As We See It: Why we are progressively pro-life

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We thought that headline might grab your attention. We thought about this, after hearing Judge Amy Coney Barrett proclaim she is “pro-life.”

Again, in this issue of the Spectrum, we’re offering the Spectrum Voter Endorsement Guide. Our volunteer group of community leaders have gone through and evaluated every race, as we jokingly say, from President to dog catcher and everything in between. We’ve made picks for every race in Southern Nevada, including the five ballot questions.

Here is some of the progressively pro-life criteria we consider:

Does the candidate support a living wage, one that will allow people to take care of themselves and their family? We’re sorry, but the current Nevada minimum wage, which will gradually increase to $12 per hour, isn’t sufficient. It’s actually less than the minimum wage it replaced, at the time it was enacted, when cost of living is taken into consideration. $8.25, where the wage currently lies, doesn’t do much to support life.

What are the candidate’s views on cash bail reform? What about adequately funded public defenders? When two individuals are both charged with similar crimes and there is an income disparity, the wealthy one pays the cash bail, gets out of jail, works on their case and hires the best attorneys.

The poor client, often can’t pay bail, loses their job, can’t work on their case, usually gets assigned an overworked public defender and meets said attorney at court. The low income defendant, even if innocent, usually accepts a plea bargain, just to get out of jail and back home. They’re often not even asked by the public defender if they’re guilty, they’ve lost their job, lost their rental apartment, perhaps lost their transportation and their world spirals downhill. What kind of life is this person going to have, going forward?

How about the person who escapes from Central or South America, usually walks hundreds of miles to get to our southern border? They may be escaping gang violence, starvation, political corruption or drugs cartels. They have the right, according to US laws and international laws, to apply for asylum in the US. When they get here, they’re locked up, treated callously, their children are often taken from them, they’re housed in wire cages in intentionally frigid rooms. As we’ve written in the past, some of our puppy mills treat animals more humanely than we treat these asylum seekers.

Our country has welcomed workers from Mexico and other countries for many, many years. Without them, our farming, ranching and construction industries would have collapsed. With the current administration, they’re suddenly pariahs. They have formed lives in this country. They have married, have children and responsibilities. Out of the blue, perhaps for an infraction as minor as a broken taillight or speeding ticket, they’re yanked from their families and deported. Spouses are left to make mortgage/rent payments, care for the children as single parents, or worse.

Our immigration and border policies are wrong. Much of what our current administration is doing is illegal, is child cruelty and simply inhumane. Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, William Barr, Katie Miller, Kirstjen Nielsen, others working in the Trump administration, including Homeland Security, and Donald Trump himself, are likely guilty of child abuse.

Lock them up? No! Once we have sane, compassionate, law abiding people elected and running the Dept. of Justice, they should be investigated and if sufficient evidence is found, they should be charged and lawfully tried.

If Biden/Harris are elected, then the very next day, they should make it clear that any administration official who is found to have treated asylum seekers in this fashion, after election results are known, will be dealt with the same lack of mercy they have shown these desperate migrants.

Don’t get us started on conservation and climate change. How many hundreds of
thousands of lives are lost world-wide by famine due to climate change? How many
people can’t breathe due to forest fires and pollution? Many people can no longer grow
crops, die from lung disease and asthma?

With Trump, Barrett and others claiming climate change is purely political, they’re
stupid and certainly not pro-life.

Conservatives and the majority of Republicans like to claim they are “pro-life,” when in fact, they are simply anti-choice and don’t understand the whole abortion debate. We maintain, if you’re truly “pro-life,” you’ll care about the issues we just raised. You’ll care if children have enough to eat, if their parents can keep a roof over their heads
and get them a proper education.

We are pro choice. It’s not our place to decide what a woman does with her body
and her life. The truth about abortion is that 91% of all abortions are performed
during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. 7.7% during 14 to 20 weeks and fewer
than 1.2% after 21 weeks. Viability of the fetus, outside the womb, is generally considered to be 24 weeks and of course 40 weeks for a full pregnancy.

In those rare 1.2% cases, nearly always it has to do with the viability of the fetus, the life of the mother or the likelihood that if born, the infant would not survive and suffer a painful death.

“Late term abortion” is a political and not a medical term. The sick scenarios anti-choice people like to describe do not happen and would be illegal.

So yes, we are pro-choice but we are progressively pro-life. Anyone who says they’re pro-life but supports policies and supports politicians that cage children, tear families apart, deny families adequate food and shelter, are plain dishonest. They’re not pro-life. They’re dishonest or at best, ignorant.