Cybrpnk's Rantings

Is anyone else out there having a hard time figuring out how one can possibly reconcile a claim to being 'pro-life' with being opposed to strict environmental regulation of industry? I just don't get it. The so-called pro-life forces in Washington are proclaiming a great victory in pushing through a law making it a separate crime if a fetus is destroyed during commission of a violent federal crime. Note that key modifying word 'violent.' Apparently destroying fetuses which women want to bring to term during commission of non-violent federal crimes is okay. Pity. I was looking forward to the criminal actions against all of those chemical plants that have higher than normal miscarriage rates downstream. Not to mention the issues of air pollution.

There seem to be pretty seriously mixed messages here. It seems to me that if the conservatives were really pro-life, that would outweigh issues like corporate profits, wouldn't it? Sure, it's a classic liberal claim that the right cares more for money than human lives, but isn't this a stark vindication of that claim? It's one thing to take the traditional conservative position about the natural juxtaposition of high-polluting industries with low-income areas simply being a result of the land in such areas being cheap. It's another to defend the existence of toxic emission in populated areas at all.

It takes little more than a rudimentary analysis to reach the clear conclusion that industrial emissions kill. And frequently when they don't kill healthy adults they are fatal to children (think leukemia as just one example). And the stuff that just makes children sick can kill fetuses. The pro-lifers like to go on about the holocaust that is abortion. They are, however, apparently unconcerned about the holocaust that is industry. And it need not be that way. Much of the toxic emission linked to industry can be controlled, and a lot of it is legally restricted. Which means that some amount of the poisoning that goes on is illegal. Often violations of federal law. Yet those crimes are not affected by the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

So what really is the message here? Apparently life is sacred when it's being taken by vicious criminals or ordinary women exercising control over their own bodies. When it's taken by corporate negligence or malfeasance, however, it's apparently not a big deal. Especially when it's mostly poor people being sickened or killed anyway. Or has our society so lost it's moral compass that we think that dumping dioxin (the active ingredient in Agent Orange), Mercury (one of the most lethal elements), etc., is causing death by natural causes. I'm reminded of this scene from a Mad magazine from years ago. Two detectives are looking at the bullet ridden corpse of a gangster. One of them runs down the violence done to the body up to and including the fatal gunshots and then declares that death was by natural causes. When the other detective protests, the first one points out that in NY, dying this way IS natural causes.

And all this is indifference to how we deal with Americans. Imagine how much more horrifying is our indifference to death and suffering of immigrants and people in other countries, let alone in the animal kingdom.

I've long wondered why it is that companies need to go through extensive testing to bring a product to market if the purpose of the product is to help people. Yet there is no barrier to dumping all sorts of toxic garbage. Unless, that is, someone can prove in a court of law that it is harmful to do so. That's right, medicine is presumed to be deadly, and industrial waste is presumed to be benign.