You hear it, don’t you?
The conspicuous silence?
The supposed pro-life Christians have gone awfully quiet lately.
In fact, come to think of it, they’ve virtually vanished ever since the Epstein files began floating up from the depths of billionaire-birthed hell and into the national discourse (at least, once they realized some of the names within them).
As the Trump Administration worked tirelessly over the last year to suppress, withhold, and redact the unspeakable horrors the files contain, the alleged church-going, God-fearing, self-identified life-lovers said nothing; sudden conscientious objectors in the war for the sanctity of all they claim God has fashioned.
And right now, as millions of pages filled with the most despicable, depraved atrocities human beings are capable of, cover every square inch of America’s collective consciousness, the pro-life Christians are nowhere to be found.
To them, these lives are not sacred; they are worthless.
The thousands of girls and young women whose childhoods, innocence, dreams, security, and very bodies were violated in ways that decent human beings cannot comprehend receive no fierce advocacy, merit no anguished outcry, and earn no passionate defense.
That’s because their massive moral burden immediately expires outside the womb.
You see, Conservative Christians don’t love life; they love embryos.
They tell us all the time.
They speak effusively about them in conversation, publicly revere them at rallies, shed crocodile tears over them in Op-Eds, accost strangers entering clinics over them, viciously troll people on social media because of them, and sermonize on street corners about them.
They even claim to have voted for a reprehensible monster whom they’d never otherwise tolerate to lead, solely on their behalf.
Republican people of faith regularly fall all over themselves, carrying on in performative grief over embryos, unleashing all manner of histrionics at those of us who believe in a woman’s right to have autonomy over her own body.
And they do all of this (they claim), because they believe that embryos are human beings, and they want those beloved in-utero human beings to be cherished, defended, and protected at all costs.
The problem with their breathless, tearful zealotry is that once these embryos are no longer embryos, these supposed life-lovers often don’t treat them like they’re at all human.
Before departing the birth canal, they’re sacred.
After that, they’re screwed.
We don’t see this MAGA Christian hypocrisy in the Epstein files alone, but in their ambivalence toward ICE’s brutality, and their silence regarding the elimination of SNAP funding, expansive Medicare cuts, or Veterans benefit reduction.
Over and over, when human beings are pressed up hard against the nightmares and staring down the demons, when people who respect and revere life should be the loudest voices and the most fervent presence, they refuse to speak.
We can’t allow these people to claim moral high ground and cosplay as defenders of life when it suits them and then disappear when it threatens their political affiliations and religious institutions, when it requires them to confront their own.
We have to hold these sanctified frauds’ feet to the fire of the convictions they claim.
We have to confront our family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, classmates, and social media contacts. We cannot allow them to look away, deny awareness, or hide in the shadows. Most of all, we cannot allow them to label themselves pro-life while showing such contempt for so much of the living.
I wish white Christian Conservatives had the same passion for victims of assault, migrant children, school shooting victims, sick toddlers, young black men, Muslim families, and LGBTQ teens that they claim to have for embryos.
Then they’d actually be pro-life, and then we’d all be able to go about the work together of caring for humanity and defeating the monsters.
Yes, white Conservative Christians love embryos.
Disparate sentient human beings who suffer in their midst?
Not so much.
They don't even love the embryos. They love controlling women. Heck, even their women, in some sick, twisted way, want other women's rights destroyed. This has never been about the sanctity of ANY life and never will be.
Anyone who fiercely says they are "pro-life" to me I correct them, saying they are not pro-life, but pro-birth. And then give them a litany of how the fetus is more valued than the child, especially if it is the fetus of a poor or non-white mother. No one dares ever say to me they are pro-life unless they prove to me they care for every child after it is born.