Whose life?

This thoughtful letter by our own John Cooper appeared in Sunday's Daily Item, partially in response to this letter from earlier in the week:

To the good folk (13 Sept. 08) who are planning their votes this year on the basis of their ‘Pro Life’ position, I’d like a bit of clarification:

For whose or what’s life are you ‘pro’?

All life? What about the plants that you destroy for food, construction or clear-cutting? What about the weeds you poison or pull up?

Oh, only animal life? What about the animals you eat or whose bodies you use for shoes or clothing? What of the insects you poison, the spiders you kill, the teeming myriad of critters whose lives you indifferently extinguish daily just by your very living and breathing?

Ah, you say, just human life? Which humans’ lives? The millions of children born each year into disease-infested squalor and poverty with no prospect whatsoever of healthy or happy lives? The hundreds of thousands of premature deaths due to the practice of punishing foreign governments by imposing ‘sanctions’ on their people? Or the hundreds of thousands of victims of America’s wars of military subjugation against those we don't agree with? Had those no right to life?

Mmm, I see, you are only ‘pro’ American lives? What about those squandered lives lost or abused in our military’s wars based on lies and distortions? Don’t they count? What about the lives of our own, ordinary citizens condemned by poor health-care, poverty and malnutrition to premature deaths by an economic and social system that enriches the rich and impoverishes the poor?

I could go on but you see my point? Sloganeering with vapid clichés whose practice belies their slogan does little to enhance the credibility of either the slogan or the sloganeer.

John Cooper