Last Friday, Georgia congressman Doug Collins caught fire for this incendiary tweet about Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, who died earlier that day:
RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended pro-abortion laws. With @realDonaldTrump nominating a replacement that values human life, generations of unborn children have a chance to live.
It would seem like he’d be mature enough to let “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything'' apply, but he’s a Republican. Considering class isn’t a priority for them in any context. Collins has since defended the statement, telling WSB-TV that “the truth was about being honest about where we’re going and what the president’s going to do. Sometimes in life, there’s just polite, and there’s just the truth. That was the truth."
But Collins couldn’t have been more disingenuous. For conservatives, their advocacy isn’t about compassion, but control. They aren’t pro-life, they’re anti-abortion. The difference in the latter position is that it prioritizes policing women under the guise of empathy for unborn children. If the men who sustain capitalism had any empathy, America wouldn’t be in such desperate straits. Capitalism is predicated on death and destitution; there’s a deep irony that anyone looking to conserve that state would promote themselves as “pro-life.”
Collins wants a Supreme Court replacement that “values human life.” But neither he nor Trump values human life. It’s unlikely that he has allies who do. Collins, Trump, and people like them are making decisions that are ruining our quality of life.
Georgia has had one of the worst responses to coronavirus. Georgia has reported 306,155 coronavirus cases, and 6,453 deaths. Governor George Kemp banned cities from ordering people to wear face masks in July. The results have been as damning as one would expect. They reported their highest daily death toll in August, five months after the outbreak began. They tried to open schools as normal, but several were forced to close as thousands of kids had to be quarantined.
76% of the deaths in Georgia are people 65 or older, while only 14% of Georgia’s population is 65 or older. 1,643 elderly nursing home patients had died as of September 6th. Despite those challenges, in June they opened up a polling station for a predominantly Black neighborhood right next to a nursing home. There was also a 76-year-old woman sentenced to 499 days in jail for a non-accident related DUI, where 59 people have died from COVID. Despite this great loss of life, Collins hasn’t been vocal about his home state’s response beyond haggling about Kemp’s miscommunication with municipalities about re-opening.
As Richard Hine noted in a piece accurately titled, “‘Pro-Life’ Now Has an Age Limit,” “Republicans stand ready to sacrifice millions of old people in service of Dear Leader and their one true god: The Almighty Dollar.”
Collins had time to tweet about Ginsburg, but nothing to say about a recent report about “hazardous and reckless actions” at a Georgia ICE facility, including a lack of COVID testing and their allowance of symptomatic employees to continue working while awaiting testing. Whistleblower Dawn Wooten also alleged that the facility was giving women unwanted hysterectomies — a direct removal of the chance to give life. While Collins has been silent, Wooten’s bravery was an example of what genuine empathy for unborn children, and potential mothers, looks like.
His silence, like that of other Republicans, damns him. What “lives” does his pro-life advocacy actually extend to? It’s conservatives like him who support ICE’s agenda to roundup and imprison undocumented people who have been through a hellish experience since the Obama administration ramped up deportation efforts. Undocumented people have been separated from their families at the border, despite having horror stories like a Guatemalan teen who feared being made to “disappear” by a man who raped her in Guatemala. Despite her tearful plea to stay in the “land of opportunity,” the government expelled her back to her home country.
Pro-life advocacy has nothing to do with the best interests of women. A 2019 poll asked anti-abortion voters about gender equity. Unsurprisingly, The Guardian reported that their answers were “significantly more hostile” toward gender equality than pro-choice voters. For conservatives, pro-life stances represent a chance to manipulate religion and moralism to police women’s bodies and uphold patriarchy. Along misogynist lines, feigning concern for the kids is more politically correct than simply admitting that they feel women should be controlled and don’t deserve domain over their bodies.
The term, “pro-life” itself is detached and clinical. It speaks to mere existence as a cog of capitalism. Who needs to work harder than those with children to provide for? How much would a mother’s life be thrown off track by being forced to have a baby that they didn’t actually want? For so many, life under capitalism isn’t living. It’s working to the bone for the express benefit of billionaires. It’s paying off college debts by working until you get unwell, then working harder to pay off medical bills.
Everything conservatives speak of and look the other way on involves death, destitution, and control, whether it’s poor people, incarcerated people, sick people, undocumented people, or any other number of aggrieved groups. There’s a strong chance that any child they claim to stump for via pro-Life grounds would grow up to be someone they stomped on.
During a 2016 debate, then-candidate Trump opined that, “if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, (overturning Roe vs Wade) will happen.” As Collins noted, Ginsburg’s death opens a seat which Trump will almost surely attempt to fill with an anti-abortion justice. If Collins has his wish, and Trump comes for abortion rights, then “pro-life” will be exposed for what it is next to his many other corrosive policies. “pro-life” would be another death knell for basic liberties.
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Venmo: Andre-Gee
This is all about republicans hypocrisy and I am not mad.
A couple questions:
1 - why have so many people been unwilling to accept that women have autonomy and choices, and how do you see that in everyday life?
2 - if RVW is overthrown, would it begin a immediate backsliding on all liberal policies or would people fight back?
3 - have you been able to talk to your woman friends about this and what do they think?