Our own worst enemy

Let me tell you, it is a good time to be pro-life in this country.  I mean, I’ll be honest, I’m late to the party, but I am now wholly & entirely convinced – and I’m not alone.  Americans who self-identify as pro-choice have hit a record low of 41% of the country, while those who identify as pro-life make up 50%.  New studies seem to emerge on a monthly basis, telling us more & more about prenatal development.  As with many of God’s laws – there is more than enough objective scientific evidence to support the pro-life cause without ever turning to Christian morality- as demonstrated by the fact that there are organizations of Jewish, Atheists, Muslims, and even Pagans for life.

 

A friend recently posted a link to this amazing article, wherein British Journalist Medhi Hasan quotes New Zealand feminist author Daphne de Jong: “If women must submit to abortion to preserve their lifestyle or career, their economic or social status, they are pandering to a system devised and run by men for male convenience.”

So, yes, pro-lifers – our allies – can be liberals, feminists, and atheists – in other words, the sanctity of life may be the only thing we agree on.

As a movement, our greatest assets are objective fact, scientific proof, and reasoned, logical discourse. No one, in the history of time, has ever been swayed or convinced by yelling, rage, or foaming-at-the-mouth zealotry.

Certainly, abortion is a terrible injustice, which elicits strong emotion from many of us – but imagine the tables turned, imagine if an advocate for choice were to pose their argument in terms of yelling, accusations, & personal attacks – oh, wait, we don’t have to imagine that! It happens all the time. So, tell me – do you find angry pro-choicers’ defensive yelling convincing?

Of course you don’t – so why would ours work on them?

There is, without a doubt, a place in the movement for everyone.  Earlier today a priest reminded me that our faith teaches that prayer saves lives – indeed it does. We need people who are vehement & on fire – and we need them praying as hard as they can. We need people who are great at marketing to raise awareness, we need those fundraising geniuses to turn their talents to funding our Crisis Pregnancy Centers. We need brave people to do sidewalk counseling, loving people to do post-abortive ministry, and for God’s sake – we need rational, reasonable, civil people to engage the opposition in logical, fact-based discourse. This is not a place for the overtly fervent, the violently vehement, the audibly zealous.

Over the course of the last few years, the number of people who believe in the sacredness of all life is growing. The trends are clear, the more we learn about fetal development in utero, the more apparent it becomes that life begins at conception. An intelligent person who asks honest questions & is answered with objective, scientific truth will come to understand what we know. Questions are the beginning of understanding. We should welcome questions from those who disagree with us – science and fact are on our side!  We should be prepared and well-educated, ready to answer questions with the truth – not with emotion, but with information.

So, when a question is met with violent antagonism, or virulent, purposeless rage, that’s the worst possible reaction. There are people who say that the current administration is the greatest enemy of Life. With all due respect, I have to disagree. People on our own side, people who cannot differentiate between a question and an attack – these people are our greatest enemy. Yes, they are on our side, but they are making our work harder.

I don’t know about you, but lately I feel like our country must be as divided as it was in the 1860′s. Every day I see intelligent, reasonable people I like and admire devolve into name-calling & baseless accusations against people they consider to be “the other side.”  It seems as though both sides are becoming more & more entrenched & angry, meanwhile there is more that unites us than divides us.

So, when all else fails, look to Christ. His response to people who disagreed with them was to meet them on their level, explaining things with parables & loving, civil discourse. So, may I strongly suggest, to quote my  11th grade Religion & Morality teacher, Mr. McCormick, that we all, “Cut the bullsh*t and be like Jesus.”