Pro-life and anti-war

Can political candidates be "pro-life" but not anti-war?

It is a paradox to say the least. Republican candidates for political office must be both "pro-life" and support the United States' interventionist foreign policy if they hope to win elections. "Pro-lifers" most recently opposed the 2006 Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, which now permits embryonic stem-cell research in our state. Their philosophical argument was that the ends do not justify the means, or that lifesaving cures resulting from the destruction of human embryos is not morally acceptable. They say that human life, at any stage of development, is deserving of society's protection.

But is it consistent to be "pro-life" while encouraging the United States' seemingly endless intervention in the Middle East? Since 2001, 6,365 brave sons and daughters serving in the U.S. military have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, with 16 more casualties this past February. Deaths of Iraqi and Afghani civilians resulting from direct U.S. military action, considered by many to be a necessary evil, number well in the tens of thousands. International sanctions on Iraq in the early 1990s resulted in the death of more than 500,000 Iraqi children according to the UN. At what point do the ends not justify the means? Is it philosophically consistent to devote so much to protecting the right to life of unborn fetuses while disregarding the right to life of peaceful civilians in the Middle East and U.S. military members?

MATT WULFERS, Cape Girardeau