Last week, Richard Beck posted a piece on his blog which puts very well something I’ve been saying for years (here, or here, for instance) – namely that if we’re going to claim that we’re Pro-Life, we should actually be Pro-Life, otherwise we should shut up about it. Beck, interestingly, takes things one step further by pointing out that in reality, “Pro-Life” looks a lot more like “Anti-Sex”. An extremely interesting read, and one which I’ve posted (in its entirety) below:
It seems to me that most Pro-Life people I know really aren’t Pro-Life at all. They are, rather, Anti-Sex. That is, the abortion debate is often just a cover to wage war on the sexual revolution and the Dawn of the Pill. What many Pro-Life people are angry about is the casual sexuality of our age, an era of “abortion on demand.” Pro-Life advocacy, then, is often (consciously or unconsciously) really a way to get sexually promiscuous people to face the “consequences” of sexual activity. The focus on life is often cover for Puritanical worries about sexuality in modern America.
Why do I draw this conclusion? Because most Pro-Life people I know are only Pro-Life in this one area, and only in this one area. They are not, generally speaking, consistently Pro-Life. For example, most Pro-Life people are…
…not Pro-Life when it comes to gun control.
…not Pro-Life when it comes to preemptive war.
…not Pro-Life when it comes to capital punishment.
…not Pro-Life when it comes to global malnourishment.
…not Pro-Life when it comes to universal health care.
…not Pro-Life when it comes to entitlement programs for the women and children of the working poor (to remove the economic incentives for abortion).
…not Pro-Life in promoting condom usage to prevent teenage pregnancy or AIDS in developing nations.
In short, the only thing many conservatives are Pro-Life about is, well, abortion. Which, incidentally, is the only thing on the list that’s about regulating sexual behavior.
Which kind of makes you wonder…