By Dave Andrusko

Editor's note. Please check out Part Two, which discusses the outlandishly slavish coverage of President-elect Obama, and Part Three, which gives you the opportunity to order lots of additional copies of the Special January 22 Commemorative Edition, "What Can I Do To Help?"

Minutes before sitting down for a chat with Jacki Ragan, NRL's director of state development, I finished the latest batch of e-mails which have streamed in since the night Barack Obama went from being a freshman senator with a negligible legislative record (but a zeal for abortion) to President-elect.

The last correspondent let me know in no uncertain terms that it was fine for me to write about the love affair between the Establishment Media and Obama (as I had in "Today's News & Views") but how about some direction--some ideas what to do? What better place to go for answers than to the woman whose finger is on the pulse of pro-life grassroots America?

At the risk of stating the stupendously obvious, people are very unhappy that a militant pro-abortionist has moved into the White House to replace a man as committed to life as Obama is to death. But unhappiness, Ragan reminded me, "can lead to indifference, to a sense of resignation, or to a fierce determination to set things right." From the time it became obvious Obama would be elected, "our people chose resistance, virtually without missing a beat."

We then shared what turned out to be remarkably similar stories. "Grassroots pro-lifers are angriest because a man who is in the pocket of the abortion lobby will be the 44th President of the United States," Ragan said. "They know what he plans--a slash and burn attack on President Bush's pro-life policies."

But people "understood that while they could and should mourn that such a man would be elected to our nation's highest office, that cannot be an excuse for inaction," she said. "The membership of National Right to Life understands that there is no other organization that is solely dedicated to saving unborn babies."

Therefore, "We will live to fight another day to the extent that every pro-life American commits to help us organize, grow, and mobilize." If we don't get it done, she said, "it's not going to get done."

Just prior to offering specifics about what needs to be done, Ragan remembered something we'd talked about previously. "It's one thing to suffer through Obama winning the election," she said. But "hard as that is to swallow, it's made even worse knowing that he shared his arms-open-wide embrace of abortion on demand and beyond only with the likes of Planned Parenthood."

The American people, who are far closer on abortion to Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin than they are to Obama, "are in for a rude awakening," she said.

Ragan quickly listed, one by one, the many different ways pro-lifers can strengthen our Movement.

"The one non-negotiable is that people become paying members of National Right to Life," she said. "We will never have but a fraction of what pro-abortionists have available to them, but we don't need that much." What we do need, Ragan said, is a commitment from pro-lifers to help NRLC triple its membership and double the number of chapters, currently at just over 3,000.

"It can be done," she said, "and it does not require an exorbitant amount of time."

Here are some of the steps.

* Send a check to National Right to Life for $25 and become a member. The address is NRLC, 512 10th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004. Send it to the attention of Jacki Ragan. She will make sure it gets to the right place and you get credited for becoming a member.

* Join a local chapter or, if one does not exist in your area, start one. (Call 202-378-8842 or visit www.nrlchapters.org for more information.)

* Become a liaison to your church. Easy to do, doesn't require a great amount of time, but helps tremendously to make a real difference in saving the lives of the unborn.

* Pledge to find at least five other people to circulate the petition found on pages 14–15 of the November/December issue of National Right to Life News.

* Make sure your church receives pro-life bulletin inserts for Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, January 25, 2009. Ordering information is available at www.nrlchapters.org. They are a marvelous tool.

* Make sure at least five other pro-life churches in your community are also receiving these inserts.

* Make it your mission to find 10 other people to become members of NRLC by the end of this year! Then renew that pledge for January 2009. You can't imagine the difference your efforts will make!

* Set up an e-mail tree. This allows you to quickly respond when needed and to keep your pro-life contacts updated.

* Purchase copies of NRL News's Special January 22 Commemorative Issue which will lay out in detail how to organize, mobilize, and energize pro-lifers in your area. (See Part Three.)

* Be sure to involve young people in every phase. They are the future of the Movement.