For those of us who want to significantly reduce abortions and find the conduct of many traditionally ProLife candidates antithetical to our Biblical values, let me suggest a way forward out of the voting conundrum we now face. As a conservative and a Republican for over 40 years, I submit that being ProLife means not only protecting unborn children but protecting and building up the lives of those already born. If we believe in this broader definition of being ProLife, our concern for protecting life should extend beyond reducing abortions, to enabling healthy and fruitful lives for all children. Valuing the life of innocent children should therefore include supporting policies that provide all children with healthcare, a quality education, protection from harmful pollutants, keeping them with their parents, reducing racial tensions, and keeping them out poverty.
Sadly, many current ProLife incumbents like to tout their appointment of conservative judges but have failed to provide a healthy life for children and have actually rescinded protections for children. For example, with respect to healthcare, many of my fellow Republicans have done all they can to undermine the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They cut the time period parents can sign up for health insurance by 50%, they cut funding for assistance signing up by 95%, and they intentionally drove medical insurance premiums up by rescinding the individual mandate for healthy people. Last year, before the pandemic hit, those steps resulted in 1.9 million people losing their health insurance, including 500,000 children.
Like protecting the life of unborn children, I submit being ProLife ought to mean being concerned about mental health and preventing suicides. In 2018, 1.4 million Americans attempted suicide and 48,344 lost their lives to suicide. Among 10-24 year olds, between 2007 and 2017 suicides rose by 56% and are now the second leading cause of death. Roughly 90% of those who took their own life had diagnosable mental health conditions. If we believe being ProLife should include addressing the anguish and torment people considering suicide must be going through, given that the ACA not only provides mental healthcare to over 20 million people, but requires all health insurance policies include mental healthcare, shouldn’t we support candidates working to expand enrollment in the ACA and not those working to dismantle it?
Another undercutting of healthcare for children and teens comes in the form of the administration’s aggressive push to reopen schools during the pandemic. While Trump has backed off his threat to defund school districts that don’t reopen, it’s tragically clear that his primary motive for reopening schools has been to get the economy going, and not encouraging school boards to carefully weigh the risks to the children in their community.
Providing children with a quality education, particularly in their early years, is another form of being ProLife. We all know that a quality education builds self-esteem and provides a meaningful basis for a prosperous life. Yet, I see serious duplicity in the Trump Administration pitching that they are ProLife, while endeavoring to cut the 2018 &19 federal budget for public schools by 19%. We who hold deep convictions about the sanctity of life should support candidates that prioritize funding the education of children far above tax cuts for those already wealthy.
Protecting the unborn and those already born from harmful environmental pollutants should be another element of being ProLife. Sadly, some incumbents refuse to believe we can grow the economy while protecting the air we breathe. Over the last three years, the Trump administration has rolled back power plant emission limits for mercury, arsenic and lead. These emissions effect all of us, especially the unborn and young children.
Lastly, the right of children and parents to be together, one of the most sacrosanct of all rights, should be part of what it means to be ProLife. If that is true, than it should not be difficult to agree that using child separations at our southern border as a deterrent to immigration is a far cry from the care and compassion that underlie being ProLife.
In these turbulent times perhaps it would be helpful to consider how giants of the Republican Party like Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, who used the power of their office to protect the weak and build dignity for all people, would respond to the conduct of many Republicans today. I submit they would steadfastly withhold supporting fellow Republicans who failed to care for those already born. Following in the spirit of their lead, let me suggest we likewise withhold supporting anyone who calls themselves ProLife while putting their own political interests ahead of the needs of children. Let us abandon those who conveniently call themselves ProLife but behave antithetically to our Biblical values, and pour our heart, time and resources into caring for the weak and vulnerable among us.