Pence announces 'Life Is Winning' celebration as COVID deaths pass 300k

Vice President Mike Pence announced in a statement Monday that he’ll be hosting a “Life Is Winning Event” on Wednesday to highlight the anti-abortion agenda of Donald Trump’s administration — on the same day the COVID-19 death toll in the United States passed 300,000.

“The Vice President will deliver remarks highlighting the Trump Administration’s remarkable pro-life accomplishments championed by the most Pro-Life president ever, President Donald Trump,” the statement read. “The Trump Administration has enacted pro-life policies, which have led to cutting federal funds for Planned Parenthood, appointing pro-life judges, and signing an executive order protecting infants born alive.”

The Trump administration has long patted itself on the back as being the most “pro-life” administration in modern history, with Trump promoting policies that have endangered abortion rights since his 2016 campaign.

But the self-congratulatory celebration is ill-timed, coming as coronavirus cases in the United States are soaring, with deaths topping 300,000 Monday. About 2,500 people are dying of the virus every day, according to The Hill.

“We are in the time frame now that probably for the next 60 to 90 days we’re going to have more deaths per day than we had at 9/11 or we had at Pearl Harbor,” said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last week.

And Trump’s failure to implement national guidelines has contributed to the record highs of COVID-19 deaths in the United States. According to an AP report, 56% of Americans blame the U.S. government for the pandemic.

Trump has denied science throughout the course of the pandemic, balking at a national lockdown and and scorning the wearing of CDC-recommended face masks, while promoting untested “cures” for the disease.

Worse, he has made virtually no acknowledgement of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died on his watch.

Bioethicist Elizabeth Yuko highlighted the discrepancy between the administration’s “pro-life” claims and its coronavirus response in a piece for Teen Vogue.

“[Their] attitude — along with their anti-mask position — demonstrates that Republicans not only don’t think that people impacted by COVID (including those who have died from it) are worthy of the same protection as embryos and fetuses, but that our lives are outright disposable,” she told the outlet. “That’s not exactly pro-life.”

And there are other lives that haven’t been “winning” under the Trump administration.

In 2020, Trump reinstated the federal death penalty after nearly two decades, and is currently cramming in a record number of executions during his lame-duck period.

Many of those executed have been Black men, highlighting racial bias in the federal justice system.

Others have had serious irregularities in their cases, were teenagers at the time of the offense, or have intellectual disabilities that should disqualify them from the death penalty.

President-elect Joe Biden, an opponent of the death penalty, told the Associated Press through a spokesman that he intends to end the federal death penalty while in office.

Meanwhile, Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, called the flurry of Trump executions “unprecedented.”

“It’s hard to understand why anybody at this stage of a presidency feels compelled to kill this many people … especially when the American public voted for someone else to replace you and that person has said he opposes the death penalty,” he said. “This is a complete historical aberration.”