by James Glaser
January 26, 2005

Well here we go, Pro-Life, Pro-Choice. Writing about either of these positions is usually a loser, because you are going to alienate about half of the people reading whatever you say. Roe vs. Wade has been in the news a lot with the anniversary of the decision and talk of a new Supreme Court Justice is food for speculation.

I was thinking today that people, who are pro-choice, are not pro-death and I also thought that people who are pro-life are not really pro-life.

Let me explain what I am trying to say here. People who are on the pro-choice "side" are usually not pro-abortion, they usually will tell you that they could never have an abortion themselves or condone their wife having one, but they want this option for all women and their Doctors.

I hear Pro-Life people saying, "They can't have it both ways, Abortion is killing and it is wrong" and I can see that point. What bothers me is that most Pro-Life people want it both ways for them selves.

Our nation is at war right now and I don't see any Pro-Life people marching against it, but war is all about killing. Our nation has atomic bombs that are made to kill hundred of thousands of people at one time. We, the United States of America, are the only country on the globe that has ever used this type of weapon and we killed over a hundred thousand innocent people both times we used it. I hear no one who rants and raves about how terrible abortions are ever say anything about getting rid of atomic weapons.

Anne Rao, a New York mother of three and a strong Pro-life advocate, wrote a moving piece about this subject and she said, "Why do pro-lifers not speak out against the use of chemical weapons, napalm-like bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan? Why do pro-lifers not condemn the use of depleted uranium weapons which will continue to deform Arab babies long after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forgotten by Americans? Shame on pro-lifers for allowing the pro-choice Left to claim these issues for themselves."

The woman has a point here, and it is usually the Left and the pro-choice people who condemn all killings by our government. How can it be wrong to "kill' a fetus, but all right to kill a baby, or an infant, or a child, or an adolescent, or a young adult, or an adult, or a senior citizen? We have been killing all of them, by the thousands in Iraq, but the American Pro-life Movement is only worried about fetuses, American fetuses.

If a person makes the claim that they are Pro-Life, what does that mean? Does that mean that they hold all life sacred or that they only want to stop all abortions? If the Pro-Life movement is only against abortions, then they should stop calling themselves Pro-Life. Maybe Pro-Fetus would be more honest or Antiabortionist.

I know this will be hard for Pro-Life people to acknowledge, but if we outlaw abortions, they will not end. The rich in this country will always have the abortion option open to them and even the poor will have the back ally to turn to. Laws will not stop abortions, as most abortions are performed on Christian women now. Proclaimed Christian women if you like.

Somehow, the Religious Right believes that overturning Roe vs. Wade will stop abortions, but that isn't true. Americans growing up today learn that it is legal for our government to kill in a war and now Washington is telling us it is legal to torture, and it is legal to put people in prison forever without a trial. So, compared to all the mass killing we are doing in Iraq and compared to the pictures showing the torture of Iraqi prisoners, and compared to putting a person in a cage for the rest of their life, does an abortion seem that wrong any more?