Pro-life? Prove it.

The ruling

Take the question back. “Pro-life” can’t mean only “anti-abortion” while you fund the war, sign the death warrant, and gut the things the born need to stay alive — the food, the doctor, the roof, the care for the disabled and the mentally ill. Defend a life only until its first breath and you weren’t defending life; you were defending a checkpoint.

Real pro-life pays for life: the born, the poor, the sick, the soldier you sent, the misfit at the door. If you won’t fund the living, “life” was a logo.

And the hard part, plainly

The movement that calls itself the religious right is, too often, no longer religious, and no longer right. It taxes, and it funds the killing — the war, the execution — and wraps it in God. But open their own book and it does not read that way:

The bluff isn’t against faith. It’s against the ones who borrowed faith’s clothes and kept none of its commandments — who serve Mammon, fund the sword, and pass the least of these on the street.

Let people be people

And let people be people. Govern less of the body and feed more of the person. Whatever you believe about the beginning, you don’t get to call yourself pro-life while you defund the middle and pay for the end. The dignity is the floor — and you don’t get to vote on the floor.

Steelmanned, because that’s the rule

Plenty of the faithful live the whole ethic. The consistent life ethic — the “seamless garment” — is theirs, not mine; Pope Leo XIV says power and the machine must serve human dignity, not the few. This honors them. The bluff-call is aimed at one thing only: the selective version — pro-birth, not pro-life. Best and worst both score; the only loss is the shrug in the middle.

Fund the living, or drop the label;

Stop funding the war. Fund joy. Only humans bleed; only humans grieve; only humans get to say a life was worth it — and only humans score.