Now that we’ve basked in the glow of the youthful throngs at the March for Life, let’s not ignore its lesson: The pro-life issue can transform America.
It’s February after January’s March for Life. The buses have been there and back. The pro-life marchers from around the country have had time to rest their weary legs, catch up on lost sleep and get back into their daily routines.
But our brains are still vibrating with the sights and sounds of 650,000 people pleading for America to respect the right to life of the weakest ones among us.
Now is the time we can see more clearly than at any other time in the year that being pro-life is America’s future — and that a pro-life America will be an America transformed.
A recent Time magazine cover said it like it’s a bad thing, and Business Week provided a state-by-state graphic showing just how real the change has been: America is becoming pro-life.
Each year, more and more reporters take their heads out of the sand, notice the March for Life and are shocked by its youth and vigor. Each year, more lions of the abortion movement are shaken to their cores to learn the lesson the March for Life keeps teaching ("I just thought, my gosh, they are so young," said NARAL president Nancy Keenan, 62, after happening upon marchers. "There are so many of them, and they are so young.")
Truly, "Pro-life is the new normal," as March for Life leader Jeanne Monahan put it. If you don’t believe her, George Weigel counted down the evidence for First Things in "Pro-Life Rising, 40 Years After Roe." And as a kind of corollary to the pro-life ascendancy, Fox News published "The Coming Collapse of the Abortion Lobby."
So, what does all this mean for pro-lifers? It means what we do next is crucial.
First, we have to keep up the good work. Keep helping women in crisis pregnancies; keep sharing "I regret my abortion" stories; keep sharing pictures with the "ultrasound generation"; keep lining the streets with "Abortion Kills Children" signs — and, above all, keep praying.
We’re close, but we aren’t there yet.
The way societal change works, getting 51% is half the battle. The next step is to push support to the tipping point — the critical mass at which a position goes from "normal" to "normative." Civil rights looked like it could go either way throughout the 1960s, until a certain percentage of support was reached. After that, political correctness made it impossible to be against civil rights, thank God. In the abortion battle, we need to go from "being pro-life is totally acceptable" to "being for abortion is totally uncool."
Second, we need to be prepared to take new pro-lifers to the next level.
Changing your mind on abortion can change everything, and these weeks after the March for Life are the perfect time to see that this is true.
I brought this up before, but my timing was terrible. During the Fortnight for Freedom, I confidently wrote "Let Us Count the Ways Pro-Life Will Triumph" — but published it the day Chief Justice John Roberts was fooled (or fooled everyone?) on Obamacare, and so it looked like naïveté. I brought it up right after the election, saying "Double-Down on Pro-Life," but that was the week that, whenever someone brought up politics, pro-lifers covered their ears and repeated: "I am in my happy place. I am in my happy place" and couldn’t listen.
But it’s true: Becoming pro-life is transformative. You have probably seen it in others, and you may even have seen it in yourself.
People who become pro-life start to be hopeful about the potential of the good and wise about the ways of the world.
They become hopeful about the future: "Lives are worth bringing into the world." They become wise about the sexual revolution: "Promiscuity hurts women and children — and men, too."
They become compassionate: "We should help women, not corner them into abortion." They see through the world’s easy answers: "They are willing to kill for a lifestyle."
They embrace science: "I don’t have to pretend that’s not a human being anymore." They become savvy about the abortion industry and its politicians: "They know what it is, but they do it for money."
They see the importance of marriage and responsibility: "We owe it to children to tame and direct our passions." They wake up about the mainstream media: "They are not telling people the truth; they are just serving an agenda."
Here is a handy checklist about the fruits of the pro-life position:
Becoming pro-life undermines moral relativism.
Becoming pro-life introduces people to "faith in things unseen."
Becoming pro-life teaches people to act out of hope instead of despair.
Becoming pro-life replaces destructive shortcuts with authentic love that makes hard choices.
Becoming pro-life reorders a voter’s priorities.
Becoming pro-life teaches people that rights don’t come from the state, but from somewhere above the state.
Becoming pro-life teaches people that duties and responsibilities accompany rights.
There is no "silver bullet" that will change the culture in one fell swoop. But the abortion issue is as close as we can get. With abortion, the devil has made the mistake he always makes: He goes for evil that is so extreme that it is bound to implode in a dramatic way.
The greatest triumph of evil in our day is that mothers are willing to kill their own children; the greatest threat to evil in our day is that, of course, mothers aren’t going to keep killing their own children (as one Washington Post writer who had an abortion put it, "Roe at 40: I don’t want my children to have 40 more years of this.").
Use whatever metaphor for the abortion issue you like: The abortion issue is the One Ring; destroy it, and the empire falls. Abortion is the Matrix: Expose it, and the world wakes up. The abortion issue is the left’s Achilles Heel. The abortion issue is the weak link on which the whole, rotting edifice hangs. The abortion issue is the camel’s nose under the tent, the point of the spear, the edge of the wedge.
However you say it, don’t miss the crucial March for Life lesson: We can win by changing hearts and minds about the evil of abortion, and when we do, we may find we have won on even more.
Tom Hoopes is writer in
residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
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Good News ! Pro-Lifers should also get their respective Bishops to STOP the annual CCHD collection of the USCCB. The millions collected have been granted for decades to left-wing radical, pro-sodomite & pro-Abortion groups. These scandalous grants will continue until the flow of funds is terminated in every parish. The USCCB was made aware of this over 5 years ago & they derided the faithful Catholics that brought it to their attention. Then they said they would correct matters. They have not & it continues. What is really reprehensible is the man they placed in charge of approving the grants has supported the campaigns of Pro-Abortion politicians !
The pro-life does look young but then when I started out in the pro-life movement at the height of the “Reagan Revolution” I felt it was young then too and I thought by now we would have won this thing. So what happened? Well, eventually my friends in the movement got married, kids and got busy with family. But they had a lot of pro-life kids and now those kids are getting ready to have kids. If we keep out reproducing the other side eventually we will have the votes to topple abortion.
“I am in my happy place, I am in my happy place.” Haha! Never heard it referred to like that, but totally true. Great article. Thought provoking and right on the mark.
Your last checklist point is important and part of the story is the contraceptive mentality. Coming to prolife has allowed me to connect the dots which should naturally take a person to the start - that is, the thinking that using contraception liberates the woman. When contraception fails, the woman presents herself at the abortion mill.
I urge everyone to read (or re-read) Humanae Vitae in a spirit of openness to properly consider Pope Paul’s arguments. All Christian denominations were united in opposition to contraception right up until 1930s when first the Anglican Church and then other Christian denominations, broke away from the Church’s teaching on contraception. The neo-pagan alternatives on sexuality, marriage and family thrust on society have been played out and it’s heartening to see that many people are recognising this.
Our young people, even in the Philippines, many of them exposed to the treacherous and relentless war against humans inside the womb by the Malthusians (left or right)are coming to light. Let’s sustain their new-found strength to repulse the evil. A first step to assisting them is to help the youth understand the supply-value chain of the abortion industry, which leaves both mother and fetus-child bereft of assistance, mere grist in the mill of the “moneylenders in the temple of God.”
If you pro-lifers are serious about reducing abortions,advocate in the extreme to promote contraception(condoms,birth control)and have the moring-after pill more readily available.Unless you all of you adopt all children(in this country-not in another),then help out and donate most of your monies in the foster care system. Perhaps all of you should check out Direction for Our Times and read the books. One of these books has Our Lord saying “it makes Me sad when a new soul comes back, but let the women know that I will always love them,no matter why or how many times. Never let them be afraid to come to Me. I have already forgiven them and want them to come to Me to receive My Love.” if Our Lord has already forgiven them without them asking for His forgiveness,who are you to condemn the women?
650,000 people at the pro-life rally and not a word in two newspapers that I rec. The Phila Inquirer and a local newspaper. In the Phila Inquirer, they had a anti-gun rally with 2000 people on the 2nd page and a tree-hugger with 35,000 people on the front page. The Phila inquirer should change its name to Pravda, the former USSR organ, which printed only the news that they wanted the people to read.
Tom, your article is so hopeful. Sometimes we want to give up. It inspired me to think positivly and to look for every opportunity God gives me to help change this culture of death. Keep up the good work. Dave Craig, Connectict
Ann…...No one condemns the women. Contraception is NOT pro-life.
Yes, we need to be active. Speaking of “Catholic” organizations undermining our efforts, do not forget CRS (Catholic Relief Services). They have written another response to the Catholics trying to hold them accountable for supporting Pro-abortion and pro-contraception organizations (like BIll and Melinda Gates Foundation). The bottom line is there is no excuse. We scream foul when Planned Parenthood uses our money for “Title X” and yet abortions skyrocket, so these Catholic organizations can not try using the same excuse and think that they can get away with it. Supporting sin is supporting sin. There are many, many organization out their that can live truly Catholic values, they need our support, not these wasteful non-Catholic (or fake Catholi/Catholic hating) enterprises.
Millions of attendees have participated in the MFL over the years and every year we are told the same thing about hope for the future and whatnot. Abortion remains legal, the number of abortions pet year had not declined significantly, and it doesn’t look like either of those things is changing soon. I think the biggest lesson of the MFL is that we’ve gotten very good at marketing the event.
Adolfo….....Hey, why the negativity?!? The event has grown every year and the average age is younger! Pro-life will win the battle someday. Pray and be active more than once a year.
I’m not saying the MFL doesn’t have merit, but that the article misses that merit. We aren’t “winning” and probably won’t win the fight in this country. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight, mind you. The fight is absolutely worth it.
The MFL serves the same function as retreats in high school. It energizes, provides some good bonding with fellow believers, and raises spirits. Those are good, even necessary, things. Let’s not make it more than it really is, though.
@Ann: Who is condemning whom? The prolifers I know not only demonstrate in prolife demonstrations, they also side walk counsel in from of abortion mills, provide for homes for unwed mothers, help mothers stay in college and provide help for post abortive women and men who are in grief because of their “choice”. As for asking prolifers to support condoms, pills, devices, etc., read the Theology of the Body and get a clue.
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Abortion is the Matrix? Which “Matrix”? Are you talking about the movie created by sub-human Lana Wachowski? OMG. An what about GOD? He can’t wake up people anymore? Ha?
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