Pro-Life Expiration Date

The inflammatory, hypocritical, and inaccurate statements of the GOP candidates are more than I can bear. Senator Ted Cruz has referred to Planned Parenthood as an “ongoing criminal enterprise.” Governor Chris Christie made reference to the “systematic murder of children in the womb to preserve their body parts.” And Carly Fiorina challenged President Obama and Hillary Clinton to watch a ”fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its leg kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.”

Unfortunately, this kind of irresponsible propaganda is flooding the United States' discussion on abortion. And while I could join in the discussion and argue that abortion should never be a topic for the government to decide, I’ll instead challenge the GOP to do something mind-blowing: be consistent.

The fact is that the GOP promotes the exact opposite ideals after the fetus is born. The GOP is “an ongoing criminal enterprise.” The policies of the GOP promote “the systematic murder of children as soon as they make it out of the womb.” And I challenge Carly Fiorina to “watch a fully formed child, traveling through life, overwhelmingly impoverished, with no food to eat and inadequate education, while someone says let’s get rid of welfare policies, shrink the workforce, and let the money trickle down.”

The mean, cold, truth of the GOP pro-life advocacy is that it has an expiration date: 9 months. GOP leaders promote and encourage groups to shout in front of Planned Parenthood facilities, condemn women receiving abortions, and villainize the doctors who perform the procedures. Yet, I have NEVER witnessed one GOP candidate rally for welfare, child care subsidies, food stamps, education in low income communities, healthcare, or any of the necessities required to protect the life and well-being of those fetuses they’ve sworn to protect.

Thus, GOP candidates are pro-life until the fetus is born; then, GOP candidates become pro-choice. They perpetuate the idea that we can all choose to live better lives if we work hard enough. However, the unfortunate reality is that a child, birthed by a woman who is either emotionally or financially incapable of providing care, does not want to have the child, or lacks the resources to provide the child with basic necessities, will endure unimaginable hardship. At times these hardships can be so great as to strip children of the futures that America and the GOP promised to give them. Had it not been for Welfare and Pell Grants, Dr. Ben Carson may not have been able to become one of the world’s most prolific neurosurgeons.

So --- while admittedly making the irrational decision to take the GOP’s pro-life rhetoric at face value ---- I have one question: can we extend that pro-life advocacy to 18 years?

Sincerely,

All the fetuses who have to grow up