What does it really mean to be pro-life and pro-family?

From an op-ed in today’s New York Times by Charles Camosy, of Democrats for Life:

What does “pro-life, pro-family” really mean?

The idea behind that phrase has long been an important organizing principle for pro-life groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council.

For many who work for these organizations — or who vote for candidates endorsed by them — being “pro-life, pro-family” is not a euphemism for opposing abortion and same-sex marriage. It acknowledges that protecting children, including ones not yet born, often requires protecting and supporting their mothers and families too.

We are in the midst of a serious crisis for vulnerable children and families, though, and these “pro-life, pro-family” organizations have been largely silent.

The crisis is the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from undocumented parents, even when the families are asking for asylum. In one particularly horrific case, a mother said that her baby was taken from her while she was breast-feeding.

The number of children being taken is so large that the administration, using the fear these children must feel as a means of deterring undocumented immigration, is apparently building “tent cities” around military bases to house them.

Given their support of the administration, and an unwillingness to speak critically about immigration policy, “pro-life, pro-family” organizations now risk being tied to these and other horrific practices.

He concludes:

The silence on the border policies is not a simple question of groups keeping a focus solely on abortion. Many pro-life organizations also do extensive work opposing euthanasia. There is nothing in principle compelling such organizations to ignore anti-life and anti-family border policies.

If the traditional pro-life movement is to regain credibility as something other than a tool of the Trump administration, it must speak out clearly and forcefully against harming innocent children as a means of deterring undocumented immigration.

These groups have extraordinary access and influence in the White House. They have to use it.

Read it all. 

Some of the comments are illuminating—and sobering.