“The Sanctity of Life”: What’s Really Being Protected?

Written by: Andrae Smith, Jr. Diversity Equity And Inclusion Panel

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Two shootings. Ten days apart. Thirty-two lives were lost.

We’re not talking about potential lives—the ones that could be but yet are not. We’re talking about fully-realized, existing human beings “endowed by their Creator” with rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those are the lives that were stolen. Now, behind the tears of the thirty-two broken families, the trauma of the survivors, and society’s “thoughts and prayers” hangs the question like smoke in the aftermath, “Why weren’t they protected?”

In the last half-century, the US has led global strides to advance equality and human rights, specifically those of women and marginalized communities. Now, it seems this progress is in danger. The most pressing example is the potential overturn of Roe v. Wade, a Supreme Court ruling which established women’s right to choose whether to abort a pregnancy without State imposition.

The opposition (supporters of the Pro-Life movement) often cite the “sanctity of life” as their reason for attempts to ban abortion. However, if you look closely, it’s evident this attack has less to do with protecting lives than perpetuating the unjust subjugation of women while ignoring all the ways life is being harmed post-birth.

Because there’s so much at stake with this discussion, the first thing I want to do is articulate what exactly is the “sanctity of human life.” Scientific and medical professionals often use the expression in moral or political questions regarding biomedical ethics. Topics range from embryo research and genetic engineering to abortion and euthanasia. It’s rooted in religious and philosophical conceptions of human life’s inherent and absolute value. These days, though, the expression has become more of a call-to-arms by conservative Christians seeking to project their theology onto secular law.

I don’t think anyone would contest that life is nothing short of miraculous, given its rarity and fragility. Still, any moral belief/conviction regarding the value of human life must be extended to people of every age, race, gender, sex, orientation, phenotype, culture, ethnicity, religion, language, status, or ability/disability. This means that people who have been born and exist today cannot be excluded. This is the bases of all human rights activism—that any law or activity endangering human life compromises their intrinsic value.

If American “Pro-Lifers” truly believed in the sanctity of human life, they would do anything to protect it, right? So why does it consistently take the back seat to protecting gun rights? Despite repeated gun-related tragedies—Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, El Paso Walmart, to name a few—new regulation on guns is completely off the table for many of these same Americans. And why? It wouldn’t be the first time regulation was imposed due to high mortality rates. Most states passed seatbelts laws to reduce traffic fatalities in the 90s and 2000s. When more than 20,000 people died in motor accidents in 2021, the US Transportation Secretary called it a “crisis” and took corrective action.

According to a 2022 study by Pew Research Center, almost 46,000 American deaths were gun-related in 2020. Does that not count as a crisis? What can be said about the sanctity of their lives? How are they protected?

It’s also worth noting that 54% of these were suicides, according to the same study. Recently, mental health has been a hot topic as Millennials and Gen Z continue raising awareness about its impact on everyday life, especially during the pandemic. Unfortunately, too many people with mental health disabilities find adequate care unaffordable and inaccessible due to a national shortage of providers, high prices, and nearly nonexistent insurance coverage for mental health services.

Despite these barriers, strategies like Social-Emotional Learning—which teaches youth to manage emotions, behave ethically, develop positive relationships and avoid negative behaviors—are being banned from schools. If it prevents teen and adult suicide, is it not protecting the sanctity of life?

Now that we’re clear that Americans cherry-pick when it’s important to “protect life” and which ones are worth protecting, we can talk about how the assault on Roe v. Wade flies completely in the face of the “sanctity of life” argument. The World Health Organization has stated on their website:

“Inaccessibility of quality abortion care risks violating a range of human rights of women and girls, including the right to life; the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; the right to benefit from scientific progress and its realization; the right to decide freely and responsibly on the number, spacing and timing of children; and the right to be free from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.”

Denying adequate and appropriate health care by overturning the long-standing ruling reduces women’s family planning options and access to proper medical care. And the damage doesn’t stop at immediate or long-term medical risks. Women needing this procedure would be exposed to increased stigma, ridicule, and extensive emotional trauma, on top of the stress and conflict around having to get it in the first place. If that weren’t enough, this decision would leave them vulnerable to absurd laws. This is the case with recent Texas Legislation that criminalizes the mothers and deputizes citizens to file lawsuits as well as a new draft bill in Louisiana that casts this (sometimes necessary) procedure as a homicide, turning these mothers into felons and removing their voting rights.

These consequences, alone, are enough to classify this motion as harmful if not completely inhumane. While Pro-Lifers argue the ethics of “murdering babies,” they are willfully ignoring the danger to people who are undeniably, inarguably alive and imbued with moral personhood.

Touching on the “which lives are worth protecting” line from a previous paragraph, if this decision were finalized this summer, it would add another layer to the issue of systemic racism, disproportionately endangering women of color for a number of reasons. First off, many of the states with trigger laws and pre-existing abortion bans are in the South, which is home to the highest population of Black Americans. Many of these families live in low-income communities and risk crumbling under the addition of a new child or the expenses of traveling for the procedure and potential court fees (should they face prosecution).

Additionally, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black women in the US are three times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. There is also a higher infant mortality rate among Black babies. Both are largely due to racial and ethnic minorities receiving lower-quality health care than white people, which has been verified by a 2005 study conducted by the National Academy of Medicine. Clearly, the sanctity of human life is not considered in these cases.

If it’s not clear how detrimental this motion is from the harm it inflicts, we can also consider the harm it neglects.

Overturning of Roe v. Wade, if successful, would effectively remove legal rights women have over their bodies, but would not provide accountability for the men involved in these pregnancies. If anything, it would make women more selective about when they have sex and with whom. Before you say that’s a good thing, that does not prevent men from “taking” what they want. Hundreds of thousands of rapes and sexual assaults against women are reported every year. Who knows how many more go unreported? We do know that for the vast majority of rape and assault cases, less than 20% result in convictions and even fewer with serious consequences.

Finally, and most critically, forcing women to carry infants full-term does nothing to protect the children once they are born. It does nothing to address the 250,000 children placed into foster care every year. It does nothing to counter the abuse and neglect experienced by thousands of these kids. It does nothing to reduce teen suicide rates.

Clearly, the sacredness of the life each person has does not equate to the quality of the life each person deserves. In a country where teens can become homeless or delinquent and be looked at as the problem rather than the symptom, where women can be violated without justice and blamed for their victimization, where children and churchgoers can be shot to death in cold-blood and receive moments of silence in place of corrective or restorative action, how can we—how dare we claim to care about the “sanctity of human life?”

What are we really protecting?

Sources Stats on gun deaths https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting

Sanctity of Life definitions https://cbhd.org/content/sanctity-life https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-012-9369-0

Seatbelt Laws / Traffic Safety https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/calculator/factsheet/seatbelt.html https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/calculator/factsheet/seatbelt.html

Pew Research on Gun Deaths https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

WHO on Abortion https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion

CDC on Infant Mortality and Black health https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/NVSR-69-7-508.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/features/maternal-mortality/index.html

Racial Disparities in Medical Care https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/racial-disparities-in-health-care/

Rape Statistics https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system https://www.statista.com/statistics/251923/usa--reported-forcible-rape-cases-by-gender/#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20significantly,were%20raped%20or%20sexually%20assaulted.

Foster Care Stat https://www.acf.hhs.gov/media/press/2021/national-data-shows-number-children-foster-care-decreases-third-consecutive-year

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Andrae Smith, Jr. Diversity Equity And Inclusion Panel

Andrae Smith, Jr. is an African-American personal development writer and coach. In 2020, he wrote and published his Amazon bestselling book, Facing Racism: The Guide to Overcoming Unconscious Bias and Hidden Prejudice to Be a Part of the Change, to be a positive force in the Wake of George Floyd’s death. Since then, Andrae has been invited to speak and teach on racial equity with Organizations such as USA Volleyball. Andrae also coaches speakers and equity leaders to turn their messages into high-impact books.