Just months after flying a “Pride” Flag at City Hall, one city council in Illinois voted to allow a pro-life flag to fly for Respect Life Month.
At the meeting, the council for the city of Galesburg voted 5-2 to approve the flag to be flown after resident Brent Zhorne lobbied for it to be flown. Zhorne commented that “Life is sacred — that is something precious and we need to protect it.”
Zhorne says he does not represent Knox County Right to Life or any other organization.
But Zhorne wasn’t the only one in favor of flying the flag; many members of the local pro-life group attended the meeting in support of the idea.
“I would like to see the flag flown because we do respect life – all stages of life.” one woman in attendance said.
Another man commented, “This cause is so sacred to our country, to ourselves, to our faith.”
There were others, however, who felt that the flag was more a symbol of being less inclusive – despite the fact that the pro-life flag seeks to recognize the dignity of the current, most marginalized group of human beings in society: those who are alive in the womb but not yet born.
“If we’re going to just focus on vulnerable mothers and their unborn children, you’re leaving out a whole bunch of people that deserve to be respected,” one woman said.
But the pro-life flag is not a symbol of disrespect to others, nor is it meant to be a symbol for every cause everywhere. It is meant as a symbol of defending the right to life for all human beings without excluding anyone from that most fundamental of human rights.
Another attendee, Council member Dwight White, who voted against allowing the flag, went so far as to compare the pro-life flag to confederate and “alt-right” flags. “I guarantee you next thing, do you think the Confederate Flag Group, Mothers of Confederacy, do you think the alt-right has a right? They’re gonna want to fly their flag,” White said.
But council member Heather Acerra stated that the flag is “not just about the unborn” but also “handicapped individuals [and] individuals near the end of life.”
On its website, the Pro-Life Flag Project states that the flag is “[a] unifying banner for the Pro-Life Movement.”
“Two feet, two hands, two stripes, two lives. Love them both,” is the project’s motto, and the flag was created by and “voted on by YOU, the members of the pro-life movement, to provide a unifying, freely-reproducible symbol for the pro-life cause.”
