Last-Minute Efforts Will Be Decisive

By Jacki Ragan
NRLC State Organizational Development Director

After eight years of the most relentlessly pro-abortion administration our nation has ever known, Americans in 2000 chose a man as firmly pro-life as Bill Clinton (and Al Gore) was pro-abortion. But George W. Bush's triumph, as crucial as it was, is only half the battle.

For pro-life President Bush to be able to sign pro-life measures and defeat pro-abortion initiatives he needs not just a House of Representatives sympathetic to the cause of life but a United States Senate as well. That is what the 2002 elections, now only weeks away, are all about.

Pro-lifers need to be active, energized, and focused to maintain the pro-life majority in the House of Representatives. Every bit as important and requiring perhaps even more imagination, effort, and diligence is changing the composition of the Senate.

Currently, the Senate is controlled by pro-abortion Democrats by a single vote (thanks to the defection of Sen. Jim Jeffords, who switched his affiliation from Republican to Independent) and is led by a crafty pro-abortion majority leader, Tom Daschle (SD). Several important pro-life bills have passed in the House in the past two years only to languish in the Senate. Sen. Daschle's determination to squelch all pro-life measures is unrelenting.

On November 5 Americans will go to the polls. For most of the general public, the abortion issue will not rank high in their thoughts that first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. After all, it is one of "those" issues that most Americans prefer not to think about. But you do!

The outcome will be enormously important for the future of millions of unborn children. Will Tom Daschle remain Senate majority leader, free to banish pro-life bills passed in the House into outer darkness? Will the House, which has done yeoman pro-life work, remain led by dedicated pro-lifers?

Firmly in the hands of pro-abortion Democrats, the Senate Judiciary committee treats with hostility judges who will interpret the Constitution according to its actual text. Highly qualified nominees with impeccable legal backgrounds are either voted down in Committee or never even given a hearing. This will never change, as long as Tom Daschle and his fellow pro-abortion Democrats control the Senate.

Time is short. There will be many, many jobs that need to be completed in the waning hours of this election. And, because you are truly pro-life, making an all-out effort is not optional. You will do what must be done, as you have for nearly three decades.

We know that our pro-abortion counterparts have money by the barrelful. They have millions of dollars, Hollywood, academia, and most of the media.

The babies have you!

Like a huge generator producing megawatts of electricity, grassroots strength and readiness are the power source for the right to life movement. We have never and will never be able to match the pro-abortion groups' funding, but we don't need to. Not as long as each and every pro-lifer is doing his or her part.

Don't assume that just because someone you know is pro-life, he or she understands the true positions of their congressman or senator on the abortion issue. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll shows that a large percentage of people don't know where the candidates stand. (See page 5.)

Make a commitment to personally get the message to at least 25 potential pro-life voters in the next couple of weeks and then ask them to do the same. While it is true that many voters have already decided whom they are going to support, a very large percentage will not decide until they actually enter the voting booth.

We don't want to wake up November 6 thinking we haven't really done our part. I know that each of you will do what needs to be done because I have confidence in you! I know that each of you is willing to stand up and be a strong voice for unborn children-with your vote, with your work of educating other individuals, with your labor, and with your heart.

The babies are counting on us!

There is a famous saying that could stand as the pro-life movement's founding motto:

Pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on us.

Leave no stone unturned, no person uninformed. Standing strong and working together, we know we will make the difference!