(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Montana GOP needs to decide whether it's pro-life or pro-death – Daily Montanan [1] ['More From Author', 'September', 'Darrell Ehrlick'] Date: 2022-09-01 Will the real Republicans please stand up? Quite honestly, it’s hard to get a handle on where conservatives stand when it comes to life. Across Montana, yard signs dot lawns that show a picture of an egg and sperm saying, “This is you on Day 1.” The message is clear: Republicans and conservatives believe that life begins at that moment, although I’d suggest that it’s a bit more complicated than cellular division. Yet if life is so precious that it begins at that very moment – and it’s worthy of protection, even in cases of rape, incest or putting a mother’s life at risk – I don’t understand how that same party can be so reckless about life after it emerges from the womb. This week, Montana lawmakers put a temporary halt to rules that would have allowed parents with religious objections to opt-out of vaccinating their child in daycare. The rule would have also exempted the employees who work at the daycare centers with nothing more than a “religious objection” form. Funny how those same legislators moved quickly to ban a one-page change form for a gender designation on a Montana birth certificate, but then rushed to create a simple one-sheet form for those wishing to ignore science and risk the health of the community. I’d say more about the contradictions if only I could follow the logic. At first, I was surprised and momentarily hopeful after hearing that the Children Families, Health and Human Services interim committee had stopped the rule with bipartisan support for the pause. But those hopes were dashed by reality as soon as I read the details – the Democrats had sided with science, while Republicans were merely concerned with the wording, not the concept. Still, I cannot help but ask: If life is precious enough to ram through U.S. Supreme Court justice confirmations in the overt attempt to overturn abortion laws, isn’t the claim of being “pro-life,” undercut, if not undermined, by the GOP’s insistence that people should not have to be vaccinated? Regardless of any particular disease and its corresponding vaccination, it is without question that vaccines and mandatory vaccination requirements have saved millions of lives and prevented unimaginable suffering and pain. And the result of not implementing vaccination requirements is simple, death. During a hearing this week, Rep. Jennifer Carlson, R-Manhattan, told the legislative committee, “I hope that someday in this country … we can get to the point where we don’t believe it’s our job to adjudicate someone else’s religious beliefs.” I find it hard to believe that any personal religious belief should be so important as to imperil the lives of infants and toddlers. Carlson is dead wrong: We should ask deep, probing and meaningful questions about any belief system – religious or otherwise – that would allow selfishness like that. I also find it puzzling that, at a time when most churches and religious organization report a decline in participation and membership, so many people are suddenly declaring such deeply held religious convictions. If that’s true, why are the pews empty? And having studied most of the world’s major religions, I cannot find much support for vaccine exemptions because the best messages of religion have centered on the concept of selflessness, while not getting vaccinated is an act of selfishness. With polio’s reemergence in America – it’s amazing to even write that – I looked back at some of those accounts that were contemporary with Eisenhower, Elvis and the Edsel. Here’s another story about biology after one day: Frankie Flood was a first-grader in a school in Syracuse, N.Y. He was busy on Oct. 30, 1953 getting ready for Halloween with his twin sister. He seemed to have a chest cold, so he stayed home from school. By that night, he was having trouble breathing. “Sixty-one hours after being admitted to the hospital, Frankie Flood succumbed to polio,” his sister wrote. “His father had cradled him as best he could as he was whisked to the operating suite for an emergency tracheostomy,” according to an oral history project of Polio, maintained by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. On the night of his burial, his sister was admitted to the same hospital with what would develop into polio. I wonder what would happen if we made yard signs showing the ravages of polio on Day 1. Would it have the same effect? The stories of epidemics and sickness are legion – and a cursory look at newspapers from Montana show what dealing with disease looked like – in Butte, there’s a family who lost at least four children within the span of a month to cholera. In Billings, on the day the first local television broadcast happened, there was also a notice on the same page, warning of pool closures due to a possible polio outbreak. Is this what Republicans are referring to when they speak in the coded of language of making America great again? If the GOP wants to continue to wear shirts, buttons and print bumper stickers that say, “Pro-life,” maybe they should at least have enough honesty to proclaim that they’re also “pro-death.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/09/01/montana-gop-needs-to-decide-whether-its-pro-life-or-pro-death/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/