Please don't take any of this personally. I think you're a pretty cool person. I just need to say something because this attitude is all but ubiquitous, and I am sick of it. HUGE red herring that is absolutely full of a failure to understand the simple little concept of context. It has NOTHING to do with the topic at hand.

I will just say that asking a group that advocates for the eradication of abortion to randomly spout off an anti-capital punishment or anti-Iraq war soliloquy in the middle of, say, a march is absolutely ridiculous. Asking a specifically pro-life group to clean up a city is like asking a group created specifically to support the legalization of gay marriage to hand out blankets and gloves to homeless people or saying that NARAL is a pointless organization because they're not doing anything to combat cancer. ? Getting caught up on the name "Right to Life" or what-have-you is just silly. The purpose of these groups is to support the repeal of legal abortion. Period. What you consider more worthy causes has no bearing whatsoever on what other people believe, and all of it is, at its root, nothing more than value judgments, which cannot be made objectively.

I am pro-life because it is the most objective and logical position to hold when taking presuppositions, the basis behind it all and the foundation of thought, into consideration (for the record, I'm also firmly against capital punishment and for great prison reform, since that seems to be important to most pro-choice people I've had this discussion with for some reason; it's such a blatant red herring, which I find adorable because a lot of people think themselves pro-choice for logical reasons). I also have a great respect for human life, but that's not exactly logical. When questions of "When is someone human?" and others of that ilk are brought into the discussion, subjectivity is always needed to define terms, and it gets terribly muddy as soon as the definitions begin. The only clear distinction that can be made is that a human is created at conception, when its own genetic code is formed. After that, things get really murky and really debatable in a hurry because they can never be objective. Miscarriages exist. Does that make intentional abortion all right, because abortions can happen spontaneously and naturally? Does the fact that two-year-old children sometimes accidentally drown make the intentional murder of a two-year-old child all right? Better yet, since it appears to be entirely natural, does the existence of SIDS make it all right for an adult to commit infanticide at random? Sex occasionally has unintended consequences, and a woman should not be punished for an accident. That is equating someone's lifestyle with someone else's life, period, and saying that it is more important to protect the lifestyle of one than to protect the very life of another. And on and on and on. I've thought this through thoroughly. I won't continue because it seems redundant to do so, but... I'm just so tired of it.

I am consistently put into a box by people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about when it comes to the views of people like me, who only associate closely with one mindset, thereby closing themselves off from others. Don't even try with the red herrings anymore. I'm going to feel absolutely ridiculous typing this out because oh my goodness I hate people publicly knowing this stuff because it seems like bragging or whatever, but for the sake of "cut it out" here goes. It's been my life's goal since I was ten years old to adopt older children, who would otherwise not stand a chance, out of the foster care system. I regularly donate money that as a college student that will soon be about $100,000 in debt I can't afford to charities. I am helping to organize an initiative on my college campus to get students to give food and blankets and other necessities to homeless people in Chicago and Gary. I'm a part of another that just started that is committed to sending aid to Haiti for who knows how many years, now that they've been forgotten by the rest of the world yet again. This last Christmas, along with my roommate I went through a local charity to buy gifts for the children of a single mother who would not otherwise have been able to give them a Christmas. Starting next week I will be volunteering by watching toddlers for three hours every Wednesday at an organization dedicated to helping single mothers. I have volunteered at animal shelters in the past. I am 100% against the death penalty, as previously mentioned, and I have a ridiculously liberal view of the prison system and understand the importance of the fact that people become how they are treated. All of my pro-life friends are the same, just as involved in the same things I am, or in similar things. Now, can we leave the generalizations and everything else that has nothing to do with abortion alone and stop putting pro-lifers into little boxes created by the same media that demonizes Palestine?

All of that said, I recognize that abortion cannot simply be made illegal and have that be the end of the story, and I would never participate in any overtly pro-life initiatives as they are today for that very reason. It has been a part of this culture for over a generation now. It's ingrained into our society. The logistics that would need to be sorted out are ridiculous. It would be a nightmare to make abortion illegal again overnight. That's another discussion I suppose, or maybe it isn't, but... I am not an idiot or inconsistent, thank you.

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Miles to go before I sleep

‎"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."
-Khalil Gibran

I don't think murder begets murder ever makes sense.

Sounds like one of those perpetual thingys, you murder the kid, I murder you, the people murder me.

Lather, rinse, repeat

VERY MISGUIDED

I specified later on that I considered them all worthy, but not worther causes.

It's not the name that I'm getting caught up on, it is the crux of the argument, that all life is sacred. If that is the belief, then the term "Pro-Life" is an inaccurate one as those groups are merely anti-abortion. Now granted, activist groups must specialize and pick their battles, and there is a good deal of contention in the abortion debate.

Your comparisons aren't terribly accurate because the basis behind those groups is well defined. Gay Marriage advocate groups base their argument on the assertion that everyone should have equal rights in marriage.
There aren't really any other groups of people in the country that are unjustly barred from marrying, but with abortion and the sanctity of life argument, there are other groups dying or being killed through actions sanctioned by the state.

What you could say, and I wouldn't be in a position to disagree is that the core argument made by Gay Rights groups is that discrimination is wrong, and therefore should not limit their efforts to ending discrimination against all groups, and not just gays.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual