New Colorado Citizens for Life Group Speaks With "Logic & Love"

Editor's note:  The following, reprinted from The Chronicle of Catholic Life in Pueblo, Colorado, is about National Right to Life's new Colorado affiliate, Colorado Citizens for Life, and its President, Connie Pratt. National Right to Life urges all pro-life Colorado residents to join Colorado Citizens for Life.  Membership donations of $35 (or more) can be sent to :  

Colorado Citizens for Life
P.O. Box 2546
Parker, CO 80134

PUEBLO- The president of the new Colorado affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) says her organization is proudly following the lead of the dozens of other state groups which have been defending life for decades.

"Like them, we've adopted the calm, caring approach essential to good communication in general and to pro-life persuasion in particular," says Connie Pratt of Colorado Citizens for Life.

Pratt, who joined a California pro-life group the day the Supreme Court's  Roe and Doe rulings were handed down in 1973, says the hours she initially spent volunteering on a pregnancy hotline taught her the wisdom of such a sensitive and sensible approach.

"While I quickly realized counseling is not my strong suit, I'm so grateful God started me in the service arm of the movement because it gave me important insights about women in crisis - insights pro-lifers typically acquire much later in their involvement."

Pratt learned, for example, that "no matter how much we pro-lifers may want to do so, we can't really save a single child. 

Only the baby's mother can do that." 

"So what our movement is actually, in large part, about is reaching out to save the mom," says Pratt.  "When we give her our unconditional love and support, she's often able to give the same things to her little one - because deep down, that's what she dearly wants to do."

Pratt says her pregnancy-center experience taught her another crucial lesson. 

"The mother and child are tied together in ways that go beyond the umbilical cord.   This means that whatever we do to one, we do to the other.  If we dehumanize one, we dehumanize the other; if we assault one, we assault the other; if we kill one, we kill something in the other."

"Put another way, abortion is, indeed, a war waged against the baby," says Pratt.  "But it is always, and of necessity, fought on the battleground of the mother's body, psyche, and soul

(Realizing from the start that abortion is as much woman abuse as it is child abuse eventually led Pratt to an even-broader understanding:  the deadly practice also does harm to everyone else it touches, including fathers, siblings - and the abortionists themselves.) 

In addition to the big-picture perspective Pratt acquired from her early paraprofessional counseling, she gained key insights from her involvement with and in the media.  Drawing on her degree in journalism, Pratt has spent nearly 35 years researching, writing, and speaking about the life issues and about the scientific, medical, legal, and women's rights evidence supporting them.  She considers that evidence so powerful "it almost speaks for itself." 

The body of supplemental information Pratt continues to amass convinces her "the best way to reach the predominantly unchurched, often religiously antagonistic, people in the 'mushy middle' is with arguments of fact which complement, and show the sense of, arguments of faith."

Surprising as it may seem, Pratt never makes an exclusively religious presentation, even when speaking to church groups. 

"Every congregation includes members who don't understand, or privately oppose, their denomination's pro-life philosophy," explains Pratt.  "We make it much easier for such people to prayerfully reconsider when we offer them a whole range of persuasive reasons for doing so."

Pratt is quick to point out that she is by no means suggesting pro-lifers exclude God.

"We couldn't leave Him out of our work, even if we tried.  It is HIS cause we are fighting.  It is HIS children, of every age, whom we defend when we join together to oppose abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, destructive embryonic stem-cell research, and human cloning."  

"But if we follow Christ's own command to be 'wise as serpents and gentle as doves' - in other words, if we use the mind and heart God has given us - we will not only teach the truth and influence the culture," says Pratt.  "We will also draw people toward the Father of us all." 

"Even if we don't consciously think about it, we introduce people to God every time we help them 'get acquainted' with the unborn baby or witness the wonders He works in the womb."

"We make it easier for them to see God every time we open their eyes to the unique gifts a woman like Terri Schiavo brings to our world or to the cross her family so faithfully carries."

Pratt says her support for the pro-life movement's thoughtful approach also stems from her longtime study of effective communication techniques.

"The first requirement of pro-life communication is simple:  we must get people to listen long enough to hear.  That happens when we lower the 'decibel level' by being gentle, not judgmental, and humble, not self-righteous.  It happens when we demonstrate, through our demeanor and deeds, that our defense of helpless human beings is based on both logic and love." 

The leaders of Colorado Citizens for Life haven't just adopted the pro-life movement's obviously-successful public outreach.  They've also accepted what Pratt calls "the principled and practical two-part objective" which NRLC shares with virtually every major pro-life group. 

"This incremental approach is the same one used in any national disaster in which lives are in imminent danger," Pratt says.  "It involves a carefully-crafted plan to ultimately restore optimum protection as well as immediate efforts to save as many people as possible."

Pratt explains what she means with an 'emergency' analogy:  A powerful band of seven men, ominously dressed in black, shock the community by simultaneously leveling fire departments all across town.  By their surprise attack, this lawless gang enables area arsonists (to whom they're ideologically tied) to start torching high-rise apartments filled with women and children.

Concerned citizens from every neighborhood, who fully intend to eventually build new fire houses and recruit new firefighters, nevertheless know they must also act now.   So even though they lack the most effective equipment and the ideal training, they bravely rush in and begin rescuing every resident they possibly can.

Asked about all-or-nothing 'purists' who consider this two-step aim an immoral compromise which makes pro-lifers accomplices in abortions, Pratt goes back to her analogy. "I can't imagine a single soul condemning the on-the-spot rescues of those high-rise residents," says Pratt, "or saying the only ethical way to affirm the innocent victims' worth and rights is to wait for currently-unavailable professionals."

"I also can't imagine anyone saying that those who save the lives of at least some of the women and children are, by that fact, responsible for the deaths of all the others."

"The blame for the raging inferno and the resulting deaths rests solely on the gang which wiped out the fire-fighting forces and on the callous people who set the blaze - not on the caring citizens intent on both saving endangered people and restoring primary safeguards."

Note:  Colorado Citizens for Life can be reached at  P. O. Box 2546 Parker, CO. 80134

If you have any comments or questions, please write Dave Andrusko at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.