My first question to any Republican who starts to talk about right to life is, at what point does the right end? After all, most support wars, any war where they can wave the flag, watch the footage on CNN with cold beer in hand and sing "Proud to be an American" (with their hands over their hearts) at the next football game. Wars kill people, so how does supporting war indicate a right to life?
And what about capital punishment? "Give 'em a fair trial before you hang the guilty bastards," right? After all, as Guantanamo and Jose Padilla prove, we're all about fair trials in this country but still, doesn't the accused have a right to life as well? Considering soldiers and death row inmates generally have to be death row inmates, I'll assume the right to life ends somewhere around eighteen.
But some states, generally those of a redder hue, are now passing laws that minors can be tried as an adult. This blurs the line a bit, back to when, fourteen? Sixteen? I'm assuming at some point, probably about the time a Baptist feels they need to be baptized, there is no more right to life in the Right's eyes because you can now give the newly minted teenager the death penalty for killing an abusive parent.
Let's take it back a little farther. Mother is now giving birth to the child and mother is poor. She, listening to the Right, is bearing the baby but what help can she expect. None, damned tramp went out and got herself knocked up. We'll veto health care for the child, we'll prevent, particularly if she is undocumented, the mother from getting prenatal health care, we'll take away welfare because we all know she should be out there working. No health care, no aid, what life have we given the child a right to? None, it can be argued. Bush vetoed SCHIP because it would interfere with insurance company profits: Nothing indicates belief like action - Republicans (Bush and those who failed to overturn the veto) value shareholder value over childrens' health.
So tracking it back, apparently right to life ends at conception, the very moment the Right insists life begins. There's no aid for the mother, no guaranteed health care for her, the unborn or the child. She's on her own. We insist she can't abort it, that would be wrong, but to sell goods to feed the poor, as Jesus injoined, even in the form of taxation and redistribution, we oppose.
Call it what you want, but it isn't right to life.
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