In a world threatened by overpopulation and overuse of resources by the few, it is both inhumane and irresponsible to claim that every fertilized egg must reach delivery -- and yet that's where society's moral obligation for the protection of life ends. We must reclaim the terms "Pro-Life" and "Right to Life" for those who care about the lives of the born. If we cede claim to the moral high ground, and thus power, to the right-wing agenda, we may lose our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Right to Life should mean the right to clean air, water and soil. Without clean natural resources, all life is threatened by lack of safe nutrition and safe territory to inhabit. Every living creature is threatened as our resources become non-productive and non-nutritive. Within our lifetimes, we have watched as toxins bioaccumulate up the food chain causing genetic mutations and disease. The right-wing is wrong to support diminished control over birth for many reasons, but this wrong is especially insidious when coupled with the right-wing's call for dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, even as curtailed as it has been with right-wing control in Congress, is the bulwark that stands between unchecked corporate greed for our resources and the protection of those resources for sustaining life now and in the future.
Right to Life should mean access to health care. The right-wing supports birth, but not health care for all as right of citizenship. Priority number one of a Romney administration is to repeal Obamacare. Leave health care to the states, they say. But not all states have the resources or the political will to provide health care for all. Many of us recall what America was like before federal mandates for racial equality. Some states deemed those with dark skin less worthy of a good education, property rights, and other cvil rights. Many people suffered greatly due to this discrimination. We are united in these states of America in order to create a more perfect union. That means we must protect the lives of those who live in states where the majority does not support the rights of minorities. We must protect those who can least protect themselves including those with pre-existing conditions that make them uninsurable by private companies who only look for profit.
Right to Life should mean the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The right-wing platform views the civil right of marriage through the lens of religion and tradition as being only between a man and a woman, just as marriage was once a right granted only to persons of the same race and religion. As we await a potential Supreme Court ruling on the right to gay marriage, we are reminded once again that human rights have been and are denied by ballot initiatives and by the legislative decree of states. Let us hope that our highest court will follow its line of constitutional law cases protecting the rights of the minority to enjoy civil liberties recognized as inalienable rights of all Americans.
The right-wing's obsession with conception over compassion for the living is a dangerous game. If played out in full according to the agenda set forth in the right-wing platform adopted at the Republican Convention, the result will be environmental destruction as corporate rights trump environmental protection, contagion as disease spreads from the uninsured to the population at large, loss of humanity as the will of the majority compromises human rights of minorities on a state-by-state basis, and eventually fighting over limited resources. This is a disaster scenario, not a more perfect union. Beware one-percenters: you can not be rich enough to insulate yourself from a world like that.