SANCTIMONIOUSLY PRO-LIFE AIN'T THE REAL ISSUE

Read Christine Flowers' sanctimonious editorial in this morning's KC Star. Here's her last line: "But the mandate of life is non-negotiable and I'm heartened to see that America is on the right track."

Yup, she's right: the rest of us are pro-death, and she's righteously pro-life. Bullshit. (Oops, i mean NONSENSE.) I remember well the reality of pre-Roe vs Wade. Rich women, the daughters of wealthy families, never went without abortions if they wanted one. They got on an airplane and flew somewhere for the operation. Rich people get what they want. Roe V. Wade simply gave the poor and lower middle class the access that the rich always enjoyed.

So if The Supremes overturn Roe V. Wade, here are some predictable results: 1. An abortion industry in states that will continue to allow abortions and have the necessary facilities and medical personnel. 2. In States like Missouri and Alabama that passed trigger laws this week: women who are raped or victims of incest and can't take the Plan B pill will have their trauma and anguish multiplied, and some of them will become mentally ill with diagnoses like PTSD, because they will never be able to escape the assault foisted upon them by the violence done to their bodies. 3. Children with medical conditions that will end their lives within a few minutes or a few years of birth, and their families and caretakers, will be condemned to live with their constant physical and/or psychological pain, and unaffordable expense in a country that refuses the poor adequate medical care, while the upper middle class and wealthy will travel to receive the medical care that enhances their lives and protects their future pocketbooks.

So, Ms. Flowers, congratulations on your sunny "pro-life" stance. If and when your hypocrisy succeeds you will be condemning thousands of women and babies, and tens of thousands of their family members, to further suffer from the lack of health care that you will receive at the drop of a checkbook. Your inhumanity is exhausting, and your pietism breathtaking. Your "victory" will cause untolled suffering in the name of humanitarian concern, and you will toast your victory far from the misery you will cause, comfortable in your world of privileged preaching to the poor about their inhumanity toward the unborn.

Perhaps you should try this instead: live on minimum wage for a year, paying rent in a violent neighborhood with shootings nightly and the likelihood that your male child will die before 25 years old and in a food dessert where healthcare is virtually unattainable, with a high school education and the seduction of drugs surrounding you. I'd like to hear your sermon when you suffer the outrageous misfortune of being a poor woman in America with so few choices and a pietistic sanctimonious preacher telling you how easy it is to be you.

I don't know Christine Flowers. But I suspect there's a special place in hell for people who presumptuously show no mercy to those who suffer, and pretend to know better how to live their lives.