{"id":1311894,"date":"2019-06-27T17:24:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T23:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/toussaint-column-right-to-life-and-the-republican-cult-of-death\/"},"modified":"2019-06-27T17:24:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T23:24:00","slug":"toussaint-column-right-to-life-and-the-republican-cult-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/toussaint-column-right-to-life-and-the-republican-cult-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Toussaint column: Right to Life and the Republican cult of death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I am fervently pro-life.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something miraculous about the moment a heart begins to beat, whether it\u2019s a hummingbird\u2019s fluttering at 1,260 beats a minute or a human infant\u2019s, pulsing at about 160 beats a minute. Or an elephant\u2019s heart, slowly pacing out a 60-year life at 30 beats a minute.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something mysterious about seeds, too. How does a seed know it\u2019s not a stone? How does it store instructions for creating roots, buds and flowers in its miniscule dark interior?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so enraptured by life that when I find \u201cvolunteers\u201d in my garden, instead of weeding them out, I usually replant them in a better spot. I deplore thinning beets, even though I know that if I don\u2019t, my overcrowded crop will be stunted.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m awed by the complexity \u2013 and sometimes the cruelty \u2013 of the interdependent web of life.<\/p>\n

Louis Pasteur\u2019s experiments proved \u201cbiogenesis,\u201d the theory that life arises only from living things, and does so through reproduction. Scientists originally coined the term biogenesis to repudiate the medieval notion that life could spontaneously generate from NON-living matter (for example, maggots springing to life from dead bodies), but the anti-abortion movement has repurposed the term. They take it to mean that \u201ceach living thing reproduces after its own kind\u201d and thus, the instant a sperm and egg unite, what\u2019s there can only be a human being.<\/p>\n

Intellectually, I can understand why pro-life activists feel that way, and why they\u2019re upset about abortions. Since I find it difficult to uproot beet shoots, I can\u2019t imagine how I would have ever coped with an abortion. I have friends who, forced by wrenchingly cruel circumstances, underwent abortions decades ago. They still feel loss and regret. Emotionally and intellectually, I can understand pro-life advocates\u2019 reverence for the miracle of reproduction.<\/p>\n

What I CANNOT understand is why their party, the Republicans, are pursuing policies that will destroy far more lives than the roughly 1 million unborn that are aborted each year. Climate change will blight the lives of EVERY child now in the womb, and every one to come the whole world round.<\/p>\n

How can anyone claim to be \u201cpro-life\u201d while pursuing policies that are destroying the earthly womb on which all life depends?<\/p>\n

Denial of climate change \u2013 and worse, greed-driven actions that accelerate it \u2013 will prove more murderous than all modern abortions, more lethal than any ethnic cleansing in history. Together, the NAZI, Soviet Union, Cambodian and Armenian genocides cost about 13.5 million lives. Unchecked global warming could abort 555 times as many lives \u2013 the entire human race. There is no word to describe how horrendous this is; genocide and ecocide don\u2019t really cover it.<\/p>\n

Our profligate destruction of the environment is on track to destroy 1 million plant and animal species \u2013 ending the biogensis of half of all life on earth. That includes not only the nice-to-have creatures \u2013 the elephants and tigers you\u2019d like your grandkids to see \u2013 but also the bees that pollinate 70 percent of our food. Plus ocean fish that feed 10 percent of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

Ocean rise will displace two billion people \u2013 one fifth of humankind \u2013 by 2,100. Lack of water, food and habitable land will lead to a tsunami of refugees. And that will lead to wars, disease and yet more refugees.<\/p>\n

In May, a massive United Nations report, compiled by more than 450 researchers working with 15,000 scientific and government reports, warned that our current and \u201cominous\u201d freshwater shortages and climate instability will worsen without drastic remedial action.<\/p>\n

Denying climate change \u2013 while Americans are suffering visible damage from floods, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes \u2014 makes the Republican party look more like a death cult than defenders of life.<\/p>\n

Enacting policies that hasten the destruction of our earthly life-support system will loose the four horsemen of the apocalypse: conquest, war, famine and death. Civilization may collapse. The massive extinction of species now underway may well take us too.<\/p>\n

If that doesn\u2019t warrant the word \u201cevil\u201d, what does?<\/p>\n

Polls vary, but show that a majority of Republicans support some form of climate action. So why are Republican leaders denying, delaying and courting mega-death? In January, the Center for American Progress totaled the members of Congress who challenge the scientific consensus that humans are propelling climate change. The 116th Congress holds 150 of them, all Republicans.<\/p>\n

So why are they acting in ways that threaten their constituent\u2019s all children \u2013 and not coincidentally, all human life?<\/p>\n

Money \u2013 specifically $68 million in fossil fuel money.<\/p>\n

That works out to just $110.29 for the each of the 7.5 billion humans on earth today. Allowing nothing for hummingbirds, tigers or elephants, it\u2019s a petty amount to put on the value of human life.<\/p>\n

Nicolette Toussaint lives in Carbondale. Her column appears monthly.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am fervently pro-life. There\u2019s something miraculous about the moment a heart begins to beat, whether it\u2019s a hummingbird\u2019s fluttering at 1,260 beats a minute or a human infant\u2019s, pulsing at about 160 beats a minute. Or an elephant\u2019s heart, slowly pacing out a 60-year life at 30 beats a minute. There\u2019s something mysterious about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 17:46:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}