These States' Leaders Claim to Be 'Pro-Life.' So Why Are So Many of Their Citizens Dying of COVID-19

[G_j]

https://time.com/5866928/coronavirus-pro-life/

IDEAS
BY WILLIAM J. BARBER II AND JONATHAN WILSON-HARTGROVE JULY 15, 2020 10:54 AM EDT

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, president of Repairers of the Breach, is a co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign, a movement to build the power of poor people and change the public narrative on poverty.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is author of Revolution of Values: Reclaiming Public Faith for the Common Good.

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As the coronavirus surges across the U.S., states across the South and West have reported sharp increases in their daily number of new cases. While the initial outbreaks in New York and Seattle reflected where community spread of the disease began in the U.S., these more recent surges in Florida, Texas, Arizona and some two dozen other states reveal more about our capacity to respond. Many Asian and European countries that experienced their first cases and initial outbreaks at the same time we did have successfully suppressed the virus and returned to semi-normal life. Meanwhile, COVID spreads across the U.S. like contrast dye on an MRI, highlighting a malignancy in our body politic.

When we look closely at the data, the regions where the coronavirus is currently surging are precisely the places where white people have been manipulated by a distorted moral narrative for decades. Ironically, the governors who are most willing to watch their citizens die are the ones who have used “pro-life” rhetoric to compel people of faith to support the narrow interests of corporate greed and white political power. COVID has revealed how the “pro-life” movement is killing us.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Republican politicians who wanted to unite a white electorate in the South, the suburbs and across the Sunbelt knew they could no longer directly appeal to white cultural values in the wake of the civil rights movement. So they began using the language of traditional values and religious liberty to persuade white voters that the real problem in America is moral decline and cultural corruption. By framing women’s rights as an assault on traditional values, this movement mobilized white people who felt threatened by civil rights, women’s rights and the anti-war movement of the 1960s and ‘70s to assert their values as “pro-life.” They opposed abortion while promoting a narrative that blamed poor people for their problems and glorified the “opportunities” corporate profits afford to the industrious.

For the past 40 years, this narrative has been reinforced through a coordinated network of independent media, private school curricula, pulpits and political operatives. As investigative journalist Anne Nelson describes in her book Shadow Network, conservative Christians have increasingly come to live in a self-reinforcing wraparound culture of propaganda. When that network of information demonized efforts to address the current pandemic by staying at home, even from church, they resisted public health advice in the name of religious liberty.

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[roamer65]

1. Because they are white supremacists.

Make more white babies or else!

[Hestia]

2. I'm trying to figure out why the unmasked aren't being called mass murderers

If you get down to it, that is what they are, just via a different means than what we are used to.

Maybe that's it -- if it ain't a gun, it's okay...

[Johnny2X2X]

3. No such as Pro-Life to them

They are anti women, that's what their supposed pro-life movement is all about. If men had abortions they'd brag all the time about how many they've had and zero Religious Organizations would give two shits.

[uponit7771]

4. Trumpers et al seem to be OK with the dying as long the dying are disproportionately non-whites

[musette_sf]

5. Because gestational slavery advocates

want women to be controlled as property and livestock. ZERO to do with any actual "pro-life" sentiments.

[malaise]

6. Pro-life for them is pro the white unborn

After birth they all support the NRA over your children

[Caliman73]

7. Because "Pro-Life" is just a code term for anti-choice or "forced birth".

They really care nothing about the "life" after it is out of the womb. They just want to punish women for having sex but they know that stating that clearly would mean a significant backlash.

The agenda of conservatives is to form a rigid hierarchy based on race, wealth, and religion. If they were open about it, there would be very few conservative supporters, so they have to lie about their agenda and throw in emotional triggers and coded language.

[IllinoisBirdWatcher]

8. They are "Pro-Fetus," NOT "Pro-Life."

Tey are also too dumb to comprehend the simple pleas from the CDC and NIH.

[Fritz67]

9. Life is sacred and precious...

...from the moment of conception until the moment of birth. After that, you're on your own.