Face masks protect others: the interesting prolife twist

“Prolife” has always been about protecting the most vulnerable, not just ourselves; that’s what face masks signal in the COVID-19 environment

“My body, my choice!”

For decades, members of the pro-life community endured the repeated brandishing of this familiar phrase as the motto of the pro-choice movement.

In response, frustrated pro-life advocates would beat their head against an invisible wall and bite their lower lip in agitation, as they murmured to anyone who would listen, “They just don’t get it. This isn’t about them…”

Now the tables are turned, and it’s painful all around.

As certain pro-life advocates with our president at the helm have taken to invoking the “my body, my choice” mantra like mynah birds who have learned to cuss, something is woefully off.

They may, indeed, be making a hard point that leaves many feeling vindicated, but using this loaded one-liner in support of “face mask freedom” amounts to pro-life hypocrisy.

I’ve traveled around the world for decades on behalf of family members, siblings and friends who have lost their lives, their children, their marriages or their will to live on the cold and unforgiving tables of abortion clinics around the country. I’ve seen the aftermath. I’ve struggled to educate and to help many heal, including myself as a bystander.

I have an opinion. It’s personally informed. It’s scientifically sound. And it’s politically confused.

These days, the pro-life community is going strong but, it seems, at odds with itself and with its usual good manners. Are pro-lifers picking up some unsavory habits from bad political parenting…? Is the pro-life movement so frustrated that it will accept any sin, any insult and any lie, so long as Planned Parenthood funding is cut?

Is pro-life suddenly blind to contradiction after so many years of selflessly enduring it…? Or am I…?

With a self-professed pro-life president who so regularly manages to humiliate and frustrate my polite, other-oriented backbone (except for those significant funding cuts to abortion provision), I am confused. I am broken by the politics, the hypocrisy of it all.

Without conservative Christian support, the Trump 2020 campaign is frighteningly weak. So he does what any good businessman president would: buy the favor. Throw money at it. Raise the advertising budget. Feign religion, use faith, hold up a Bible. That’ll get ’em.

The face mask debacle is a particularly concerning political issue because it is not political at all.

Good, faithful Americans somehow, somewhere started believing that a facemask-free countenance was, to quote the Commander-in-chief, “not for me.”

Initially, when our nation’s Head Influencer wasn’t wearing a face mask, I wasn’t at all surprised: an outrageous but somehow expected, egotistical pro-choice choice from a pro-life president who so often manages to embarrass, confuse and divide good and bad people without prejudice.

When he finally did don his stately POTUS face mask several months after the pandemic had begun, it was beyond late. Flanked by bad-ass military assets (as if to imply that “real men and cool dudes wear masks”), it seemed to confirm the president’s unspoken insecurities about himself, or his total disconnect with the gravity of the situation or the reality of human suffering.

Over the following days and weeks, instead of demonstrating pride, assurance, and consistent reinforcement of the simple, life-saving behavior, he seemed embarrassed and weakened in his own mind, and has rarely been seen in public with a mask on since.

Arguably, tens of thousands of lives — as important as every preborn life — may have been saved with the simple, early gesture of putting his foot down and setting the example, instead of downplaying it, bragging on the economy and suggesting that the virus would “disappear.”

The president needs a pep talk on the purpose of a mask. The “my mask protects you, your mask protects me” line doesn’t seem to be working with him, but rather, he seems to prefer the mantra of “my body, my choice” coined by his Democrat friends… I mean enemies (but they’re supposed to be working together).

Maybe if someone told him it’s cool, it’s responsible, it’s in style, and it even makes his hair look better, he’d get on board. Somehow, the idea of protecting those around himself and practicing ways to help save the lives of others — doesn’t seem to be enough. At less than an ounce, the face mask seems to be a huge dent in his pro-life armor, and may even be a type of litmus test for any person (or candidate) claiming to favor the most vulnerable.

But he forgot (or never really knew) the essentials:

Pro-life has never been about me. People don’t stand outside of abortion clinics for themselves or go to 12-hour rallies on frigid winter days for themselves. The human will? It’s not that strong, at least not in 2020.

But when it comes to sacrificing or risking our lives for others — going to racial protests on sweltering summer days in the middle of pandemics, and willfully putting social distancing aside for some common, greater good — when the well-being of others is on the line, somehow we dig deeper; we find the strength.

We don’t wear face masks primarily for ourselves, just as we don’t attend racial protests primarily for ourselves, and we don’t have babies primarily for ourselves (at least, we shouldn’t…).

Wearing a face mask is a natural extension of the other-centered creed that many pro-life advocates live by daily when the cameras are off and all the trophies have been given out. Pro-life and face masks go hand-in-hand because neither one is about me.

Every choice we make affects others, and endangering or terminating the lives of harmless people is never okay. At least not once we know better, or someone has taken the time to educate us, to demonstrate for us and to help us understand how we can avoid doing harm.

Foregoing a mask using the, “My body, my choice” line in a sarcastic echo — is wrong. It’s clever (and I’m sooo tempted to like it), but it’s still — very, very wrong.

In times of COVID-19, public expressions of love, support or social concern should involve respect for others including social distancing and the wearing of a mask. Even at racial protests. Even on the campaign trail. Even in front of abortion clinics. Otherwise, these noble gestures of unity are risky. Haughty. Inauthentic. Deadly.

Any candidate or leader worthy of support should be first to model and legislate behaviors that avoid putting others at risk or in harm’s way (right down to “the most vulnerable”). They should lead the way to the American dream, and put others in line first before themselves or their friends.

Part of the unwritten pro-life creed? If you save just one life, you save the whole world.

I can think of one simple way we can all be pro-life today: wear a face mask. Please.