Brad Johnson: Guns, poverty, health care, immigration are pro-life issues

Conservative politicians and religious leaders reacted with joy recently when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision.

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said she would call the legislature into a special session to make abortion almost impossible to obtain in our state. That special session probably will not occur, however, because of the mischief that far right House Republicans such as former House Speakers Spencer Gosch and Steve Haugaard might stir up.

Those two, and several others who dislike Noem, will not return to next year’s legislature.

Most everyone clamoring to overturn Roe v. Wade champion themselves as pro-life. But are they really? Or are they more akin to wolves in sheep’s clothing?

Staunchly conservative Catholics and others reacted with shock when the Vatican called for real “pro-life” work.

That includes welcoming immigrants; providing health care, food and shelter for the poor; and dealing with gun violence.

In a June 25 editorial, Andrea Tornielli, the editorial director at the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, said the ruling “could provide an opportunity to reflect on life, the protection of the defenseless and the discarded, women’s rights, and the protection of motherhood.”

He noted that Pope Francis, in his 2013 Evangelii guadium, said the pro-life movement also “involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves, never a means of resolving other problems.”

Tornielli wrote, “A serious and shared reflection on life and the protection of motherhood would require us to move away from the logic of opposing extremisms and the political polarization that often – unfortunately – accompanies discussion on this issue, preventing true dialogue.”

Being a pro-life politician, it seems, means that our representatives should recoil in horror when hearing of the 50 immigrants who died when the semi-trailer they were being smuggled in was abandoned in the heat in San Antonio.

Ensuring it never happens again is being pro-life.

But our “pro-life” governor, U.S. Sens. John Thune and Mike Rounds and Congressman Dusty Johnson are “pro-politician,” making sure they preserve their careers instead of solving life-and-death immigration problems.

As Tornielli noted in his editorial, “according to one statistic in the United States, about 75 percent of women who have abortions live in poverty or have low wages. And only 16 percent of employees in private industry have access to paid parental leave, according to a study published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry on 9 March 2020. Almost one in four new mothers who are not entitled to paid leave are forced to return to work within 10 days of giving birth.”

Being stalwart pro-life champions, one might think Noem, Thune, Rounds and Johnson would solve those issues.

In South Dakota, expanding Medicaid would provide 45,000 residents decent health coverage. South Dakota has the highest percentage of uninsured adults of any state that has not yet expanded Medicaid.

State voters will decide whether to expand Medicaid in November because our pro-life legislature has refused to do so. In fact, it tried to kill Medicaid expansion by offering a constitutional amendment giving the minority veto power over such issues.

Voters handily rejected that proposal nearly 2-1.

Tornielli also said, “Being for life, always, also means defending it against the threat of firearms, which unfortunately have become a leading cause of death of children and adolescents in the U.S.”

Yet again, our pro-life political leaders voted against the most innocuous of gun legislation last week.

“The legislation enhances background checks for prospective gun buyers under 21 years old, closes the so-called 'boyfriend loophole,' clarifies the definition of a Federally Licensed Firearms Dealer and creates criminal penalties for straw purchases and gun trafficking,” a CBS news report said. “It also provides $750 million in grants to incentivize states to implement crisis intervention programs and provides roughly billions of dollars in federal funding to bolster mental health services for children and families and harden schools.”

Those all seem like “pro-life” actions.

Yes, a lot of people dress up to be pro-life, but few are the real deal.

Brad Johnson is a Watertown businessman and journalist who is active in state and local affairs.

This article originally appeared on Watertown Public Opinion: Pro-life issues include guns, poverty, health care, immigration