As long as I can remember, being in the pro-life movement meant forging ahead because it was the right thing to do, and not because you thought you were actually getting anywhere.  You rallied and sent letters and held signs and held your nose to vote for the least bad candidate . . . but you didn’t really expect anything to change until the Second Coming.

There is still plenty of bad news.  The statistics are dreadful; and, most chilling of all, some people are now willing to admit:  yes, this is clearly a human baby resting in his mother’s womb.  Let’s kill him anyway.

On the other hand, there is hope.  Just in the last week, the abortion industry has taken several hard hits.

—I recently wrote about how my state, NH, voted to defund Planned Parenthood, but the president zipped right over and refunded them, in flagrant disregard of the will of the state.

Well, the Executive Council is fighting back!  I just sent an email thanking the three right-headed members of this council for their courage.

—Planned Parenthood is being investigated for improperly using federal tax dollars to fund abortions and for failing to report sex trafficking.

Finally.  It’s like when you call your doctor and complain about this or that symptom, and say that you’re feeling this and that pain, and he keeps blowing you off and saying it’s normal; and you keep pushing, and finally get an office appointment, and he takes off the bandage and looks underneath, and says, “OH.  Oh.  I see what you mean.  Okay, let’s get a specialist on the line.”

—Even Notre Dame is fighting back against Obama’s “Conscience, schmonscience” healthcare plan that would force all institutions offering insurance to fund sterilization and the morning-after pill.

Notre Dame!  Who knows what their real motivations are; but in the big picture, this news tells me that the USCCB is doing its job and making a fuss over the right thing.  We have our beloved Benedict to thank, since he has appointed (as far as I know) nothing but strong and courageous bishops so far.  (NH has a new bishop, too, and we’re happy and hopeful.)

—Don’t expect to hear about this on the nightly news, but it turns out that Planned Parenthood is actually doing an incredibly lousy job in preventing unplanned pregnancies.  According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood), when public funding increases, unplanned pregnancies increase. 

The news itself is not good, but it’s excellent that this stunningly obvious correlation is now available to the public.  (I contend that Planned Parenthood is directly to blame for an increase in unplanned pregnancies:  they do everything they can to preach the gospel of everyone having as much sex as possible, so of course pregnancies go up.  There is . . . I’m almost dying here, with the sheer stupidity of having to say so . . . a connection between sex and babies.  It’s just barely possible that, once money is concerned, the general public will start to see the connection, too.

—In Illinois, a notorious abortion clinic with a long history of grotesquely offensive tactics against pro-lifers has been shut down for—gee, who’da thunk it, in a practice so brimming with malice and mental disease—foul and unsafe health practices.

—Finally, listen to what pro-choicers are saying, and you’ll see which way the wind is blowing.  One French abortionist laments,

[F]ew gynecologists commit themselves at a reasonable level to the practice of VIP [“voluntary interruption of pregnancy”] . . . fewer and fewer, and fewer and fewer among the younger generations. . . We count them on our fingers, with one hand, where I work . . . They use their ‘conscience clause’ to justify their lack of involvement.

Hourra!

How about in our corner of the world?  According to Medical Students for Choice,

The United States and Canada face a dangerous [sic] shortage of trained abortion providers . . . 57% are over the age of 50 . . . medical schools are simply not addressing the topic; most physicians are graduating with little more than circumstantial knowledge of abortion.

—In a 2011 Gallup poll, over half of Americans said that abortion is “morally wrong.”

I am involved mostly with the happy end of the pro-life movement:  staying home, having babies, raising kids who find it obvious that babies are good.  It must be very, very hard for pro-lifers who are called to the trenches to stay hopeful.

So let’s encourage each other a little.  What’s your favorite piece of good news for the pro-life movement?