The recent experience with the novel coronavirus and the economic effects of the shutdown gives us all an opportunity to calculate how much the pro-life party values life. Approximately 30 million Americans lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic. The shutdown if continued through the phased reopening without being rushed will save perhaps 1 million American lives. It follows that to the (mostly Republican) politicians who wished to end the shutdown in the early summer, one life to them is worth not more than about 30 jobs. It also explains the Republican fascination with the death penalty. If the average death penalty case costs about $100,000 to try, which we can evaluate as equal to roughly 2 jobs for a year, but if only one out of every 40 people convicted of a death penalty crime is actually executed, then each execution produces roughly 80 jobs, a very decent return on investment from this coldly capitalist point of view.
The same analysis explains also the Republican position on abortion and right to life. If a healthcare team of four people can perform two abortions a day for 250 business days a year, equaling 500 per year altogether, then each abortion produces only 1/125 of a job for a year, far below the job production from capital punishment. What we have taken for years as Republican hypocrisy about human life may merely be economics. Further research is needed to determine the normative Republican value for job-life equivalence. I think it will turn out to be about 20 jobs per life.