Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz

Conservatives love embryos. They tell us all the time.

They speak effusively about them in conversation, publicly revere them at rallies, shed crocodile tears over them in Op-Eds, accost strangers entering clinics over them, viciously troll people on social media because of them, and sermonize on street corners about them.

They even claim to have voted for a reprehensible monster who they’d never otherwise tolerate to lead them, solely on their behalf.

Republican people of faith regularly fall all over themselves, carry on wildly, and tear their garments in showy grief over embryos; unleashing all manner of histrionics at those they deem a danger (those who believe in a woman’s right to have autonomy over her own body.)

And they do all of this (they claim), because they believe that embryos are human beings and they want those beloved in-utero human beings to be cherished, defended, and protected at all costs, which all sounds quite admirable were that the whole story—though it isn’t.

The problem with their breathless, tearful zealotry, is that once these embryos are no longer embryos—these supposed life-lovers often don’t treat them like they’re at all human. Prior to departing the birth canal, they’re sacred. After that, they’re screwed.

Nine or thirteen or thirty-two or sixty-five years later when these former embryos show up in their communities, in their emergency rooms, and along their borders, in need of food or refuge or healthcare or compassion—they’re no longer something sacred or beautiful. Unless these lives conform to the narrowest and most stringent of criteria (usually being white and Republican), they’re more often treated as threats to be neutralized and adversaries to be destroyed.

Embryos that grow into LGBTQ teenagers aren’t worthy of their protection anymore. They receive their contempt, bear the brunt of their jokes, and absorb the full damnation of their brimstone sermons. They can’t get married, use a public bathroom, or get benefits for their partners without being assailed at every turn by these “lovers of life.”

Embryos that become terrified migrants and refugees fleeing crime and poverty and pressed up against the most urgent desperation don’t merit the passionate defense once within their borders they might have received while inside the womb. Instead, they sustain their scorn and suspicion and every bit of their malicious, wall-building bitterness.

Embryos that become sick middle-aged adults fighting metastasizing tumors, facing astronomical chemotherapy bills, and desiring healthcare that will not drive them to bankruptcy—don’t elicit a shred of the empathy they’d have garnered when they were still microscopic.

Embryos that one day need Government assistance to keep the lights on or food on the table for their children because they have endured unthinkable adversity along their journey—will not be met with tearful embraces by these so-called life-lovers. They’re derided as lazy and irresponsible; told to pull themselves up by their boot straps, while never having the benefit of boots.

Embryos that one day worship in Muslim communities around these white Christians, aren’t afforded any passionate defense and aren’t celebrated with effusive social media soliloquies. They’re branded as terrorist sympathizers, their religious freedoms ignored and their very existence resented with checkout line coldness, airport side-eye stares, and travel ban exclusion.

And perhaps most ironically of all, embryos that grow into women who desire the final say regarding their very bodies—will find their lives and wills are now of little concern. They will be legislatively subjugated by those who’d have once declared them precious.

In fact, as the Right deports thousands, eliminates cancer research funding, seeks to take healthcare and retirement benefits from the elderly, dismantles programs designed to ensure minority communities have opportunity and representation, and further depletes our natural resources—you suddenly realize how little “life” they’re actually for.

These days are revelatory because it exposes Conservative Christian’s willful delusion. By putting all their eggs (so to speak) into a fervent defense of embryos, they can feel the intoxicating easy high of self-righteousness and moral virtue—without having to actually love people.

That’s because embryos can be idealized into something pleasant and palatable; devoid of any of the messy characteristics they find undesirable in actual human beings. They get to feel like noble advocates for Life, and still hold onto their prejudices and hang-ups and hatreds. They can dispense all kinds of cruelty and expose human beings to staggering forms of bigotry—and still say they’re defending the living.

It’s also why they can claim to be single-issue voters because they are single-issue protectors of life. These people have no interest in a consistent pro-life ethic regarding healthcare or poverty the environment or gun violence or the death penalty because they won’t let themselves sit with the hypocrisy of their current conduct toward vulnerable communities that this necessitates.

To live with any consistency would require an empathy that is simply too high a price for them to pay, it would demand an equity that encroaches on their comfort, and it would mean facing the reality of their privilege. It would be to confront their phobia, their nationalism, and their whitewashed religion.

I wish white Christian Conservatives had the same passion for migrant children, school shooting victims, sick toddlers, young black men, Muslim families, LGBTQ teens, the environment, and women’s autonomy over their bodies that they claim to have for embryos.

Then they’d actually be pro-life, and then we’d all be able to go about the work together of caring for humanity wherever there is need to do so.

Yes, white Conservatives love embryos.

Disparate sentient human beings who bear little resemblance to themselves—not so much.