If you haven’t heard, pro-life conservatives have introduced a bill called the Protect Life Act. On its surface value, that name sounds wonderful; who wouldn’t want to protect lives? However, if you’re clever enough, you’ll quickly realize that this bill is focused on the issue of abortion and the attempt of pro-life conservatives to interject their skewed moral beliefs into our laws.

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If you haven’t heard, pro-life conservatives have introduced a bill called the Protect Life Act. On its surface value, that name sounds wonderful; who wouldn’t want to protect lives? However, if you’re clever enough, you’ll quickly realize that this bill is focused on the issue of abortion and the attempt of pro-life conservatives to interject their skewed moral beliefs into our laws.

The bill, which was introduced by Republican Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, proclaims to be an act to prevent the federal government from funding abortions except in extreme circumstances, which at least seems like a reasonable proposal. If a woman wants an abortion outside of a medical emergency, she should pay for it. However, the true intentions are made clear in the deceptively worded latter half of the bill.

The second half of HR 358, if passed, would under any circumstances prevent public hospitals from performing abortions or referring patients to doctors who will. This includes instances of rape, incest, or most disturbingly, when the mother’s life is in danger.

The hypocrisy of the conservative pro-lifers and the politicians funded by such movements are boundless. They claim to be promoting the preservation of life when in reality they are protecting the unborn at the expense of the living. Forcing a mother to carry a pregnancy through whatever the cost defies all logic.

Consider a pregnant woman who has prenatal complications that cause her kidneys to shut down. Doctors determine that if the pregnancy is terminated, they may be able to save the mother; if not, she will die. Under the Protect Life Act, the abortion cannot be performed to save the mother. Clearly, life is not being protected! It’s disgusting, cynical, and twisted.

I was always under the impression that Republicans were all about less involvement in the personal lives of citizens. Apparently, that stops when it comes to personal morals and decisions. What’s more personal than having the government tell you what must be done with your body and condemning you to death?

Clearly this is not an issue about protecting life. Instead, it’s a much larger, more disturbing issue of what role religiously-inspired morals should take in government. Our generation has a decision to make, and it is a quintessential decision that will influence the very direction we want our country to move and the country we want to be.

Do we want a country where we have the right – the choice – to make our own decisions over our bodies; where we have the decision to decide moral issues for ourselves; or do we want a nation where we don’t get a voice over ourselves and must obey the moral decisions of the few Christian pro-life conservatives? It is our future, and we must decide.

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