If you’re a pro-life activist, you may be faced with an uncomfortable choice in the not-too-distant future. Let me explain.
Women choose to have an abortion – and, if you’re having a fight-or-flight reaction because of the a-word, take a moment to settle down and let the adrenaline drain away – for a variety of reasons, but often the reason centers around economic circumstances. In other words, caring for one more child would push the family into poverty, thus endangering the entire family. For the pro-life person, the sacrifice of one potential child to help ensure[1] the safety and prosperity of the others. For the pro-choice member, it’s the termination of a fetus, a non-person, to ensure the safety and prosperity of the family.
President Trump’s use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to keep the meat production plants open is properly seen as an echo of the Texas Lt. Governor Patrick’s (R) suggestion that the elderly sacrifice themselves for the good of the country, because the workers, as they have recognized, are being asked to put their lives on the line for the good of the country – not just to ensure a supply of meat, which is not in itself critical, but for the good of the economy.
That is, a pro-life activist cannot be in favor of the forced staffing of the meat production plants. It puts the workers in the position of risking their lives unnecessarily for economic reasons.
The more frantic pro-lifers may try to make much of the option of not returning to work, but this is nonsense, since, as Governor Reynolds (R-IA) has made clear, those who should be working under the DPA but refuse to do so due to health concerns will lose their state-level pandemic benefits.
At least.
Might as well just get the whips out and drive them slaves, er, workers, back to their tasks.
So, in both situations, we have decisions being made for, ostensibly, economic reasons. There’s really little difference here, although it’s true the workers have a good chance of surviving the experience, although even so they may find themselves permanently damaged, not to mention spreading the coronavirus to customers, friends, and family. I’m trying to visual Governor Reynolds volunteering to work on the line with the workers as an inspiration to them.
While I sincerely hope she goes there, and it would be good for her re-election chances, I don’t expect it to happen.
A pro-lifer, faced with this conundrum, must decide to either take the workers side, against the Republicans who believe economics is more important than life, or the Republican side, against those who believe their lives are more important than the economics and the bottom-line, even survival.
You’d think this one would be easy. I’ll wait and see, since most, though not all, “pro-lifers” tend to be conservative.
1 “Ensure” is the common usage for scenarios such as these, and it is wrong. The proper word would be one that means “increases the odds of the desired outcome occurring,” but, if such an English language word exists, it escapes my vocabulary. This morning.
