I’d respect “pro-life” advocates more if they really were.

As a young and foolish college student, I demonstrated mightily for an end to the VietNam war. From my point of view, ending that horrible war was an ultimate “pro-life” position. Over ten times as many Americans died in that war than have died in Iraq and Afganistan even though we’ve been in those unhappy countries longer. So, even though I’ve given up on ‘demonstrations’ as a solution to anything, I can’t very well tell the anti-choice people lining the streets outside Notre Dame that they’re doing anything wrong without condemning my own past behavior at the same time.

But I can condemn them for hypocrisy.

I love the Monty Python number featured in their film The Meaning of Life, “Every Sperm is Sacred.”

There are Jews in the world, there are Buddhists.
There are Hindus and Mormons and then,
There are those that follow Mohammud, BUT
I’ve never been one of them.

I’m a Roman Catholic,
And have been since before I was born,
And the one thing they say about Catholics
Is they’ll take you as soon as you’re warm.

You don’t have to be a six footer,
You don’t have to have a great brain,
You don’t have to have any clothes on,
You’re a Catholic the moment Dad came.

Because…

Every sperm is sacred,
Every sperm is great,
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate

Why is it that anti-choice conservatives are oh-so-willing to let people die of AIDS in Africa rather than distribute life saving condoms; or even die in the streets in America rather than support life-saving social reforms. But when it comes to telling somebody else – in this case, a woman – what they can or can’t do with their own body, then they’re so concerned about the loss of life.