EXCLUSIVE GUEST COLUMN: Pro-Life Governor Greg Abbott explains Texas' high rate of "child churn"
G.O.T.H.S. welcomes its second-ever guest columnist
Grift of the Holy Spirit is proud to exclusively share this guest column by Texas Governor and Catholic Greg Abbott.
On September 1st, the Lone Star State became the most proudly pro-life state in the nation with Texas’ SB8 taking effect, banning abortion procedures after six weeks of pregnancy, and allowing for an unprecedented level of citizen involvement in the democratic process by offering $10,000 bounties to private citizens who sue abortion providers or anyone “aiding and abetting” abortion. I'm proud, as a Catholic, to have signed a bill that strikes such a powerful blow for the rights of the unborn.
Naysayers have called me a hypocrite - this is a clear example of anti-Catholic bigotry, by the way, and also possibly ableist - for taking such an aggressive stance against the evil of abortion while taking equally aggressive stances against the evils of masking in schools or vaccine mandates in the state. Some in the biased media have suggested that my commitment to pro-life causes rings hollow as school districts shutter in my state due to multiple teachers dropping dead from COVID, and as Texas currently leads the nation in child deaths from COVID as of September 3rd, at 59 deaths total. Critics have suggested that results like these point to a “pro-life” stance that is not actually sincere and more concerned with cynically scoring political points than any sort of concern with protecting life. These critics are wrong. These measures are not contradictory, they are not hypocritical, and they actually compliment each other in my overall holistic pro-life goal: to increase Texas’ rate of “child churn”.
What is “child churn”, and why is it pro-life? Well, any idiot can force women to carry pregnancies to term with no exceptions for rape or incest or the health of the mother, and any idiot can include a bizarre provision trusting enforcement to private citizens instead of the state to encourage an insane vigilante apparatus to stand on the necks of pregnant people across the state. It takes a truly visionary pro-life Catholic man, like myself, to realize that many of the children who will be born as a result of this bill may be weak, or poor, or otherwise undesirable, and need to be killed off as quickly as possible.
It is incumbent upon me as governor, therefore, to not only force as many births within my state as possible, but to also ensure that those born are brought into a world so harsh, brutal, and deadly, that only the strongest specimens can survive, go on to reproduce, and ensure that the bloodlines of Texas are as strong as possible. With enough time, a large enough pool of births, and a high enough mortality rate, we can truly create a state where only the strongest can survive and prosper. The numbers don't lie: with an infinite number of births into a perpetual plague state, we can eventually find a baby with a natural immunity to COVID. From there, with more forced births, we can ensure that all of Texas becomes stronger. And what could be more pro-life than building a state on the strongest, most resilient lives imaginable?
Put another way: the most prestigious universities in the world have a high number of applicants, but also reject a high number of those applicants. They are selective, and that selectivity is what makes them great. In Texas, we are rapidly expanding our applicant pool, but also rapidly increasing our rejection rate, in order to make ourselves more selective. And instead of “getting into college”, it's selective for “being alive in Texas”. We wouldn't call a university great if they had a high number of applicants but accepted them all, just as we can't call a state pro-life if they force everyone to give birth but then try to keep those children alive, or even refrain from actively trying to kill them. Similarly, other states may call themselves pro-life for passing restrictive anti-abortion measures, but without ensuring a high rate of child churn through ignoring public health or encouraging open carry or privatizing the power grid so we have mass blackouts in an era of increasingly severe climate diasters, these states will simply produce disgusting weak lives, lives that are a drain on our collective resources, and that's not very “pro-life” of them at all.
To the 59 grieving families who have recently lost children to COVID, and to the hopefully thousands more to follow, I say: thank you for your contributions to our high rate of child churn and the future success of America's most selective pro-life state. And thank you for sharing my vision: being pro-life means recognizing that most of those lives are worthless, unprofitable, weak, and deserving of extermination. The only way to be truly pro-life is to openly foster an environment in which superior lives can be allowed to flourish and weaker lives can perish quickly. I am truly proud that Texas has now become the most selective pro-life state in the nation, and hope that we can serve as a model for the rest of the country.
I would like to give my sincere thanks to G.O.T.H.S. for the opportunity to write this guest column, and to you all for reading it. God bless America and God save Texas.
Grift of the Holy Spirit is a series by Tony Ginocchio detailing stories of the weirdest, dumbest, and saddest members of the Catholic church. You can subscribe via Substack to get notified of new installments.