George W. Bush Is Not Pro-Life
By Mary Shaw
27 January, 2007
Countercurrents.orgFirst, let me say that I have never liked the term "pro-life". It's been hijacked by the anti-choice crowd to imply that those of us who support a woman's right to reproductive choice are somehow "anti-life". But, in my 40-plus years, I've never met someone who was truly anti-life. Except maybe George W. Bush and whatever might remain of his followers.
George W. Bush and his cohorts frequently talk about a "culture of life". But actions speak louder than words. You can't be pro-life and yet orchestrate so much death and suffering at the same time. Sooner or later, someone is going to notice.
If you can publicly condemn the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and yet do nothing to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to protect this country from future attacks, then you are not pro-life.
If you can use the attacks of 9/11 as an excuse to launch a war of aggression, based on lies, against an unarmed country that posed no threat to us, killing countless innocent civilians, then you are not pro-life.
If you can send other people's children (but never your own) into that unnecessary and unjustified war without the equipment they need to protect themselves, then you are not pro-life.
If you can add insult to injury by telling our brave troops to their faces that "you have to go to war with the army you have, not the army you want", then you are not pro-life.
If you can thumb your nose at the Geneva Conventions and other international and domestic humanitarian laws and standards, and play semantic games to justify the denial of due process and the abuse and torture of human beings, then you are not pro-life.
If you can insist on tax cuts for multi-millionaires, while 13 million children in this country suffer from hunger due to poverty, then you are not pro-life.
If you can spend your time protecting pharmaceutical companies' profits by keeping drug prices high and preventing foreign (even Canadian) competition, while 12 million seniors are forced to choose between medicine and food, then you are not pro-life.
If you can pull strings for corporations that pollute the environment, censor the scientists, and deny the threat to the health of our children and our planet, then you are not pro-life.
If you can insist on abstinence-only sex education, and thereby deny the critical disease prevention information that our young people need to avoid AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases should they succomb to their hormones and stray from your mandated path of abstinence, then you are not pro-life.
If you can deny funding for stem cell research that would ease the suffering of countless victims of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other diseases, even though the needed stem cells would come from embryonic remains that would otherwise be tossed into the trash, then you are not pro-life.
If you can casually sign death warrants while ignoring mitigating evidence, and publicly mock death row inmates who plead for clemency, as George W. Bush did while governor of Texas, then you are not pro-life.
No, Mr. Bush and his cronies can talk all they want to about their so-called "culture of life". But their rhetoric does not mean that they are truly pro-life. In fact, they are merely pro-birth. Once you're born, you're on your own, and heaven help you (unless, of course, you're lucky enough to be born rich).
And, perhaps worst of all, I really don't think they care.
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist. She currently serves as Philadelphia Area Coordinator for Amnesty International, and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide. Note that the ideas expressed in this article are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty or any other organization with which she may be associated. E-mail [email protected].
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