I cannot escape the idea that “Pro-life” is a red herring.
Tough words in our time. However, let me tell you why this idea even popped into my head.
First, being “Prolife” requires little of a person. They may give a miserly amount to a “Pro-life Pregnancy Center,” and proclaim proudly one is “Pro-life,” but little is required beyond that.
We may stand with our church which is “Pro-life” but do little beyond that.
Let me tell you why I believe “Pro-life” is a red herring. First, because of the number of foster kids straining the foster care system. Currently in Texas there are 29,927 kids in foster care, and 3,378 waiting adoption. “Pro-lifers should be lining up to make sure every child has a stable home and a safe home. That has not happened, nor will it happen because one is a slogan, the other is a commitment.
“Pro-lifers” are most associated with abortion and the efforts to make such procedures illegal. I note that stand is a focused intrusion by the Federal government into the bedrooms of America. Imagine Congress enacted legislation which limited the size of a family to one or two children. We would be outraged. The government has no business telling us how many children we can have. They have no business telling that we have to have children. However, that is not how we feel about abortion. Rather it is somehow alright for the government into intrude into the personal life of a woman telling her she must carry the child she does not want. So, again where are the “Pro-lifers”lining up outside the Abortion clinics offering to raise the unwanted or inconvenient child? That is real “Pro-life.”
Real Pro-life would also support the Legislature allocating enough funding for the broad area that could be called Children's health and safety such as: Child Protective Services department(chronically underfunded and short staffed); expanding Medicaid while allowing providers to have a reasonable return for their treating Medicaid clients(instead of lining the pockets of insurance companies who are paid handsomely to manage an ever shrinking budget); the Chip program for low income families which has almost been gutted by the Legislature; foster care system which never has enough safe homes for kids removed from their families; and state funded programs which target at risk kids.
“Pro-lifers” would stand against the every cycle of Legislative sessions which always want to cut Medicaid moneys, early childhood support, and criminal justice abuses. Real “Pro-lifers” would support living wages for families which are always on the brink of not having enough. “Pro-lifers” would recognize the inequity in the criminal justice system, and instead of constantly cutting services within the prisons, would recognize it is in the best interests of society to help rehabilitate an offender knowing that most will exit the system at some point. Punishment alone does nothing but foster anger and rage. “Prolifers” would realize prison is an expensive treatment track for those with mental illness. Currently it costs $30,000.00 a year to keep a person incarcerated in Texas. For the mentally ill, $5,000.00 invested locally in adequate services and support would net a savings of $25,000.00 per client. “Pro-lifers” would also realize that community mental health in Texas is done on the cheap, continually shrinking financial support for mental health-mental retardation centers across the state. Texas would rather give billion dollar grants to billion dollar companies to move to Texas than to help the folks who are already here and struggle with decent housing, jobs, health and mental health care.
Real “Pro-lifers” would have an uneasy conscience about the death penalty as practiced in Texas. I have been a strong supporter of the death penalty because I believe there are some crimes so heinous, so cruel, so base the criminal deserves to pay with his life for what he has done. The connection forged in horrific crime between the criminal and the victim family is finally broken. Those of us who have worked in the prison setting and the unique setting at Polunsky Maximum Security Prison which now houses Texas death row, know that while law enforcement, prosecutors, juries, and judges can lock these folks away, they cannot contain the evil within. Security officers, mental health clinicians, medical providers and their families deal with the shadow cast by these criminals. So while the allusion of containing the evil is thought to be satisfied by prison. It is not. The alternative of life without parole only makes it worse.
However, watching death row offenders up close and realizing some had been on death row for 20 years or more, some who were sentenced for crimes they did not commit, or were mentally retarded or mentally ill at the time of the commission of the crime, have made me more skeptical of how Texas practices the death penalty.
Three great concerns for me relate to how Texas chooses to house DR offenders. When Death Row housing was moved to Polunsky, DR offenders were single celled with only 1 hour or 2 at most out of their cell. Depending on which security team was on duty, communication between cells was often prohibited. Over the years of being single celled in a very small spartan rooms caused many to sink into mental illness. My term for it was “Puddling.” It meant their humanity or what was left of it melted in that harsh environment or puddled.
Second, sentencing and execution were often years apart. There was no swift justice, but it was not unusual for men(our unit was men) to be waiting 10+ years for execution.
Third, there were enough innocent men who were ultimately proven to not have committed the crime. Evidence was withheld, some crime scene DNA was never processed, or simply law enforcement got the wrong man.
I am not saying that “Pro-lifers” would necessarily support life without parole for heinous crimes, but that we would act humanely, treat the offenders humanely, and provide the maximum amount of safe interaction while they wait for their execution.
At a certain point, the focus shifts from them to us. If we are unjust, inhumane, mean, vindictive, that value is amplified in our culture. I love the way Martin Luther King expressed it, “If to defeat the beast we become the beast, then bestiality has won.
Wash your hands, wear your mask for others, mind the gap, and be kind.
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