Republicans Are Anything but “Pro-Life”

Texas has become the first state to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected through sonograms. The law went into effect Wednesday, September 1, 2021, after the Supreme Court and a lower federal appeals court declined to place an emergency stay of the law. It was signed into law by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in May.

A fetal heartbeat is usually detected around the sixth week of pregnancy, often before many women know they are pregnant. Though this law follows 12 other states that have attempted to pass “fetal heartbeat” legislation, which have all been struck down by the courts, the Texas law is unique in that it empowers citizen snoops, vigilantes, to turn in abortion providers and anyone who assists women in obtaining an abortion following the discovery of a fetal heartbeat.

A list of other states attempting to pass this legislation includes Georgia, Mississippi, Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, Arkansas, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Ohio.

Pro-Life or Pro-Control?

“The Republican Party must continue to uphold the principle that every human being, born and unborn, young and old, healthy and disabled, has a fundamental, individual right to life,” wrote the Republican National Committee for Life

Ever since the historic Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, in 1973, the National Republican Party Presidential Platform has consistently taken a so-called “pro-life” position. For example, its 2012 platform proclaims:

“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”

Though the Republican Party might have an interest in bringing pregnancies to term in nearly all situations – even in instances of rape and incest, and regardless of the wishes of the women involved — even a cursory investigation of the Party’s stands and actions on the major issues of the day, proposed and in many cases acted upon by current Republican legislators and executives on the national, state, and local levels, gives us a picture of a Party that is anything but “pro-life” for the living.

In actuality, the GOP conducts itself as a Party that stands for life until birth; then one is left to fend for oneself.

Some Republican governors have taken “emergency powers” to prevent local mayors, public health experts, and other officials from taking “emergency powers” to mitigate a deadly transmissible viral pandemic. These governors are suing mayors and local school districts to prevent them from instituting mask mandates as students are returning to classrooms. They are attempting to subvert local governance.

Republican governors in several states, including Florida and Texas, have barred local officials from instituting mask mandates in schools. In addition, Republican candidate for California governor, Larry Elder, promised that if elected he would repeal the current vaccine and mask mandates in that state.

While Texas remains as one of the major epicenters in the high rate of Covid-19 transmission, Governor Greg Abbott lifted all mask mandates throughout the state to the dismay of an increasing number of local officials.

“With the medical advancements of vaccines and antibody therapeutic drugs, Texas now has the tools to protect Texans from the virus,” said Abbott. “We must now do more to restore livelihoods and normalcy for Texans by opening Texas 100 percent.”

The governor clearly has disregarded public health best practices as that state’s schools are about to reopen, and he has clearly placed business interests over the health of Texans.

The Republican Party, by pandering to its increasingly conservative Christian evangelical base, has essentially become itself a religious cult choosing death in the name of God over reasoned scientific advancements. Ironically, this supposed “pro-life” political party mandate policies of death (suicidal and homicidal).

Under its understanding of being “pro-life,” in its policies and accumulated legislative actions, the GOP, time and time again, has attempted to rescind and reverse the historic Affordable Care Act, which would return an estimated 50 million people in our country to the ranks of the uninsured where their only option of health care is the hospital emergency room that the remainder of the population must pay since the GOP adamantly refuses to provide a single-payer government health care system.

Instead, Republicans force us to accept the exorbitant profit-motive insurance premium rates of private healthcare providers.

The GOP votes against raising government student assistance programs, even as college and university tuition increases, resulting in the exclusion of deserving students from middle and working-class backgrounds from attending institutions of higher learning.

The GOP has consistently tried, and in many instances succeeded, in circumscribing the basic rights of citizens to participate in the electoral process following the conservative-controlled Supreme Court’s decision to strike down section II and V of the 1965 “Voting Rights Act.”

Under its understanding of being “pro-life,” in its policies and accumulated legislative actions, the GOP has consistently cut governmental entitlement programs, thereby eliminating the safety net support systems from our elders, our young people, people with disabilities, people who have suffered hard times, and others struggling to provide life’s basics.

The GOP fights at every turn to pass legislation restricting immigration as well as social and educational services from young people.

It attacks the rights of women to control their bodies, as doctors and others are intimidated, and even shot and killed at family planning clinics. Since these women have already been born, the GOP has lost its concern for them.

The GOP attempts to deny basic human and civil rights to LGBTQ people, rights that are routinely accorded to heterosexual people daily.

So when the Party argues it will fight for the rights guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment for embryos and fetuses to “equal protection under the law,” it is not interested in, or actually opposes, extending these rights to LGBT people, as evidenced by its staunch opposition to marriage equality and its push to pass the current plethora of so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration” acts, which grant people the right to discriminate on “religious” grounds.

Under its conception of being “pro-life,” in its policies and accumulated legislative actions, the GOP fights to abolish affirmative action programs branding these as nothing more than “reverse discrimination,” even though such programs have improved the lives of people of color and women by providing them with increased assess to educational and employment opportunities previously long denied to them.

The GOP drives to privatize our national parks and loosen environmental and consumer protections of all kinds, and advocates for mining, petroleum, natural gas, and lumber companies to exploit the land, while simultaneously working to continue to hand over enormous tax breaks and subsidies to these industries.

The GOP backs deregulation of environmental standards and termination of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Protection Agency, even as residents of the U.S., who represent approximately 5 percent of the world’s population, consume 40% of the world’s resources, and contribute 40% to worldwide pollution.

The GOP battles for school vouchers to funnel money into parochial institutions at the expense of public education, and lobbies to reintroduce prayer into the public schools. Essentially, the GOP has not merely attempted to blur the lines as much as they have worked to abolish the already tenuous lines between religion and government.

Under its banner of being “pro-life,” the GOP works for people to own and use assault rifles, and to carry concealed guns into bars, political rallies, and college and university campuses. It long ago placed itself in the pocket of the National Rifle Association, which claims in its literature that “GUNS SAVE LIVES,” as it fights to dismantle governmental regulations on gun ownership and use.

So “guns don’t kill people,” but instead, guns held by people in a country that only barely gives lip serve to gun control do.

In this regard, the GOP still claims a “pro-life” trademark when more times than not, Republican leaders favor the death penalty rather than life imprisonment as punishment for committing certain crimes.

The neoliberal battle cry of “liberty” and “freedom” through “personal responsibility” sounds wonderful on the surface, but we must ask ourselves as individuals and as a collective nation, what are the costs of this alleged “liberty” and “freedom”?

How “pro-life” is the GOP; or more accurately, for whose lives do the GOP actually fight?

In the final analysis, the GOP’s “pro-life” rhetoric and its small and limited government philosophy stand in stark contradiction: Republicans want to get the government “off our backs” while imposing massive governmental restrictions at the expense of women’s reproductive freedoms.

So, for women, and also for LGBTQ people, middle class, working-class, and poor people, people of color, non-documented residents and “dreamers,” people concerned with the health of our planet, people interested in living in a safer and less violent society and the world, people who see healthcare as a right and not as a privilege for those who can afford it, how much real “freedom” and “liberty” do these people actually have in the Republican doublespeak of “pro-life”?

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This post is republished on Medium.

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