Pro-Life, Generously Speaking

The jig is up. 

Three months ago, Illinois "Right to Life" program director Steve Jacobs decried efforts to paint anti-abortion advocates as hypocrites because many of them have slammed state lockdowns and ridicule measures to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.  He wrote

pro-lifers do not believe the government always has an obligation to take every step that might feasibly protect every single human life. Instead, the pro-life movement is merely premised upon the argument that pre-born humans deserve the same rights and legal protections that the government provides to all other humans.

"Pre-born humans" are not "humans." They are not born. Pre-born kind of changes things, as law acknowledges.  If you live in a state in which the drinking age is 18 and present the liquor store clerk with identification that indicates that your eighteenth birthday is nine months (or one day) ahead, you will not be served.  And that applies even if the clerk is an anti-abortion activist.

If "pro-life" politicians favor only the pre-born and not the only born, it renders the cause meaningless, where meaningless is spelled "fraudulent."

I'm old enough to remember when Trump, confronted with the fact that 1000 lives in America are being lost to COVID-19 every day, responded with "it is what it is" https://t.co/Yxh6Ku48rV

— Pé (@4everNeverTrump) August 5, 2020

It would be hard to believe, but this is Donald Trump and he stated

They are dying-that's true. And it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague that beset us.

 

Donald Trump is not the only important Republican officeholder who is publicly both "pro-life" and cavalier about people's lives. There are also Representative Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana...

 

.... and Wisconsin state legislator Robin DeVos:

And that is why the "pro-life" movement is properly labeled the "forced-birth movement."

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