{"id":167,"date":"2012-10-29T09:51:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T13:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=167"},"modified":"2012-10-29T09:51:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-29T13:51:00","slug":"why-i-am-pro-life-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"Why I Am Pro-Life – NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why I Am Pro-Life – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In my world, you don\u2019t get to call yourself \u201cpro-life\u201d and be against common-sense gun control \u2014 like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don\u2019t get to call yourself \u201cpro-life\u201d and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don\u2019t get to call yourself \u201cpro-life\u201d and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can<\/i> call yourself a \u201cpro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.\u201d I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as \u201cpro-life.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cPro-life\u201d can mean only one thing: \u201crespect for the sanctity of life.\u201d And there is no way that respect for the sanctity of life can mean we are obligated to protect every fertilized egg in a woman\u2019s body, no matter how that egg got fertilized, but we are not obligated to protect every living person from being shot with a concealed automatic weapon. I have no respect for someone who relies on voodoo science to declare that a woman\u2019s body can distinguish a \u201clegitimate\u201d rape, but then declares \u2014 when 99 percent of all climate scientists conclude that climate change poses a danger to the sanctity of all life on the planet \u2014 that global warming is just a hoax. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The term \u201cpro-life\u201d should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is leading to terrible distortions in our society. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why I Am Pro-Life – NYTimes.com In my world, you don\u2019t get to call yourself \u201cpro-life\u201d and be against common-sense gun control \u2014 like banning public access to the kind … Continue reading “Why I Am Pro-Life – NYTimes.com”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moral-arguments","category-social-justice"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}