Even Pro-Aborts Are Discovering Women Are Pro-Life

"Watered-down rhetoric may ease some of the public's squeamishness about abortion. But it does little to galvanize grassroots activism. The last national pro-choice march was seven years ago; NARAL's membership has declined significantly since the '92
elections."

From a profile of NARAL Executive Director
Kate Michelman in the January issue of Mirabella magazine

"For Kate Michelman, the true enemy...is the 'dangerous apathy' she sees among pro-choice supporters."

Same article

Kate Michelman is a formidable foe. Like an acrobat, she can spin reporters with one hand and pummel under-enthusiastic pro-abortion politicians with the other at the same time she skillfully juggles the truth for syncophantic morning television program hosts.

If you watch her work, it doesn't take long to figure out that Michelman's modus operandi consists of variations on one woe-is- we mantra: everything-is-falling-apart-the-zanies-are-winning- everywhere-p.s.-send money. But that's her business. Our job is to sift the wheat from the chaff, which pays off in surprisingly useful ways.

Next issue Mary Balch will deconstruct NARAL's latest hysterical state of the states report. We could only wish 1998 was the unqualified pro-life success portrayed in "Who Decides? A State-by-State Review of Abortion and Reproductive Rights." However, because NARAL shamelessly exaggerates should not lead us to blandly minimize: The cause of unborn children did fare extremely well in many state legislatures in 1998.

In a different but related realm Michelman and her cohorts are clearly onto something when they allude/complain/whine about fatigue/apathy/complacency within their ranks. Obviously, there is some lethargy, some overconfidence. But let me quickly add, there is one catch to this analysis, which while grousing actually is intended to reassure.

By limiting the problem to energy levels and languor, the remedy remains within their control. All the Kate Michelmans need do is figure out whether, after 150,000+ miles, their vehicle needs a new engine, or whether the car is just fine and it's just that the drivers need to stop falling asleep at the wheel.

In truth, however, pro-abortionists face a much more fundamental dilemma than can be solved with a quick trip to the mechanic or a couple of No-Doz. Attitudes, which underpin behavior, are changing dramatically. I could spend the next five pages listing examples, many of which come from pro-abortion observers. Let me mention just a couple.

Item number one: Last month, the Center for Gender Equality released the results of a telephone poll conducted [get this] last July! The center is headed by the smoothest pro-abortion operator of all time, Faye Wattleton, former executive director of NARAL's fraternal twin, Planned Parenthood. The poll sampled 1,000 women 18 years and older. The title of the report was "The Impact of Religious Organizations on Gender Equality." Wattleton found the results "very disturbing." First, the strictly abortion component.

To quote the core conclusions: "Only 28% of women today believe abortion should be generally available to those who want it. Altogether, 70% favor more restrictions on abortion, including 17% who say there should be stricter limits than there currently are, 40% who think abortion should only be allowed in cases of rape, incest, or to save the woman's life, and 13% who think abortion should not be permitted under any circumstances."

The report adds, "Two years ago only 45% of women thought abortion should be outlawed or restricted to extreme circumstances, significantly fewer than the 53% who hold these views today."

Beyond that, the study found that women are religious and becoming more so; want religious organizations involved in " public discussion about the roles of women and men in society"; and increasingly believe "politicians should be guided by religious values in their decision-making." What must have really fried Wattleton was that "more than twice as many women think the [strongly pro-life] Christian Coalition works in the interest of women than think it is a threat."
All in all, women (who've always been more pro-life than men) are becoming even more opposed to abortion and more uncomfortable with a value-free public square.

Item number two: Last fall, for the sixth straight year, support among incoming college freshmen to keep abortion legal dropped. In 1990, a whopping 64.9% of incoming freshmen at colleges and universities wanted to "keep abortion legal" (a formulation which will always artificially inflate the level of real support). By 1998, that number had dropped by more than a fifth to 50.9%.

Item number three: In an interview which ran in the January issue of Mirabella (which the editor misleadingly hyped as "the first time any magazine has ever profiled her"), reporter Sara Corbett notes that "Michelman herself often avoids using the a[bortion] word until she's midway through" her speech - - preferring, one gathers, to try to enmesh it in a wider agenda that does not instantly polarize people. When Corbett labels this "watered-down rhetoric," it represents the only less-than-unctuous observation in the entire piece.

Item number four: In a very keen observation, Michelman offers grudging admiration for the DeMoss Foundation's exquisite television ads which ran under the theme "Life: What a Beautiful Choice."

"Those ads are powerful," she tells Corbett. Her eyes, we're told, " widen expressively" and Michelman adds, "We're finding in focus groups that the other side has quite effectively taken our word, choice, and co-opted it."

To Michelman, such initiatives work only because they are a clever play on words. Not so. What we express in thought, word, and deed is beginning to resonate with a much wider audience because, in our way, we are doing what National Book Award winner Alice McDermott says she attempts in her novels: "to give language to whatever is already in our hearts." Deep down people already know abortion is brutal, cowardly, and not worthy of us as a people.
When he was in St. Louis in January, Pope John Paul II likened Roe v. Wade to Dred Scott, arguing that abortion presents us with a "similar time of trial." In challenging words overflowing with insight and love, the Pope explained that "only a higher moral vision can motivate the choice for life."

I thought of that clarion call for decency and compassion when I recently read an interview with former President Jimmy Carter. In that discussion, Carter paraphrased one of the major themes of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Corinthians: "the things that never change in life are the ones you cannot see" - - justice, humility, service, forgiveness, and love.

These five qualities wonderfully encapsulate what you and this Movement are all about. When our work on behalf of the unborn exemplify these attributes, people naturally gravitate toward us and the cause we champion.

Americans have long been trapped by an egregiously misleading choice: that you are either "for" the mother or "for" the child. Because you care about both mother and child, you provide a synthesis that leapfrogs this false dichotomy. And in so doing, you offer our beloved nation a better way, a loving way.
Way to go!

dha