The Rebirth of the Pro-Life Movement

It’s time for new leadership in the pro-life movement and, thankfully, that leadership is now beginning to rise up all across America. This is happening under the banner of the Personhood Movement, which recognizes the personhood of all unborn children and the fact that they are therefore protected by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.

For more than three decades, the existing leadership of the pro-life movement has pursued a strategy of regulating abortion rather than ending it. Instead of insisting on our nation’s most important founding principle of the protection of the unalienable God-given right to life for all, by forgetting this timeless principle upon which our liberty is premised, they have thereby ceded the moral, political, and legal battle to the enablers of the abortion industry.

This failed strategy is now putting our posterity further into danger’s path. President-elect Obama has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which will, in effect, nullify any incremental pro-life law or regulation that has been passed over the last 35 years. While National Right to Life and their compromised allies will never acknowledge it, this would leave these “conventional” pro-life organizations no alternative but to embrace Human Life Amendments. Unfortunately, NRLC has consistently worked to undermine these efforts in every state where one has been introduced.

Right to Life of Michigan is one of the largest and most highly esteemed conventional pro-life organizations in the nation. And yet, they opposed Michigan’s Human Life Amendment in 2006. From the Grand Rapids Press, March, 2006:

“Rather than try to directly ban abortion, Right to Life of Michigan wants to put its resources into electing a U.S. senator and governor who oppose abortion,” said Paul Miller, chairman of the group's PAC.

Predictably, since then, they have lost all of it: the Human Life Amendment, one race for Governor and two for the U.S. Senate. In fact, one of these U.S. Senate candidates lost his RLM pro-life endorsement precisely because he supported the Human Life Amendment petition drive.

Let’s fast forward to today. In Michigan, RLM prides itself on being an 800-pound political gorilla. How did this political powerhouse fare in the 2008 election? Let’s take a look:

1. They lost 17 State Representative seats.
2. They lost 12 Circuit or District Court judges.
3. They lost one position on the Wayne State Board of Regents.
4. They lost the University of Michigan Board of Regents.
5. They lost one position on the Michigan State University Board of Trustees.
6. They lost one position on the State Board of Education.
7. They lost an incumbent Michigan State Supreme Court Justice.
8. They lost two incumbent U.S. Congressmen.
9. They lost the U.S. Senate race.
10. They lost the presidential race.
11. They lost the fight against Proposal 2, which legalizes and funds embryonic stem cell research.

These so-called “leaders” have now proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that their supposed pragmatism is really nothing more than unprincipled shortsightedness. Their total ineffectiveness, their complete irrelevance to anything real, is now apparent to all.

Proposal 2 passed because of these people’s lack of conviction and focus on the true crime of embryonic stem cell research: it kills human beings, persons who have just as much right to live as anybody else. A mountain of money was used, not to make the case for preserving the integrity of America’s most precious principles, but instead focused entirely on money issues. The true stakes were obscured by their trivialization of the most important moral issue of our time.

Had they shown a human face, represented by the thousands of living “snowflake babies,” those children who had formerly been frozen embryos but who were adopted out and given life, as a comparison with the sterile medical term, “stem cell research,” the results would have likely been far different. This doesn’t even take into account the huge amount of money that RLM, through its political arms, spent trying to elect a man who ran ads in the recent election promising to spend millions more of the taxpayers’ dollars on life-destroying embryonic stem cell research: Senator John McCain.

The extent to which Right to Life of Michigan is willing to play all political sides was best conveyed by the Michigan State Senate Leader, Mike Bishop (R) when, in 2004, he and his pro-abortion Democrat opponent received a co-endorsement from RLM.

“For me, the issue of life is a core conviction not subject to the whims of political expediency. I stand by my votes for life and with those who supported me, but I cannot stand up for an organization, which through a co-endorsement, makes a mockery of the principles and ideals upon which the organization was founded. If a candidate with a 92% approval rating from Planned Parenthood is as worthy of endorsement as the candidate with a 100% pro-life voting record, then something is fundamentally flawed in the way that organization chooses their endorsements. Then again maybe it is a wake-up call for the grassroots supporters to reevaluate who their leaders are.”

But there is a new day dawning. We have been inspired this year by the courageous efforts of those in Colorado who worked tirelessly to put their Personhood Amendment, which recognizes the unalienable right to life of all from the moment of fertilization, on the ballot. Their efforts resulted in the gathering of more than twice as many petition signatures as required to do so. While the effort did not succeed at the ballot box this time, there is new momentum all over the nation to introduce and pass Personhood and Human Life Amendments. One of the brand new organizations founded to help in these efforts, Personhood USA, cites 16 states that already have initiatives underway.

So all is not lost. New leadership brings with it new hope. Those of us who believe that the right to life is unalienable shall continue to pursue the protection of unborn children through the ratification of Personhood Amendments, state by state. For the sake of our babies, let us hope and pray that the compromised leaders of the past come to their senses and begin to do what is right. Regardless of whether they do or not, we are going forward, with or without them.

Judy Zabik is spokesperson for Flint Area Right to Life and Black Americans for Life (http://www.FlintRTL.com) in Flint, Michigan, Board member of Genesee County Republican Party, Treasurer for Alan Keyes for President (http://www.alankeyes.com), and Treasurer for America’s Independent Party National Committee (http://www.aipnews.com).

So, you want me to do your work for you? Okay, here’s one example below. And if you are really serious about finding out about societal repentence, you will go buy a book about Finney as I suggested.

Charles P. Bush, a native of Rochester converted during the revival, later remarked:”The whole community was stirred. Religion was the topic of conversation in the house, in the shop, in the office and on the street…Grog shops were closed, the Sabbath was honored, the sanctuaries were thronged with happy worshippers…There was a wonderful falling off of crime. The courts had little to do, and the jail was nearly empty for years afterward.”

Historians say of the Rochester revival that “the place was shaken to its foundations.” More than 40 of the new converts entered the ministry and at least 1,500 revivals broke out in other towns as a result of Rochester. To his credit, Charles Finney gave God all the glory:

http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/ChurchAndMinistry/ChurchHistory/Charles_Finney_A_Nations_Character_Redefined.aspx

Wow, you really are lazy. This is the last time I’ll do your work for you:

“Previous to the great revival which took place on the continent of America, before the middle of last century, certain men there had correspondence with a number of praying men on your side of the water. President Edwards wrote, setting forth the state of religion in New England, and requesting a union of prayer between the brethren there and those in Scotland. They entered into a solemn covenant to pray for the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and they had not prayed long before the Holy Ghost was poured out, and Whitfield and others were sent into the field to promote the work as preachers. That revival, as history informs us, resulted in the conversion of thirty thousand persons in the United States....

... That revival had very many of the characteristics of the present movement, and its antecedent was a great spirit of prayer, on both sides of the Atlantic, for the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. In the United States, to say nothing of the revivals that occurred all along locally for a great many years, from 1821 along to 1830, and 1835, particularly up to 1830, revivals were scattered here and there. On to 1830 and 1831, for some years a wonderful spirit of prayer was seen to prevail among Christians. Daily prayer meetings were held;ministers and laymen uniting together;and Christians of both sexes observed certain hours for closet concert prayer. This continued to increase, as I can bear witness, and I did what I could to promote it, till, in 1830, it burst out with a mighty power in the city of Rochester, and overflowed in every direction until it reached many places east and west, till Dr. Beecher remarked to me: ‘This is the greatest revival of religion that has been since the world began.’ 100,000 were converted this year in the United States. Taking the whole of that time, or perhaps from 1830 to 1835, there could not have been fewer than 200,000 that were converted....

In Rochester, Christians of all denominations;Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians; united in the work, and daily prayer-meetings and preaching were held in the different churches in succession;the meetings moving round from church to church in a circle. So much interest began to be manifested in these meetings, that information regarding them could not longer be withheld by the secular press. The facts lay too prominently on the face of society to be ignored by the secular press. They had ignored it in great measure, but a man who is a sceptic himself as I am informed, yet editor of a paper of great importance in Rochester, having a Roman Catholic reporter, sent him to take notes of the sermons every night, and they were published next morning. He also attended the prayer-meetings in the morning, I believe, and reported them. The public demanded this;it must be done;the papers must not ignore it;they must give the intelligence to the public. As soon as this was done, it aroused the masses in every town. The daily press reported the sermons, and that brought the movement into public notice. From that the revival spread in every direction. Daily prayer-meetings were commenced, which resulted in a great many others, and the awakening gave promise of becoming general. The next winter the work commenced in Boston, and became powerful. In Boston the work continued, and, I may say, increased for two successive winters. I speak from personal knowledge, as I was present. Meantime the revival of religion in the State of New York seemed to be growing in many places. In Brooklyn, just across the ferry from New York City, a daily prayer-meeting for the revival of God’s work had been held for several months. In central and western New York a minister had given himself to the work of establishing daily prayer-meetings. In 1856, in connexion with the great revival in Rochester, N. Y., a little book had been published on daily public worship as an appointment with God. This book was circulated, and stirred up the churches in many places to hold daily meetings for prayer and conference. Evangelists, east and west, were assisting faithful pastors in preaching and holding daily prayer meetings with constant and growing success, and a mighty spirit of prayer for business men;for such men, who were neglecting their souls;spontaneously burst out. Thus it increased until 1858, when the commercial crisis occurred, previous to which New York had seemed to be on such a wave of prosperity as to be the death of revival effort. Business men were confounded, and rich families were being reduced to poverty. At this time a few individuals agreed to see if they could not get up a prayer-meeting for business men, in a business part of the city, particularly near the Exchange. This was done, and done like business men. They took pains to give public notice of these meetings, as they would notify matters of business or politics. They used the appropriate means, and it was remarked almost immediately after, ‘Now God is answering prayer; this business crisis will bring about a revival.’ A great many of us felt as if the commercial breakdown were the beginning of the whole movement in the great commercial city.

The results probably some of you know. In gathering the statistics, from week to week, from different parts of the United States, it has been estimated that the conversions numbered at least 50,000 a-week; and it has been stated that over the United States, the number who have been converted cannot be less than 500,000. The revival is still spreading though it has abated in the large cities.”

http://www.gospeltruth.net/1859%20PPM_glasgow.htm

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