Justice is Pro-Life

I have always felt that how you treat living people is part of being Pro-Life.  That you can't be pro-life and no pay someone a living wage or not treat them justly.  I think the events of this last year in places like Ferguson have proved that.  You wonder why a young man heading to college would react the way he did to being pulled questioned by a policeman.  Now that we know that people have had their lives ruined by simple things like traffic violations I think I understand more.

The injustice of a system that charges fines to make money for a town and where the fines are not on a sliding scale based on income is not pro-life.  When lives are ruined, jobs lost, homes lost, jail time given, for traffic fines and jay walking the people of a town come to fear the police.  People who fear the police are going to make bad decisions I. A time of stress that could cost their lives or the lives of the policeman.  Both lives count.  On a different level, simply not killing someone is not rejecting their life.  Not allowing abortion or euthanasia is not what it takes to live a pro-life life.

Respecting life means just that.  Respect life from conception to grave and we won't have to worry so much about the other things.  Making sure that people can provide for themselves and helping them when they can't is Prolife.  Being fair and just to everyone, no matter their skin color, and especially to the poor, is Prolife.

I recently had a tail light go out and got a warning for it.  I heard on the radio the story of a woman in Ferguson who had the same problem.  Her life was torn apart by having a tail light out.  I got a warning for the tail light, expired inspection and not having my insurance cards available.  She got a ticket for her tail light being out in each small town she drove through on her way to work.  She is a working Mom and can't afford the multiple tickets for each city and can't take off work to beg for mercy.  The tickets cost her a job trying to get mercy that she didn't receive and so she had a warrant out for her arrest.  For a tail light and a lack of mercy.

Injustice causes revolutions as we have seen recently in Middle East.  Many of the Western Young people who have their homes to fight have from areas do great unemployment and injustice.  Those young people most likely go to their deaths and go to cause death for others, they bear full responsibility for their actions, most of their neighbors don't take this path.  But do the people who refuse to hire them because of their last name or where they live bear some responsibility.  Maybe not legally, but about in God's eyes?

Think of the number of lives lost to slavery in our own country.  The lives lost in capturing human beings, those lost in the middle passage, those lost to cruelty here.  Add to that the cost in lives to undo that injustice, those lost in the Civil War and the lives lost due to the racism engendered by that horror even today.  My guess is the answer is in the millions and only known in total by God.

Our Lord God has infinite mercy on us.  None of lives a life that would allow our salvation based on oor own merits, we all need his mercy to save our lives.  We should show that same mercy to others.  The justice of God would have us all condemned to Hell if He didn't love us and have mercy on us.  He demands that we treat each other with the same love and mercy.