Year in Review
Examples of Pro-Life Commitment Inspire Holiday Cheer
BY Holly Smith

In November and December National Right to Life staff members have a chance to catch our breath as we recover from a busy autumn filled with legislation, elections, and confirmation hearings, and as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with our own families and friends. This time is actually the calm before the January storm when, like you, we work long hours preparing for events to commemorate Roe v. Wade on January 22.

The end of the year is also an appropriate time to reflect on the previous year. In so doing, I was inspired by a number of anecdotes that serve as reminders that we do not labor alone and that our lifesaving work is making a difference. Here are three that encourage me.

January 22, 2005, marked another solemn anniversary of legal abortion. But at that same time there were many silver linings for me, beginning with the reassuring knowledge that we still had a president in office who would address and encourage the pro-life movement. Pro-lifers worked long and hard to re-elect President Bush. His remarks to those assembled in Washington, D.C., for the annual March for Life illustrate why. The President said,

"We're making progress in Washington. I've been working with members of the Congress to pass good, solid legislation that protects the vulnerable and promotes the culture of life. I signed into law a ban on partial-birth abortion. Infants who are born despite an attempted abortion are now protected by law. So are nurses and doctors who refused to be any part of an abortion.

And prosecutors can now charge those who harm or kill a pregnant woman with harming or killing her unborn child.
"We're also moving ahead in terms of medicine and research to make sure that the gifts of science are consistent with our highest values of freedom, equality, family, and human dignity. We will not sanction the creation of life only to destroy it."

From the President of the United States to Dave and Mary Labun of Millinocket, Maine, we saw examples of Americans promoting the right to life through their work and daily lives. You may recall that the Labuns helped save an unborn baby simply by placing a National Right to Life "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart" bumper sticker on their car.

"I usually don't like bumper stickers," Dave Labun told NRL News, "but I felt that I should put this one on."

That reluctant decision led to an amazing result when Mary Labun discovered a note on the windshield early one morning. It was from a teenage girl, who wrote that she was pregnant and scared, thinking about abortion. Passing the Labuns' house on her way to school, she saw the bumper sticker.

"My heart dropped," she wrote. "I believe God was talking to me, through that sticker, and I also believe I will never think about it [abortion] again, I'm going to keep my baby and I'm not that scared anymore." She signed the note, "God Bless, A very happy mother-to-be."

"We couldn't believe it," Dave Labun told NRL News. "Someone's life was saved!" Labun encouraged pro-lifers who have bumper stickers but don't put them on their cars to reconsider.

"Most people don't preach on street corners, but your car goes everywhere," he noted. "Who knows how many other people have seen a bumper sticker at a time they're making such a big, life-and-death decision?"

[You can order "Abortion Stops a Beating Heart" bumper stickers from NRLC by going to http://www.nrlc.org/bsodrfrm/bsorrfrm.htm, or by calling (202) 378-8842.]

Many pro-lifers throughout the country went to great lengths to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina, and particularly pregnant mothers and mothers of young children who were displaced from their homes. This next example of the commitment of pro-lifers comes from a victim of Hurricane Katrina, who was eager to get involved in the Movement.

Rebecca of Biloxi, Mississippi, e-mailed NRLC. "I would like to be involved in the Right to Life--what would be involved in starting a chapter?" she wrote. "I do think it is important to have one in this area--I also believe that RTL should be actively trying to stop people in the area from having abortions and educating them about their options. Please let me know what would be involved--I do work full time and my children are on split shifts for school since Hurricane Katrina and we lost our home, so we moved further away from their school--but it should change in the next month--so I would have a little bit more time free."

I was overjoyed that, in spite of the personal losses Rebecca and her community have endured through Katrina, she is interested in giving what little time she has to the defense of the unborn.

These Americans exemplify the quality of people that not only make up the movement, but keep us moving forward. Each advance we make means that real babies are saved and their mothers are protected from abortion. President Bush summed it up well last January:

"We're making progress, and this progress is a tribute to your perseverance and to the prayers of the people. I want to thank you, especially, for the civil way that you have engaged one of America's most contentious issues. I encourage you to take heart from our achievements, because a true culture of life cannot be sustained solely by changing laws. We need, most of all, to change hearts. And that is what we're doing, seeking common ground where possible, and persuading increasing numbers of our fellow citizens of the rightness of our cause.

"This is the path to the culture of life that we seek for our country. And on its coldest days, and one of our coldest days, I encourage you to take warmth and comfort from our history which tells us that a movement that appeals to the noblest and most generous instincts of our fellow Americans--and that is based on a sacred promise enshrined in our founding document that this movement will not fail."