What now for the Pro-Life movement?

Pro-lifers have been helping low income mothers for decades

Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck

The Washington Post pushed an interesting thesis in a front page article Tuesday. Under the headline "Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus from Ban to Reduction," Jacqueline Salmon posits that as a result of an devastatingly unfavorable 2008 election, some Pro-Lifers are "setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance programs for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions."

Playing off rhetoric from the Obama campaign, the article is emblematic of the idea that somehow helping poor pregnant women is a compromise or "common ground" between the pro-life and pro-choice positions. This "compromise" is a vicious and remarkably clever attempt to destroy the pro-life movement for good.

It's vicious because it implies that the pro-life movement has not focused on assistance programs over the years — when that has already been the real focus of the pro-life movement for decades.

The heart of the grassroots pro-life movement has always been about helping needy expectant mothers in crisis pregnancy centers. Just do a Google search for "Crisis Pregnancy Center" and you'll find hundreds, if not thousands, of local efforts to help women in troubled situation make positive choices — and provide them with resources once that choice is made.

The election of Barack Obama didn't suddenly give pro-lifers the idea that they can help poor pregnant women with financial aid and emotional support to help them decide to keep the baby. I hadn't even heard of Obama when I first heard Wayne Mays, Arkansas Right to Life President, explain how important it is for right-to-life organizations to "love them both," that the mother was just as valuable as the unborn child. Although the Washington Post doesn't know this, Mays is the typical pro-life activist: He raises money for crisis pregnancy centers and marches in pro-life political events. For Mays and hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers, fighting for a political ban and helping mothers in need are not mutually exclusive ways of fighting abortion. They are both part of an integrated strategy that is as old as the pro-life movement.

Pro-lifers should support any and every plan and program that will reduce abortions. Many of those are social programs. Some are run by the government. Some are run by private organizations. But should the pro-lifers give up on the political fight?

Even if perpetual failure on the this front is certain, how can those who believe abortion is murder be silent in the political arena?

However well intentioned Obama himself may be, pro-choice forces know that silencing the pro-life voices of descent in the court of public opinion is the best way to assure that legal abortion on demand for any reason at any stage will never be challenged.

The "common ground" case is a brilliant distraction from the real issue: Is abortion murder or not? While theology and science both inform us on this issue, the abortion question can only be answered politically — the same way most moral questions are answered. Recreational drug use? Non-consensual sex? Prostitution? Gambling? Slavery? Our political system answers them all. Governs them all. Gives rules on them all.

And sometimes the political answers change. Prohibition comes to mind. Our culture changes and our elected officials change with it. This is why the political element of the pro-life movement is so critical. Right now, our culture is divided or undecided on the morality of abortion. If no one calling abortion what it is — murder — to the political and cultural establishments, then society will fully accept abortion as morally acceptable.

If pro-lifers give up on their political efforts now, they will not reduce abortions. Instead, more people who were undecided and the culture at large will see abortion as morally acceptable. And if abortion on demand is becomes as morally acceptable as pro-choice advocates would have it be (politically, this is where Obama is), why would not many more people then choose to have abortions of convenience?

Which brings us to the greatest red herring of the abortion debate. By trying to get pro-life people to focuses merely on the underprivileged women who get abortions, the women who use abortion — the killing of the most innocent human life — as birth control for convenience get political cover for their irresponsible and selfish actions.

The Post article cites ambiguous research with this mind-twisting math: "A study ... found that the abortion rate among women living below the poverty line is more than four times that of women above 300 percent of the poverty level." Three hundred percent of poverty level for a family of four is roughly $120,000. How many Americans live above poverty and below 300 percent poverty? What percentage of the abortions in America were between the poverty level and 299 percent of poverty level? The article doesn't say.

Some interpretations of recent data released by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute ("Advancing sexual and reproductive health worldwide") show that its likely 70 percent of abortions are performed for reasons of convenience (i.e. not for health reasons or "inadequate finances"). Even if that figure is off by ten or 20 percent, more than half of abortions are abortions of convenience — tens of millions of innocents killed since Roe v. Wade legalized the practice.

All Obama's compromise and "common ground" does is get the nation to ignore half of the slaughter.

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