Pro-Life

Elijah Cummings died this morning. He was the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and a strong advocate for investigating the alleged wrongdoings of the Trump administration… allegations which often developed into proven crimes. For this reason he will be attacked, criticized and posthumously degraded by many pro-Trump Republicans today.

I disagreed with Cummings on most things. He was a Democrat for a reason, and it showed in the policy he supported. Traditionally, upon a politician’s death, the people of the country come together and agree that the person might have had policy that they disliked or liked, but that as a person they deserve respect and appreciation for their public service.

Exceptions are often made for people who were known or suspected to have abused their offices and committed felonies. There were a lot of shrugs in Republican circles when Teddy Kennedy died. But rarely is there hate and revilement. I predict that is what will happen today. Considering the reactions when Cummings’ house was recently broken into, it’s a prediction which doesn’t require a Sibyl.

It’s easy because I saw the reactions when it was announced that Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s cancer had returned. There was unrestrained excitement on the part of many, anticipating that an open seat would be something around which to rally the Republican base, bringing them out to vote in November. The notion of a person dying was negligible.

This would seem to be a good time to remind the Republicans that they used to be, and for some reason still consider themselves to be, pro-life.

I say that because the Republicans, along with the Democrats, have continued to fund abortion with federal money throughout the term of Donald Trump.

That’s the easy one, though, the low-hanging rhetorical fruit. I say it also because the Republicans have been aggressively embracing the policy of death.

These aren’t accidental deaths amidst the fog of war. These are targeted murders using war as cover.

But even that’s granting too much credit to the Republicans at this point, because those are just the famous names. Democrats were always the ones who were accused of caring only about the famous, and not caring about the unborn… or, to extrapolate only a little bit, not caring about God. God’s gift of life to all creatures is the underpinning of much of the pro-life philosophy, supposedly.

If we’re to look at it in that light, let’s consider some of the other dead. But let’s not go just to Syria.

The most conservative estimate I’ve seen of the soliders who died while Trump was withholding aid is 13, from Newsweek. It’s possible some of them might have been killed anyway; it’s a conflict, and people were dying while aid was going there. But weaponry can protect people… a concept obviously familiar to the Republicans who typically swear by the Second Amendment.

Let’s not stop there… Remember Venezuela? That’s where we stood firmly behind an uprising and swore we’d be with them… until Putin and Xi reminded us that Venezuela was under their protection at which point we stood down. Perhaps we should have decided we’d capitulate before we threatened to help an attempted revolt, because it’s resulted in many of the advocates for freedom being killed.

And those are just the foreign policy decisions which have led directly to death. How about the domestic policy choices? And again, I’m talking about direct linkage, not indirect and arguable results of economic decisions.

The excuse used for that one is that they shouldn’t have come here in the first place. They knew it was dangerous.

The questions I have are simple: how is that pro-life? If the root of their belief is God’s gift to us, are they willing to stand at judgement and say, “but they were going to take an infinitesimal portion of my resources and were performing a misdemeanor?”

Even if they completely ignore the religious aspect, do they not realize that they’re championing death?