I realize that my site here is mostly a geared towards a technical audience(however limited that is), but there comes a time that I feel the need to speak up on current events in the US. This is one of those times. If this does not interest you, feel free to ignore. Note that I am not a writer, so while I have spent a lot of time on this I fully admit that it may not flow well or always be correctly argued.
With regards to Marjorie Dannenfelser’s opinion piece, I must question her claim of being “pro-life.” In her opinion piece, she states “Our message is that if you say you are pro-life, you have to act like it.” This is absolutely true, but it is drastically undercut by her determination to only support Republican candidates.
As we have seen over the past few months and even years, Republicans are not by any means of the imagination pro-life. From large scale immigration raids to routine statements by Donald Trump calling immigrants “garbage” or claiming that they are “rapists,” this behavior is so thoroughly against what pro-life means that it is a wonder that the Republican party claims to be pro-life.
While Marjorie claims to be a Catholic, the Catholic Church does not support many of the policies of the current administration as shown by the recent Special Pastoral Message on immigrants. As stated in the message, the Church recognizes “the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants.” This belief has been trampled on by the current administration, as we have seen in the brutal ICE raids in many American cities.
The fundamental rights of all persons are violated when the government comes in and deports people without due process or makes a media spectacle of their arrest. Many times these arrests will break up families, often with young children whose parents have been in the country for years. Take for example the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Married and being gainfully employed in the United States, he was nonetheless deported with a minimum of due process, breaking apart his family and leading to weeks of uncertainty as to his whereabouts and health. This is a direct assault on the family, straight against the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Violent arrests and operations more designed to feed the social media machine than protect people does not make America safer.
In her opinion piece, Marjorie also states that “If it must be legal to end the lives of fellow human beings, at least do not force those who object to be complicit through their tax dollars.” If this is the case, can we also object to our tax dollars being used to target alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean? After all, the administration has asserted sweeping powers to kill anyone as long as they are trafficking drugs. These apparently arbitrary strikes are paid for by our tax dollars as well, further eroding any belief that the Republican party is pro-life.
We also see that ending human lives by the government is something that happens on a daily basis when we look at the number of police shootings each year in the United States. The two recent killings in Minnesota of Renee Good by ICE and of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol are just the highest profile shootings so far this year. In neither case was the officer in immediate danger, but it seems that ICE is no better than many other law enforcement officers, with a shoot first and ask questions later approach. We can be unequivocal in saying that Alex Pretti was not a danger to the officers, as it is abundantly clear that he was shot in the back as he was kneeling. The Republican glee over shootings of American citizens by the government should give everyone pause.
The lack of care for life is not just seen in the killings of people, it is also seen in rhetoric from administration officials such as Stephen Miller when he says “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” The late Pope Francis explicitly warned against this sort of thought in his letter to the Bishops of the United States of America where he said “But worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.” This kind of language coming from a senior official should be strongly condemned by all those who consider themselves to be pro-life.
Given all that we have seen, why would Marjorie threaten to pull support from Republicans for being insufficiently anti-abortion, when their words and actions should have disqualified them in the first place?
I think that E.J. Dionne succinctly summarized thoughts on Trump being pro-life in an interview shortly after the 2024 election: “If abortion is your issue, you’re not getting much out of Trump, and you may not get much out of the incoming Republican Congress. They have to ask themselves: Am I really voting for Trump because of his position on abortion, or am I actually voting for him for other reasons? And should I think about a different way of being pro-life?”
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