EDITORIALS
By Dave Andrusko

The Genius of the Pro-Life Movement

As I sat down to pound out this editorial, I was reminded of something Milton Berle once said: "I have a photographic memory but once in a while I forget to take off the lens cap." Even though this ought to be engraved on my frontal lobe, sometimes I forget that the best issues of National Right to Life News are editions that cover everything from A to Z. The September NRL News, I hope you agree, fills that bill.

In a sense what I will talk about in the next 35 or 40 column inches plays off this edition's efforts to address the issues that are front and center for most pro-lifers. Put another way, what I'd like to talk about reinforces the subtext of all that pro-lifers do as shown in what we write about in the "right to life newspaper of record."

Ultimately, what are we about? In service of what goals are all the educational, organizational, and legislative initiatives that we undertake?

Pro-lifers, it seems to me, are gentle persuaders who habitually invite people to "come on in." Our before we-can-do-anything-else objective is to convince those not firmly with us or against us that defending the lives of unborn children is consonant with not only their own values but also with basic American principles of justice, fairness, and equality. Once they see how much more they have in common with us than with the likes of NARAL and PPFA, they are ready to step out of the foyer and into the living room. For reasons I cannot entirely explain, this jumped out at me when I read a political commentary produced in early September by the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

The DLC bills itself as a "centrist" organization, whose self-appointed mission is to rein in those it sees as driving the Democratic Party, electorally speaking, off a cliff. Our concern with intra-Democratic Party politics is limited but important. We are trying to help the party come in from the cold by assisting Democrats to see that slavish obedience to pro-abortion orthodoxy is not only foolish politics but also completely at odds with the party's own principles.

The DLC commentary was particularly interesting because it reminded me of something we pro-lifers do reflexively, without a second thought.

The author of the piece's ire was raised by a September 1 article that appeared in the New York Times. The gist of the Times article, written by Adam Nagourney, is that so-called "swing voters" (those not firmly entrenched in either party) "are being overshadowed by a growing and very motivated base of Republican and Democratic voters."

The right-on conclusion of the DLC commentator is that this is a "false choice between the party base and swing voters," one, alas, which "keeps turning up like a bad penny." Obviously, you have to appeal to both, more so now than ever, given that the fastest growing political affiliation is "independent."

What has that to do with us, you ask? There are many thoughtful insights in the DLC piece but none more important than this.

If "energizing the base" means that a party deploys a message "designed to work up partisans into a hate frenzy about the evil opposition," this "may or may not increase core voter turnout, and may or may not succeed in increasing one's own vote more than it increases the vote of that hated opposition. But at least in this particular era, it is pretty much guaranteed to limit the perpetrator's appeal to swing voters. And once again, the whole idea of candidates campaigning this way misses the big opportunity to send a message that can appeal both to the party core and to swing voters."

The writer perceptively labels such a suicidal strategy as a "mania for winning without persuasion."

The contrast to what pro-lifers do is, I think, self-evident. We are first and foremost about the business of winning THROUGH persuasion.

Indeed, that is the genius of the pro-life movement and why (much slower than we would wish, of course) the American public is gradually moving our way. The words and images and metaphors that pro-lifers use to energize their compatriots embody exactly the kinds of sentiments and attitudes that will also resonate with "independents" - - those who as yet have not dropped their anchor in either pro-life or pro-abortion waters.

Our benighted opposition, meanwhile, is caught in a trap of its own making. It's like they are struggling in a quicksand of their own making. The more extreme they talk, the more out-of-the-mainstream positions they take, the deeper they sink.

Let's take just a moment to cite only a few of the obvious examples. They oppose bans on partial-birth abortions, which are essentially indistinguishable from infanticide. They expect the public to believe that when a pregnant woman is viciously assaulted and her unborn baby is injured or killed, only the woman has been victimized - - that there is no second victim.

They must hold the family-unfriendly position that it's acceptable for third parties (usually older men) to spirit pregnant young girls out of states with parental involvement laws to go to states that don't so as to secure secret abortions. And they must hold their tongues when laws are proposed to treat equally every infant born alive, regardless of his or her stage of development or whether the live birth occurred during an abortion.

All of these positions are not only morally obtuse, they are also real losers, from the perspective of explaining them to deeply skeptical constituents. It isn't easy defending the indefensible.

I say all that to conclude simply with this. Pro-lifers have the wind behind their sails.

They stand for win-win solutions to crisis pregnancies and for the fundamental truth that women and their unborn children are not competitors but rather mutually interdependent parties to the most sacred bond in human culture.

It is an enviable position to be in!

dave andrusko can be reached at daveandrusko@hotmail.com