The American Taliban, otherwise known as the religious right, are forever touting their ‘pro-life’ trumpet, as if they had some kind of advantage in the race to claim the most advanced moral compass. The truth is that they are not pro-life at all, nor does their claim to ethical purity have any merit whatsoever. Their smug moral superiority is based on an obsession with protecting embryos at all costs, including any concern for the mother’s life and health, as well as ensuring that sex seldom happens outside of procreation. Oh my, this so reminds me of the repressive Catholic culture in which I was raised.

In my humble opinion, their ideological stand is little more than a pathetic attempt to feel superior to those of the ‘woke’ persuasion and, in the end, lacks much coherence. One problem is that, given their overall ideological package, they care not a whit for anyone after they are expelled from the womb. Their political positions on guns, the environment, access to affordable medical care, the public safety net, funding for child care and child protective services, and education (amonh other things) all speak to thwarted opportunities for most at the least and unecessary or amenable deaths at the worst. Gun violence alone is the leading cause of death in our young people and that is a preventable outcome … our peer nations are successful in doing so. For evangelicals, all pretense to caring for others ends when it costs any tax dollars, except when those doollars are employed to kill others. Thus, the one area the GOP would exept from cuts in their debt limit negotiations with the Democrats is military spending.

The meme below is instructive. To be ‘pro-life’ to the righteous right is to care about life BEFORE birth and not at all AFTER birth. As a whole, their political positions tell the post-born (as opposed to pre-born) that now you are on your own. It is time to be independent since the government has neither the right nor the resources to intervene on your behalf … a perspective both ludicrous and immoral. This pro-freedom perspective, for them, means getting no help to navigate through life despite your circumstances of the misfortunes you might face. You are to do it on your own no matter where you are at the starting line … a scion of a wealthy family or the issue from a desperately poor, drug addicted, single mother. I guess it all is God’s will, with the only remedy offered the unfortunate being thoughts and prayers.

Earth Day was yesterday, April 22. The first celebration, which happened 53 years ago, is largely credited to Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, one of a handful of politicians who resurrected the Democratic Party in Wisconsin after World war II. The inspiration for the environmental moevement is atributed to Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and scientist. She was one of the first to see how intimately connected life and the environment were. Her research traced the use of the pesticide DDT to eradicate pests and to show how this poison seeped into our waters and infected fish, some of which were a food source for birds and, of course, humans. One bad outcome spilled over to the next along the food chain.

Spokespersons for the companies that made pesticides attacked her viciously, including questioning her loyalty to America (this was the height of the Cold War after all) and whether she was sane. Anyone questioning corporate America’s right to make a profit absent any accountability had to be nuts. No traditional publisher wanted to touch her book titled ‘The Silent Spring.’ But the New Yorker Magazine made it available to the wider world in serial form and a movement was born (and her work later published in book form to become a best seller).

Her work on the ecological interconnection between human action and the life chain eventually sparked an emerging interest in the broader topic of the environment. It made the public more aware that what we do has a consequence beyond ourselves. A new moral sentiment was forming … that we are stewards of the planet on which we depend. Specifically, people started asking whether observable climate change is the result of anthropogenic (or human caused) forces. Another way to put this is ‘are we killing our own species.’

The suspicion that man’s actions have dire consequence on weather and our environment goes back a long way. There are newspaper articles from around 1912 discussing the possibility that fossil fuels were emitting substances that would adversely impact weather and, more seriously, the climate. Those were mere possibilities then, proven certainties now. The next three graphs lay out the fundamentals in graphic form.

The story is simple. Our actions cause disproportionate amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, and other gases to be disbursed into the atmosphere. This effects the layer around the earth in ways that unbalance the homeostatic properties necessary to preserve life as we know it. If things get too far out of balance, it will be all over except for the ‘fat lady to sing.’ All the essential metrics are going in the wrong direction. The only question remaining is whether we have permitted things to go too far, crossed some tipping point of no return, and thus lost all ability to turn the ship around.

Some 65 million years ago, most large species were wiped out by, we presume, an asteroid strike that radically changed the earth’s environment. We could face a similar outcome over the next century or so with one important exception. The dinosaurs, who had been around since about 240 million years ago (a very long run compared to the brief run of homo-sapiens), never saw their fate coming . Even if they could, they had no way to stop it. We have seen our fate coming for over a century. The entire scientific community has been ringing alarm bells as well as our Pentagon, the United nations, and virtually all sane governmental bodies.

We have (or had) the power to reverse things, if only there were the will. But no, in the U.S. we divert our attention to debates about whether slavery can be mentioned in our classrooms, whether our youth can learn that some people love those of their own gender, or that those approaching their teen years should learn ways to prevent unintended pregnancies. We see teachers and librarians being harrassed as right-wing vigilante groups go on book banning crusades.

The striking irony in all this is that the very people who tout their ‘pro-life’ credentials will bear the responsibility if we fall upon this anticipated apocalyptic end. The Republican Party, the political expression of this so-called ‘pro-life’ movement, has just moved to rescind the money President Biden allotted last year to fight adverse climate change. Their unstated rationale for doing so is mostly, if not exclusively, to protect tthe tax advantages of our wealthiest citizens as we struggle to deal with our growing national debt.

Think about that for a moment. The party of life would threaten our entire species to satisfy the egregious greed of a few. I doubt there is a level in hell harsh enough for such people, nor any moral code worthy of the name that could justify such a position. At the barest minimum, a moral person would seek to protect and nurture the vehicle that God or nature has provided us, that vulnerable home on which we have been able to evolve and thrive. As far as we know, we are the ONLY advanced life form in a universe of trillions upon trillions of stars and solar systems. (See a tiny view below) We are unique, a divine experiment of sorts. Should we not keep this experiment going?

Pro-life my ass!