aborted fetuses), Bain earned millions when it sold this stock. Also, Bain’s capital included investments from El Salvadorian landowners — the ones responsible for funding the “death squads” murdering nuns and priests — including Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980. Catholic theologians concluded that the Romney/Ryan budget is antithetical to Catholic social teaching and immoral.

Obama is pro-choice, not pro-abortion. “Pro-choice” affirms the “primacy of conscience” right of a woman’s own moral decision. Romney is pro-choice, pro-life, pro-expedience. He’s hardly the clear moral choice.

Cardinal Ratzinger said, “When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand on abortion, but votes for the candidate, it can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

What about war, atomic weapons, social justice and protections for the poor, the oppressed, the environment?

Such proportionate reasons compel “pro-life” advocates from all faiths to choose Obama, whose policies morally reflect a “seamless” stewardship of life.

David J. Brown

State College