From this point on, no more free pass.
No more allowing the ideological "conservatives" who dominate the Republican Party -- in reality, not conservatives but radicals who want to dismantle the advances of 20th-century democracy -- to call themselves "pro-life."
They are not "pro-life." They are degraders and destroyers of life.
Half a dozen, a dozen, two dozen, a hundred people are killed by a lunatic with a gun. What's their response? Alarm -- that the government might take their guns away. Their tools that have no use but to maim and kill. They're anxious that they might lose their power to take another person's life away.
Time and time again, a story emerges of a police officer who shoots and kills an unarmed person, or beats and kills an unarmed person, or Tases him, or pepper-sprays him, and their reply is, "He should have done what the officer told him." They claim to be "pro-life," yet they consider death a fitting penalty for anything less than perfect and immediate obedience.
They reply to "Black lives matter!" with "All lives matter!" and show through their words and actions that the only way they can possibly believe it to be true is by redefining "all" (as all who are somebodies, all who enjoy status and privilege, all who are familiar and nonforeign and nonthreatening), redefining "lives" (as productive lives, lives that serve the system, and only the productivity of those lives, not the quality or dignity of them) and redefining "matter" (as mattering enough to express pro forma sympathy for them but not mattering enough to respect them, not mattering enough to improve them, not mattering enough to defend them).
They express glee, not despair, at the prospect of going to war, of sending young Americans to war. They don't even count enemy or collateral casualties. They reward our returning troops with platitudes and little plastic flags and cuts to care for disabling injuries and PTSD. They are never troubled by the news of a drone assassination -- or by the hundreds more that they never receive news of.
They extol the "dignity of work" while robbing workers of dignity in the workplace. They extol the virtues of work yet balk at paying workers enough to support their families on. They oppose stable pension benefits and a safety net for the poor and precariously employed. They value the life of a working person the way they'd value the life of a good draft horse, to the same extent and on the same conditions.
They say they're "pro-life," but if you can't afford to pay the exorbitant price tag for your own health care, you don't deserve to live. Your life ceases to matter when they have to pay a dime to prolong it. Even if you're only a child.
Oh, yeah, let's talk about the children. These folks who say they're "pro-life" oppose SNAP, which provides the nutrition that keeps children alive. They oppose WIC. They oppose any and every measure -- whether it be creating jobs or compensating for the absence of those jobs with economic relief -- that might lift children out of the poverty that turns their neighborhoods into meat grinders. And they oppose any and every measure that might limit access to the guns that grind the meat.
I confess to a degree of sympathy for those who take an interest in the life of an unborn fetus (which they heart-tuggingly call a "baby," as if there were no developmental differences, as if a toddler were the same thing as a teenager), but not when that interest disregards and undermines the equal liberty of the woman who carries it. Not when their interest in that fetus's life vanishes as soon as it becomes an infant. Not when that infant becomes a child and goes off to school and is killed along with 19 of her classmates by a lunatic with a gun, and it's gun owners and gun manufacturers, not the 20 children, who elicit their sympathy.
No, they do not get to call themselves "pro-life" anymore. Their choices prove that life is not what they care about. Their choices damn them.
What do they care about, then, judging by their choices? Defining people as "enemies," and killing those enemies. Defining people as unimportant nobodies, and keeping the nobodies in line. Keeping the nobodies down, where they "belong," and making sure they get what they "deserve." Having docile and obedient citizens, and punishing the ones who aren't. Having docile and obedient employees, and firing the ones who aren't. Paying those employees as little as possible and working them as hard as possible, without regard to their ability to sustain themselves, materially or psychologically. Paying the government as little as possible to take care of those whom the Invisible Hand hasn't already provided for. And preserving, by any means necessary, their own power to kill.
When your platform consists of taking lives, threatening lives, constricting lives, diminishing lives, devaluing lives, impoverishing lives, immiserating lives and ruining lives, by the dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions, you do not get to be called "pro-life." You do not get to call yourselves "pro-life." You reveal yourselves for what you are: a self-centered, authoritarian death cult.
You want to call yourselves "pro-life"? You want to earn that name? Then go out there, now, find a living, breathing person who's unhappy or unhealthy or overburdened or in danger, and save that life, improve that life, extend that life, defend that life. Then do it again. And again. And keep doing it until you don't have time to talk about how "pro-life" you are anymore.