Children of Light

"Pro-life people are invisible to the elite cultures of the United States. What I mean is: the way of looking at the world, taken for granted by pro-lifers, cannot even be grasped by these elites."
     Professor Michael Pakaluk
     From the Boston Pilot, the official publication of the Archdiocese of Boston.

Once a pro-lifer, always a pro-lifer. Just this morning, a woman who worked for me years ago kindly sent along a story about pro-lifers doing their level best at Yale to awaken the slumbering consciences of their peers.

And, as you might expect, this bastion of "free speech" is ambiguous about extending that First Amendment right to pro-lifers. But that's not stopping them. (We'll be writing about this in the November issue of National Right to Life News.)

Not so long ago, the idea of pro-lifers having a high profile on elite campuses would be, if not unthinkable, certainly highly unusual. Nowadays, up and down the East Coast campus pro-life groups are rearing their lovely heads.

When I read the story forwarded to me by my old colleague I thought of a piece I recently came across written by Michael Pakaluk, an assistant professor of philosophy at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Under the headline, "Children of Light," Prof. Pakaluk wrote a thoughtful, inspiring essay.

He begins by pointing out how limited--and therefore misleading--is the label often attached to us: "anti-abortion." Standing up for Terri Schiavo had nothing to do with abortion, he writes, nor does resisting culling stem cells from "surplus" embryos "left over" at fertility clinics--to take just two examples.

"[T]he large scale implications of being pro-life are even more difficult for the elites to grasp," he write. "We can identify these by asking the question: What is it like to grow up pro-life? What is it like to see quite clearly that killing a child before birth is no different from killing a child after birth, yet to grow up in a country in which this evident fact is widely denied?"

In our special January Commemorative Issue we will hold Roe v. Wade up to the light. We will discuss in detail some of the endless facets of this assault on the dignity and unity of the human family. One of the essays will develop in a careful way the point that Prof. Pakaluk makes so eloquently: "The pro-life view is, after all, the natural view to have."

In a wonderfully engaging essay, perhaps the section I enjoyed most was when he talked about what "traits" pro-lifers develop as a result of appreciating that abortion is cruel, but not illegal, and supported by "the universities, the courts, the media, and a major political party."

They include, first, a "tremendous independence of mind. You'll take for granted that the most powerful institutions in our society can be wrong about the most basic things."

Second, you develop, according to Prof. Pakaluk, "moral leadership. You'll see that most people are not pro-life because they refuse to make up their minds clearly and stand by principle. You'll resolve not to be like that."

Third, you'll develop a "well-grounded patriotism. You'll find a fellow spirit in Abraham Lincoln, who had to deal with slavery just as you have to deal with abortion. You'll study foundational documents such as the Declaration of Independence, which speaks first of all about the right to life."

Fourth, he writes, "you'll acquire a deep sense of human folly and the nature of evil. ...With a sense of tragedy, you'll recognize that well-meaning people and institutions (for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court) can go astray through folly and arrogance."

And I do think that, Planned Parenthood-types to the contrary notwithstanding, most people are well-meaning and HAVE gone "astray through folly and arrogance." Put another way, they have stumbled into darkness, largely because the leading cultural authorities in our country no longer illuminate with the truth.

No small part of our task is to get institutions such as the major media and academia back on the beam. That's what pro-life campus groups are doing, often with the assistance of NRLC's Outreach Department. (The wonderful person on staff who handles this is Holly Smith. Holly can be reached at hsmith@nrlc.org)

I concur with Prof. Pakaluk's conclusion: often "quick change on a large scale" follow, once a "tipping point" is reached. To be sure I cannot predict WHEN the critical juncture will be reached.

But what I can say with complete confidence is that, thanks to your efforts, that day WILL come.

Please send your comments to me at dandrusko@nrlc.org.