GET READY FOR 2004

The 2004 presidential election is more than a year away, but pro-lifers better get ready. The September column informed you about elaborate plans by well-funded groups "to defeat Bush and 'elect progressive officials at every level in 2004,' targeting 17 key states," as one of them declared. As the primary election and nomination process in the Democratic Party is currently constituted, only a candidate strongly favoring abortion rights can expect to be that party's presidential nominee.

The September issue of NRL News also brought a lengthy report by NRLC's Federal Legislative Director Douglas Johnson about old myths and lies relating to partial-birth abortions being recycled by the mainstream press. As the likelihood grows that a federal partial-birth abortion ban will be signed into law by President Bush, the tactics of the pro-abortionists and their helpers in the media are becoming more desperate. So it's back to the old lies.

The falsehoods about partial-birth abortions aren't the only myths and lies that are being recycled. I have already seen the first signs of other old and worn misrepresentations of the pro-life movement being re-polished for public presentation. Elections must be around the corner.

Again we are being accused of not being "really" pro-life but only anti-abortion. And if we were "truly" pro-life we would work for a broad range of social justice issues in the spirit of the "seamless garment," etc. Because these charges are so nonsensical and tiresome we are tempted to ignore them, but in the climate of an election such charges do harm because they provide cover for the Ted Kennedys, Patrick Leahys, and Tom Daschles of this world. So they must be refuted whenever they are raised.

National Right to Life Committee and its state affiliates are committed to the legal and constitutional protection of all innocent human life. We concentrate our efforts on the protection from abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. NRLC and its state affiliates have worked in all these areas of concern through education, legislation, litigation, and political work through our respective political action committees. Any competent and honest observer of our work must come to the conclusion that we are, in fact, pro-life and not merely anti-abortion.

Abortion, of course, is the overwhelming problem in the "culture of death"--although euthanasia is fast moving up the ladder, as the European experience suggests. Given the enormous death toll by abortion, it is no surprise that our efforts are most visible in this area.

When our opponents refer to the "seamless garment" of social justice concept they imply that it is improper for us to concentrate on a narrow set of issues. They want us to address "the other issues," too. The "other issues," however, are quite numerous.

If we were to treat the right to life as just one of equally important issues covered by the "seamless garment," we would be guilty of an unacceptable simplification. The right to life constitutes the core fabric of the "seamless garment." Without this core fabric the garment disintegrates. Without life the other rights "endowed by our Creator" cannot be enjoyed. The aborted child has no need of the other "social justice" provisions of the "seamless garment." Because the right to life is the fundamental right, it is entirely proper for us to concentrate our efforts on it. It is odd that the right-to-life movement is again and again accused of being "single-issue" oriented, while any number of "progressive" organizations may be so without being criticized. It is even odder that being "single-issue" on a fundamental issue is bad, while being single-issue on a lesser one is not.

It pays to recall Cardinal Bernardin's motivation for proposing the "seamless garment" concept. His point was to convince "pro-choice" politicians, especially the Catholic variety, that the right to life should be their concern because they claimed to be for social justice. The Cardinal's good intentions were turned on their head: Instead of turning pro-life because of the teachings of the "seamless garment," Catholic and non-Catholic "pro-choice" politicians alike are using the "seamless garment" as an excuse for not being pro-life because they vote "right" on "the other issues" that affect life. For them the "seamless garment" contains no common thread. For them it is only a patchwork of "issues."

One should take the Cardinal's own words seriously: "Human life is the condition for enjoying freedom and all other values. Consequently, if one must choose between protecting or serving lesser human values that depend upon life for their existence and life itself, human life must take precedence. Today the recognition of human life as a fundamental value is threatened. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of elective abortion" (from a statement entitled "Deciding for Life," issued on Respect Life Sunday, 1 Oct 1989). Do the pro-choicers conclude from this that the author of the "seamless garment" concept himself was narrowly "single-issue"?

There is a common confusion about the "seamless garment" concept. The "seamless garment" concept is indeed broad, as it should be because it is addressed to politicians who by the very nature of their job must deal with a broad range of issues. But that does not mean that civic organizations must at all times be equally broad in their concerns. Within the broad range encompassed by the concept of the "seamless garment," there is a hierarchy and a structure. There is life ("the condition for enjoying freedom and all other values") and then there are the "lesser" values. It is, therefore, completely inappropriate to demand of an organization like NRLC that it be active in all these concerns. Levels of taxation and government spending, for example, are certainly worthy of debate in the context of social justice but we need not make them our issues.

The complaint about our being "single-issue" and supposedly in violation of the "seamless garment" concept is typically raised by someone of a "progressive," if not outright "pro-choice," persuasion. It is the result of an inability to make distinctions and wishful confusion about what the "seamless garment" concept really means--or it is just plainly malicious.

You can count on these false charges being hurled at us during the upcoming campaigns. Don't ignore them, refute them.