Marian McCue discussed my candidacy in Maine’s 1st Congressional District in her Capitol Notebook column last week. I would like to put a finer point on an issue that represents one of my deeply held religious beliefs.

Life begins at birth. I am pro live with two exceptions: incest and rape. My religion tells me that abortions are wrong. My conscience tells me it is reasonable to consider cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at risk. I know by not being a purist pro-lifer my God will judge me one day and I will beg his forgiveness.

Even the legal side of abortion is a very complex issue that was decided by nine unelected citizens in black robes, unlike the United Kingdom, where it got a national vote.

A few things are crystal clear to me: abortion should never be used as birth control, partial-birth abortion is morally indefensible, and the selling of baby parts is beyond reprehensible. But pathologically progressive liberals have systematically eroded away society’s collective moral repugnance associated with reducing human life to a commodity.

In my clinical practice I have worked with women who have struggled with their decision even decades after the fact, and suffered from anxiety and depression associated with the remorse they carried.

For me there is a continuum of concern beginning with abortion as a form of birth control, to sex selection, to selling baby body parts, and ending with partial-birth abortion being the most disturbing. Recently there was a bill before Congress that would have prohibited medical professionals from killing a baby following a botched abortion that I would have supported. I would add prohibiting abortions based on the sex of the baby, a practice that is considered “ethically controversial” by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Liberals are systematically eroding our liberties and the moral foundation our nation was built on. The path they have taken us on is ill-conceived, short-sighted, morally reprehensible, and does not represent the collective morality of the good people of Maine. The people of the 1st Congressional District love and protect children far more than progressive liberals would have us believe.

Mark Holbrook of Brunswick has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is a candidate for the Republican nomination in Maine’s 1st Congressional District.