An *actual* consistent ethic of life
Lately, my social media feeds were filled with people I rarely see post suddenly very passionate about life. A very specific life, the life of an unborn fetus. And I gotta say, 90% of you need to sit down.
A prominent “progressive” Christian was opining about a consistent ethic of life. Okay, pal, let’s look at what that means.
To have a consistent ethic of life, we need to examine all of the parts of our society that are deadly, particularly those that are deadly to those who have already been born. For example:
We live in a country that is currently prohibiting people escaping life threatening situations in their home countries from making a home in the United States. In addition, our government it *still* separating children from their parents and maintaining baby jails, in which children and adults have died and/or been murdered through neglect, abuse and despair. One man recently killed himself so his son could stay in the US. People who have been sent back to their home countries as a result of this administrations current approach to immigration and asylum seekers have already been murdered, others are locked away awaiting return and likely facing death at home. One many killed himself
Four people were recently convicted of leaving water for immigrants trying to cross the desert to get into the US. Thousands of immigrant children say they were sexually assaulted in detention centers. As of February, 22 immigrants that we know of have died in ICE detention centers.
Our current immigration and asylum actions and policies destroy life. To be pro-life is to shout in the streets, in letters, in your representatives offices, in your churches, in spaces public and private for the lives, rights and dignity of people seeking asylum and immigration in the US.
Our criminal justice system systematically incarcerates black and brown people at a higher rate with harsher sentences for the same crimes than white men, decimating the communities they come from and forcing families to be separated. This separation had deep and long lasting impacts on communities, especially on the children of people who have been incarcerated. The ways our criminal justice system impacts the lives of all who interact with it decreases opportunity, wealth, health, and familial health, producing negative outcomes for everyone.
The police killed 1,166 people in 2018. Black people are 3x more likely to be killed by a police officer than white people. In 2014, 69% of the black people killed by police were not suspected of a violent crime or believed dangerous. (Source: mappingpoliceviolence.com) In departments that have changed police-use-of-force policies and increased de-escalation trainings, death by police has reduced 5–25%.
To be pro-life is to see the dignity and worth in every human being, including those who have been accused or convicted of crimes. This means working to end the school to prison pipeline, racial disparities in policing, arrests, conviction, and sentencing. It means fighting to end the bail system. It means fighting to change police use-of-force laws in your town. It means ending the death-penalty. As far as I am concerned, it means dismantling the whole damned system, because the criminal justice system in the United States as it stands is anti-life.
According to the Guttenmacher Institute, there are multiple reasons people have abortions, but 74% of people who have had abortions cite being unable to afford raising a child — including not having a job, not having enough income, not being able to take time off from work, and/or not having adequate medical care — as a primary motivating factor.
40 million people, including 13 million children, live below the poverty line in the United States. That’s 40 million people who don’t get enough to eat. That’s 13 million children who can’t learn because they are too hungry to pay attention in school, and over 20 million people who are choosing between food and medicine.
Being pro-life means ensuring our siblings, counsins and neighbors are cared for. It means loudly advocating for paid family leave, increased SNAP benefits (which are $4/person/day and does not include necessities like diapers), universal health care, & adequate welfare & jobs programs. It means looking at how we, as a community, support one another, including the possibilities of a universal basic income.
There are myriad ways to say this, but, succinctly, racism kills. From the criminal justice system disproportionately sentencing black men to death black and brown folx dying at the hands of the police at higher rates than white people, to the medial systems lack of care for black women leading to a maternal mortality rate that is 3x higher for black women than white women, to environmental racism to the effects that facing racism every day has on the health of children.
To be pro-life is to recognize the effect racism has on the lives of black, brown and indigenous people and to work to dismantle your own attachment to whiteness and to dismantle white supremacy.
Every day, 100 people are killed by guns. Nearly 2/3 of gun deaths are suicide. There have been FIVE MASS SHOOTINGS IN FIVE DAYS IN JANUARY 2019 113 people were killed or injured IN SCHOOL SHOOTINGS in 2018.
In the past few weeks, there have been multiple mass shootings committed by angry white men against women. Most mass shooters have a history of domestic violence or stalking. Half of women murdered are murdered by an intimate partner.
To be pro-life means working to end gun violence. At the very least it means supporting things like universal background checks, gun licensing and insurance, gun registration and ten day waiting periods (though I would argue it means getting rid of guns altogether). It means working to keep guns out of the hands of people who have records of violence or stalking.
Misogyny kills. An increase in people declaring themselves “Incel’s” (involuntarily celibate) and gathering on the internet is feeding movements for violence against women. The idea that womxn should always be available for sex, for homemaking, for whatever, feeds violence against womxn, against gay men, against pretty much anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into the gender roles prescribed by society.
To be pro-life means to dismantle patriarchy and misogyny. If you’re spouting off about how women (and men!) have certain roles or should be certain ways, if you’re talking big talk about how men are in charge and women should listen and take their leadership, if you’re working to reinforce the gender binaries in your home, church, business, community or government, you’re not pro-life.
LGB youth are FIVE TIMES more likely to attempt suicide as heterosexual kids. LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are 8.4 times as likely to have attempted suicide as LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection. Transgender people are TEN TIMES more likely to attempt suicide, multi-racial transgender people are THIRTY-THREE times more likely to attempt suicide. Violence against members of the LGBTQIA community is on the increase, with an all time high for violence against transgender people reached last year. LGBTQ youth have a 120% higher chance of being homeless than heterosexual youth.
Anti-LGBTQ beliefs destroy life.
A consistent ethic of life would value the lives of LGBTQIA+ people as highly as heterosexual people, would protect LGBTQIA+ people against being fired, being discriminated against, against being beaten. To be pro-life is to fight like hell for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people and for their full inclusion in all of our communities. And when I say full inclusion, I mean FULL INCLUSION AS THEY ARE AND NOT WITH AN EXPECTATION OF CHANGE. Welcome is not actually welcome if it is conditional on changing who a person is.
Climate change is causing the spread of disease, crop failure, flooding, heat waves, destroying our oceans, and so much more. It is real, there is science behind it, 98% of all scientists agree and so does the US Military and a whole host of other people. I’ll just leave this one link here because if you insist on refusing climate change is real, I don’t know how to help you. Climate change is already killing people.
A consistent ethic of life values the life of the whole earth, not just human beings. To be pro-life is to work for governmental and corporate policies that protect the planet and the people living on it, curb emissions, and dream of a world in which people and planet co-exist.
When comprehensive sex education is provided, young people delay their first sexual experience. Rates of unintended pregnancy goes down. Abortion rates decrease. IN FACT — when abortion is made legal in a country ABORTION RATES GO DOWN. Organizations like Planned Parenthood provide vital health care to women and taking away their funding for so much as talking about abortion puts women’s lives at risk. Abortion bans put the lives of people who might have babies at risk. Already born people will die because of these bills restricting funding and access to necessary healthcare. And yes, abortion is necessary health care.
As far as I am concerned, a consistent ethic of life values the lives of people — the ones already born — and wants to provide them with the best and most affordable healthcare. Abstinence-only health care, birth control restrictions, funding restrictions and abortion bans are not pro-life.
I cannot even begin to understand the mentality of simultaneously supporting the death penalty and wanting to outlaw abortions, and the whole idea of calling for the death penalty for women who have abortions belies that the “pro-life” position isn’t about life at all.
A consistent ethic of life would not support the death penalty. Full stop.
There is so much more I could write about. Opposition to war, fighting unethical work practices, how most of our stuff is made, supporting regimes that torture people, and on and on, and on. There’s a lot of life out there that isn’t being fought for nearly as hard as fetuses.
For my Christian siblings: every single one of the above issues is talked about dozens of times in scripture: welcome the stranger, free the prisoner, feed the hungry, break the chains of oppression, care for women, love those who are different from you (love, love, love is everywhere). The only time the death of a fetus is mentioned, the legal remedy for killing a fetus when harming a pregnant woman is pay them the price of a cow. Not a life for a life. Pay for a cow.
If you’re gonna call yourself pro-life, you better be defending all life, not just fetuses. Otherwise, you’re pro-forced birth and that’s about it.
