Let's get the arguments right!

I heard it yet again.  A Catholic radio host tells Catholics that they must vote pro-life and that Barack Obama is not pro-life.  An angry Catholic listener calls in and proclaims that the host cannot be prolife if he supports the war in Iraq.  The host responds that he does not support the war, but that abortion is the more important issue.

Then the host offers his reasoning.  I have heard both Drew Mariani and Michael Barber (I believe it was him, anyway) say that abortion is much worse than the war because more babies are killed each year by abortion than innocent lives have been taken by the entire war.  On Michael Barber's show, the caller rightfully jumped on him for using proportionist reasoning in an inappropriate context.  The killing of innocent human life is inherently wrong, no matter if one life is taken or a thousand.  The caller was correct, but his conclusions were not.

What both caller and host don't understand is that waging a just war and killing an unborn baby are fundamentally different acts.  In a justly fought war, innocent life is only taken collaterally.  Innocent life is never taken purposely or directly.  We can argue all we want about whether or not we went into this war for a just cause, with right intention and as a last resort.  However, I don't think anybody could sanely argue that America does not fight its wars with just means.  Our men and women do an outstanding job protecting innocent life, trying to attack military targets and keep innocent casualties to a minimum.  Yes, innocent people do die while American soldiers try to defend themselves or to perform an offensive on an military operation in an urban setting.  But this life is never the direct target.

Abortion is always the direct, intentional killing of innocent human life.  There is no attempt to do anything except kill the baby.  Even in the extremely rare cases when an abortion is performed to save the life of the mother, the innocent life is directly targeted.  It would be analogous to soldiers shooting through innocent civilians in order to get at the enemies beyond them - something our soldiers would never do. 

It would be ok to argue the proportionate number of deaths between war and abortion if all else was morally equal.  However, things are not morally equal between war and abortion.  If you compare a single abortion to a single innocent person dying in the course of a war, the abortion is more evil hands down.  Both deaths are evil, but only in the case of abortion was the evil directly chosen.  If only one abortion was performed each day and hundreds of innocent lives were lost in a war each month, abortion would still be the worse evil because those thirty lives were maliciously targeted for death every month.

Yes, it is fair (and important) to argue whether or not the war in Iraq is a just war.  However, the war is not a comparable evil to abortion.  This judgment has nothing to do with the number of lives lost.  It is the judgment of the act itself.  To support the war and oppose abortion can be a legitimate position.  To support abortion and oppose the war is sheer hypocrisy.