Jocelyn Hamlaris retired from a 40-year career in advertising and brand management. She later became certified and worked as a counselor treating substance use disorders.She is a community member on the Columbus Dispatch EditorialBoard.
In the quest to maintain control over women’s bodies, a certain faction of our society crafted messaging that they believed would resonate with any reasonable person.If you ask someone on the street what the Right to Life movement is about, they will tell you that it is to prevent women from having abortions so that an embryo may grow full-term.It is clear, however, that what happens after that child is born is of less concern as evidenced by reductions in Medicaid distributions, food stamp allocations, and the current state of the public school system.
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So what does having the right to life mean?Simply put, those words should mean that all people have a basic right to live.However, that is clearly not the common translation in today’s society.
Basically, every individual should have:
- The right to not be killed in school, in church, or at the mall;
- The right not to starve to death because there are no grocery stores that you can reach by foot because there is no bus and you have no car;
- The right to not die in a makeshift boat because you are not offered asylum to flee murderous regimes and enter a safer country (which is now debatable);
- The right to not die after a traffic stop;
- The right to not die while jogging;
- The right not to die of the coronavirus which has spread from maskless, unvaccinated people;
- The right not to be caught in crossfire while sitting in your living room
And those are only a few examples.
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People wildly disagree on who should have certain basic rights. Watching the news, we see legions of people screaming about their right to have dominion over their bodies and not wear masks or take vaccines to contain a virus that has killed millions of people around the globe.Conversely, don’t citizens have a right to not be killed by a virus that has proven lethal to people of all ages, ethnicities, healthy, unhealthy?It appears some people think their right to go maskless overrides others trying not to die of COVID.
If we follow the right to life (anti-abortion) rhetoric, adherents will likely says it is about giving the fetus a chance to be born into welcoming, nurturing arms.However, the facts don’t bear that out. Many children are born into circ*mstances where food, shelter and healthcare go lacking.The zeal expressed to save a fetus wanes once the child is born into circ*mstances that don’t support life.
There was a time when the classroom was one of the safest places for a child.Today, children are practically set up to be targets for the next random shooter. The (erroneous) thinking is that we can stop the mass shootings by warehousing people with mental health struggles in hospitals or loading them up with drugs, and magically, our children will be safe again. I would like to offer an alternative.Maybe children will be safer if they are not hunted down with a gun designed to shoot up to 60 rounds a minute.
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If we look at all mass shootings where children have been killed and injured, it is reasonable to think we could save many more lives by banning assault weapons than closing abortion clinics. So exactly how dedicated to saving lives is the Right to Life movement?
It is time to reclaim the phrase "right to life."For those of us who really want to save lives, especially those lives of our young children, let’s ensure that all living beings have a right to life. Each of us can take immediate steps to save our rapidly decaying society:
- Get involved in the political process.Vote out those people that don’t care about saving our children and elect those that want to see our society flourish.
- Speak up in every room you enter, among your friends, or with people you just met, and advocate for children and innocent people that die at the hands of illegal guns. Most importantly, help us ban guns that are clearly designed to kill people.
- Donate what you can to candidates and causes that exist to maintain a society where children have an excellent chance of graduating high school and live to contribute to our general welfare.
- Remember that we are a democracy, which is government by the whole population through elected representatives. If your local, state or national leadership does not reflect your values, work as hard as you can to vote them out.
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Every American citizen has a right to life.Take time to read the Constitution of the United States to see what it actually says, and what it doesn’t say.Your children, your neighbors, your teachers have a right to not be gunned down in our schools, shops or churches. Get rid of illegalguns and assault weapons.
We can alter the current course of our country by making change and embracing optimism.We can once again enjoy our coveted status as the greatest country on earth.
Jocelyn Hamlaris retired from a 40-year career in advertising and brand management. She later became certified and worked as a counselor treating substance use disorders.She is a community member on the Columbus Dispatch EditorialBoard.
