How Can Those Who Oppose Abortion Remain Mute To Banning Refugees? Whose Life Matters?

Statue of Liberty  (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I.

I am an immigrant. I came to the United States at to be adopted as a child. Prior, I lived in an orphanage in Dublin. I am the mother to a child we adopted from Korea. Matters of immigration are personal. And so it might not be so surprising that I am confounded by the illogic of those Right-to-lifers who remain quiet on the issue of immigrant bans and yet are consistently loud with respect to the rights of the fetus. This is the same group who helped to put Donald Trump in power regardless of his stances on non-abortion issues.

This morning I am wondering how a group of cells can warrant such empathy from this group, while actual living children do not? Whose life matters to these people? How dare they call themselves right to life. Don't co-opt that title if you don't care for all life.

Me in Dublin, 1960

II.

This is me in Ireland before I came to the States.

Nothing nefarious there, I imagine you would agree. Just a baby. And yet, Trump and his voters want to ban children who are refugees from Muslim countries. It is impossible for me to understand how cells can warrant better protection than actual flesh and blood of a child, but, there you have it.

This is Who Trump and his Voters Want to Ban from Entrance...Syrian refugees

from Trump's Executive Action

Take a good look.

This is who Trump, his voters, and the GOP want to ban from the country that says, Give me your tired.  Trump calls the executive action, PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES. Does this child look like a foreign terrorist to you?  Is he any more complicit in the war acts of men that have torn his country apart than I was in 1960? Where are your voices in support of this child? Or does your care only stretch as far as the womb?








III.

My dad holding Devon and my mom. 

In 1917, against President Wilson's veto, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917. This shameful piece of legislation barred Asians from the United States and imposed a literacy test on all else. People, like my very son, would not have been welcomed here. It would not be until 1952 that this law would be revised and racial restrictions would be removed.

Now racial discrimination is back.

Now, we have Trump--foolish bigot that he is, a man who seems not to have studied history, intends to bar refugees based on religion.

His executive act bans people from Syria indefinitely.  It bans for 30 days all “immigrant and nonimmigrant” entry of individuals from these countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Suspends visa issuance to countries of “particular concern.”

Have we learned nothing? I have no respect for people who rail against abortion and yet remain mute on issues of actual life and death.

I intend to continue to protest.