Pro What?

Some people may think I am as dim as a firefly in a London fog or that one would need access to the Hubble Telescope to see any glimmer in my obtuse brain but there are things I simply don’t understand.


Yesterday in Ottawa there was a huge Pro-Life rally. Thousands of people walking around the downtown core yelling and screaming how important it was to save every life; that the unborn child had the right to live; that mothers who get an abortion were murderers; etc. We all heard the message: some are touched by it, others are offended, but very few are left indifferent.

As I was walking back from a meeting, I was able to observe the participants in that rally. It was quite a mixed bag: young and old, beautiful and ugly, calm and excited. They all seem to have one thing in common though: they all had a bit of a right-wing air to them. Whether it was the hairstyle, the clothing, the glasses, the demeanour, or other more subtle indicator, most of them were certainly the conservative type. That got me thinking. If, they were indeed leaning on the right, they had me confused. Aren’t these people that are now asking the government to save the life of all unborn children the ones that beg for the return of the death penalty, demand lower spending in public health, call for the right to bear arms, appeal for greater investment in the military? I really wonder how the same people who so strongly defend the life of the unborn can rationalize equipping the military with the latest weapons to increase the kill per soldier ratio or giving someone a lethal injection based on an “eye for an eye” logic.

I wish I could find out when, in these people’s minds, life looses its sanctity? Is it when the individual is capable of independent thought? When facial and body hair appears? Maybe it’s something else. I know it’s not politically correct to say this but does the ethnicity of the life in question have some importance? Is the real message behind all of this that we must save white unborn children but it’s OK to kill Arab extremists, black prisoners and sick natives?

Come to think of it, at the rally yesterday the crowd was certainly overwhelmingly white. Could some explain all this to me because it’s all very puzzling?