I always shake my head when I hear the phrase “pro-life.” Like, who isn’t “pro-life?” Life is good.

What would the opposite of pro-life be? Anti-life? Pro-death? I’m certainly not either of those. I am generally a supporter of life, so I’d consider myself pro-life, as any happy and healthy individual would be the strict etymological definition of the word.

The political definition of pro-life is much less universal, however. The irony with the pro-life movement is that the only parts of life that are actively advocated for are the time before one is born and the time when one is in so much terminal pain that they’d prefer to be dead. If you’re one of the 318 million people in the United States who don’t fall under these two categories, I’m sorry to tell you that the pro-life movement isn’t for you.

When California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law ABX2 15, the “End of Life Action Act”, last week, California became just the fifth state in the nation to legalize assisted suicide, joining Washington, Oregon, Vermont and Montana.

Unsurprisingly, protesters came out in droves at the news, particularly in the religious community, because apparently the Church has more of a right to determine the sanctity of a particular life than the person that actually possesses life.

This comes in a year where the pro-life community has had an uptick in its protests, particularly after the Planned Parenthood fetal-tissue “scandal” over the summer, as House Republicans have voted to defund the women’s health organization, which provides over 300,000 abortions each year.

I get it. I staunchly disagree, but I get it. Biologically a life technically begins when the zygote is formed, and this counts as life according to the Bible, as does a vegetative state of a terminally-ill elderly person, and you want to protect any semblance of life at all costs to please your God. I get it.

Here’s what I don’t get: If you care about the sanctity of life so goddamn much, why not apply the same logic to other issues? Oh, life is good, death is bad? Then why does the Republican Party, whose official platform has a section entitled “The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life,” not oppose guns, machines whose fundamental purpose is to end life?

When Jeb Bush, the Republican nomination front-runner among establishment candidates was asked about the massacre at Umpqua Community College, he said, “Look, stuff happens. There’s always a crisis.” A week prior, at the second Republican debate, the former governor of Florida said, “Life is a gift from God, and from beginning to end we need to respect it and err on the side of life.”

“Err on the side of life?” Practice as you preach, man. Put in background checks to take guns from murderers and ban assault weapons whose sole purpose is for mass-killing. If you’re up in arms after a three-month-old brainless piece of tissue is killed but have a “ho hum, we can’t do anything to stop it” approach after nine young adults pursuing an education are mercilessly murdered, then you, my friend, are a hypocrite to the highest degree.

Bush’s party is also the one that rushes their young soldiers into ill-advised wars, forces a workforce into malnutrition by failing to provide a decent minimum wage and opposes affordable health care for their citizens. Pro-life? To each their own, I suppose.

The Republican party has made it known that they are pro-life both when a person is pre-birth and when they’re in a vegetative state at age 104.

I’m the opposite. I’m pro-life for everyone between the age of zero and 103. Radical idea, I know.

FEATURED PHOTO CREDIT: CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD