how not to be pro-life: a quick overview

Because it would appear that there’s been a little confusion on this issue, of late, here’s a brief and not especially overly-analytic rundown on things not to do if you feel like identifying as pro-life.

• Pretend that “pro-life” means only trying to make abortion illegal.
• Vote for people who claim they will make abortion illegal even though:

1. they have zero track record on being reliable
2. they have zero track record on caring about defending human life, born or unborn
3. doing so isn’t really possible within the existing legal framework
4. in every other respect they promote anti-life policies such as pre-emptive war and capital punishment
5. they are boorish, immoral, and misogynistic enough to make the term “pro-life” sound like a bad word for the next fifty years

• Vote to defund the health coverage of poor people (then post a Bible verse. Preferably in some swirly font).
• Support the removal of protection for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
• Decide that pregnancy is a pre-existing condition.
• Tell low-income women they shouldn’t have gotten pregnant anyway, if they couldn’t afford to provide for their child, but on no condition should they have used birth control, and if they don’t have the self-discipline to use NFP effectively, they probably are not equipped to parent anyway.
• Tell parents of disabled children to start a GoFundMe, or maybe a bake sale! It’s not our job to care for those who can’t contribute to society (then post a really pastel image of Our Lady, looking like a WASP teen girl doing cosplay).
• Remind everyone that it’s not the state’s job to (fill in the blank with anything that has to do with following the Gospel) while at the same time drawing on state authority to (fill in the blank with anything that is violent, destructive, or contrary to the Gospel).
• Tell low-income working people they should just go get a second job.
• All of this finally having been accomplished, forget about how once upon a time you said that “care for the poor and for unwed mothers should be left up to private charity.” After all, you have to pay tuition at the special Benedict Option school for your kids, lest they be corrupted by the evils of the world from which you have so devoutly withdrawn (post a cute picture of a baby with something about how defending life is the most important thing in society today).

If you find yourself unable to resist the above activities, you might want to consider calling yourself something else, other than “pro-life” –  and maybe switching out your bumper stickers until you’ve got all the anti-life shenanigans out of your system.

image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/scrooge-stingy-greed-mean-selfish-28854/