ABORTION AS A 'CHEAP GRACE' FLASHPOINT

 I am pro-life. I am also pro-choice.
I am in favor of women in crisis pregnancies being enabled to carry their babies to term and then helped to get back securely on their feet, whether they keep the child or give it to be adopted. I 'm pretty sure such help consistently available will encourage progressively more women to choose life. That is where I think a genuinely 'pro-life' movement's main focus ought to be. Not to mention supporting measures that actually do render life better and brighter for all or at least most of us. But in no case do I support anyone but the women choosing their courses of action.
I also hold already-breathing lives to be at least as important and as sacred as those not yet breathing. This includes those with darker skins than me, LBGTQs, and condemned criminals.
I also know Biblical tradition holds that life begins with breath, which in Hebrew is the same word as 'spirit'. I am also willing to pay any additional taxes that might be levied to pay for such help when offered by federal and/or state governments.
I think a question that should be asked is, does a woman pregnant as a result of rape compound the violence done her by aborting her child? I don't claim to have or know the answer. I only think that the question deserves asking and civil, and cogent, discussion.
I'm married to someone I call a genuine 'pro-lifer'. She takes the late Cardinal Bernardin's 'seamless garment' articulation about the sacredness of life very seriously indeed. I'm not sure I do, but I respect such a stance. I cannot say the same about most others who call themselves 'pro-life'. I call such hypocrites pro-birth Pilates. The minute the child breathes, they take water and wash their hands, although not usually before a multitude. Then they're gone.
I imagine such bipeds, when called on their hypocrisy and being told that, if they were really 'pro-life', they would support such things, you'll get replies along these lines:
"WHAT?! Do you mean now I have to pay more taxes from my hard-earned money so that this no-good slut and her bastard brat can get 'on their feet'?! This slut deserves all the hardship she has coming and she and her slut sisters should cry us Good People a river before they get another red cent from us!The only thing I'll pay for is JAIL for her, her sisters and all their brats and then I'll be happy to pay for a public gallows where their brats can be executed when they're caught in crime--any crime! I wanna see these b*****s bawl as their brats swing and I want them producing more brats so we can all see what SLUTS they are!!" You see, they're usually anti-contraception as well. Basically, they don't want anyone--and certainly no one with less money than they--to have any pleasure at all.
Can you imagine what pumps their blood? If they have hearts, they have to be as small and hard as withered walnuts. And as darkness cannot comprehend light, they think that those who genuinely seek to help are lying about their motives, because that's what they do. They really cannot comprehend any motive which doesn't involve enabling oneself to feel nastily superior to those they seek to help. Thus they project that motive onto many, most of whom it may have never occurred to feel 'superior' or, best of all, to thrust that idea from them whenever they find it in their own hearts.
Today's pro-birth Pilates are addicts to something the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called 'cheap grace'. That is, they look for ways to look virtuous and think themselves Good People which don't really cost them anything. And pro-birtherism is a current flashpoint for 'cheap grace'.
I'll stand with Fr. James Martin when he says that he considers all life equally precious and add that, if anyone is genuinely 'pro-life' it is incumbent on them to be for real gun control, against capital punishment and for making a country and a world where abortion becomes redundant. For any and all measures necessary to that end. About what they are I expect vigorous but civil debate as we reason together right down to the roots of the issues.
But no one should be allowed to call themselves 'pro-life' unless they also support the measures above. Absent such support, 'pro-life' means only 'pro-birth Pilate' which means, a peculiarly nasty variety of hypocrite.