I can thank punk rock for a lot. When I was young, it gave me music I could call my own and a cultural moment to embrace, and over time its bedrock dictum “Don’t Trust Authority” has been essential to forming a conservative political viewpoint – far more than it ever did when I called myself a liberal. It also played no small part in helping me embrace a pro-life stance – almost as much as my Catholic faith.
For its shock value alone, abortion was an evergreen theme in punk imagery and lyrics, but at a time (and in a country) where no one wanted to really talk about the simple facts of abortion, punk’s insistence in waving it in your face, if only to provoke, forced me to contemplate something that native moral clarity has to judge to be monstrous. Simply put, a single Sex Pistols song – “Bodies” – did more to form my pro-life conscience than a hundred earnest pamphlets, and I don’t think I’m alone.
4:00 mark:
