LETTERS: 'PRO-LIFE' MEANS MUCH MORE THAN 'ANTI-ABORTION'

To the editor:

As Election Day draws near, we are again deluged with messages designed to influence our voting behavior. One particularly disturbing strategy is the labeling of individual politicians as being "pro-life" if they claim to oppose abortions.

If an individual indeed values and promotes life, he or she would be equally concerned with preventing the variety of toxic practices that prevail in our society, including abortion, alcohol abuse and the effects of drunken driving, secondhand tobacco, accidental deaths and suicides by firearms and chemical poisoning from industrial pollution.

However, as we examine the records and behaviors of many of these so-called pro-life politicians, we find that they are seldom consistent with supporting pro-life values. Anyone who opposes the lowering of the legal blood-alcohol content to 0.08 percent, who opposes using tobacco settlement funds for tobacco prevention, who opposes efforts to improve the safety of lethal firearms or who claims that industries should be left to eliminate their own polluting practices is not pro-life. These individuals are pro-politics and believe they can fool enough people to get them elected if they trumpet a stand against abortion. At the same time, they gladly accept huge political donations from those industries that profit at the expense of innocent human life.

It is our responsibility as citizens to either vote these deceitful hypocrites out, or at least hold them accountable for the pro-life values that the majority of Missourians support.

JIM MAGINEL

Cape Girardeau