Time to re-group

Pro-lifers have been divided against themselves for decades, some disagreeing on how best to accomplish the goal of protecting human beings from abortion. Then there’s the other end of life, and some pro-lifers who are actively involved in work to save women and unborn children from abortion don’t see euthanasia as an issue to get involved with, for one reason or other.

South Dakota’s abortion ban went down again because its opponents were hugely funded and manned…..and helped by a certain few pro-life groups staunchly against any and all legislation that limits abortion that they don’t consider perfect.

The big victories scored on election day by pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia forces only strengthened their resolve to squash pro-life efforts once and for all. They say ‘argument over, you lost, don’t even try again, let’s get on with it now.’

I don’t like to use combat terminology (though we all know the saying ‘politics is war by other means’). But here’s the situation: pro-lifers have lost many battles, though they’re not conceding the war.

They do, however, need to talk. Fr. John Jay Hughes has some good suggestions.

We need first to recognize that politics is the art of the possible and that political battles can never be won by attacking our friends. During the annual march on Washington each January, some pro-lifers have had nothing better to do than to stage confrontations with pro-life members of Congress whose support they consider insufficiently militant. I received such an attack myself, during a previous presidential campaign, when a listener found the decibel count of a strong pro-life homily I preached too low. This is madness.

Yes, it’s also the path to defeat.

Second, we need to recognize that, for some years to come, abortion will be with us; we must support the kind of limitations on the practice which are in force in most other countries. To oppose such limitations on the grounds that they do not banish all abortions is also madness.

And it’s the reason why South Dakota failed in ’06 and ’08, though it represented the best law crafted and put forward by state legislators since Roe v. Wade.

Beyond replacing political naivete with political savvy, the task before pro-life people now is to concentrate on the only task that will bring success in the fight for life: changing hearts and minds.

(Been saying that here as well.)

“For too long we’ve been asking politicians to do for us what we need to do ourselves,” a militantly pro-life Catholic bishop told me on election day. He was right. Of course our laws should protect the weak and defenseless. And who is more vulnerable and defenseless than the baby in the womb—or Grandma in a nursing home whose mind has gone ahead of her and whose care is costly? We need to realize, however, that laws that do not enjoy wide popular support are useless, or worse.

For one thing, they get advanced, defeated and then set back the pro-life cause considerably. That’s worse than useless.

As former Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin pointed out in an address for Respect Life Sunday late in his years, America is a nation of freedoms, and limits on those freedoms. He brought up examples like the ones offered here.

In a notable pre-election speech in St. Louis, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee spoke about three legal innovations which he had witnessed in his adult lifetime: limitations on smoking, requirement of access to public places for the handicapped, and requirement of seat belts for drivers and passengers of automobiles. In each case, Huckabee pointed out, people were first persuaded that the proposed change was beneficial. Then, laws were enacted to mandate the change.

Pro-lifers need to heed this lesson…

He has a suggestion that to many people, is an old argument. But like Chesterton said about the Church, it’s not that it’s been tried and found wanting…

A good entry point for persuading people that abortion is wrong is pointing out the chilling similarities between the arguments for slavery in the 1850s and those used to defend abortion today. Like today’s pro-choice people, slaveholders said they weren’t forcing others to own slaves. They simply pleaded for the right to do what they wanted with their “property.” That word disguised, of course, the fact that human lives were at stake…

The slaveholders’ pro-choice argument also lives on today in the bumper stickers that read: “Against abortion? Don’t have one.” Would those who display that sticker display one which said: “Against slavery? Don’t own one”? They’d be ashamed.

Until that reality sinks in, people who fiercely defend ‘a woman’s right to abortion’ or the ‘right’ to assisted suicide aren’t going to understand why theirs is not the best argument for human rights. Or why ‘the Inconvenients’ have become the victims of the new holocaust.