Posted on 06/06/2003 10:32:33 AM PDT by Cathryn Crawford
The Pro-Life Movement's Problem With Morality
Exclusive commentary by Cathryn Crawford
Jun 6, 2003
Making claim to being pro-life in America is like shouting, “I’m a conservative Christian Republican!” from your rooftop. This is partly due to the fact that a considerable number of conservative Christian Republicans are pro-life. It’s hardly true, however, to say that they are the only pro-life people in America. Surprisingly enough to some, there are many different divisions within the pro-life movement, including Democrats, gays, lesbians, feminists, and environmentalists. It is not a one-party or one-group or one-religion issue.
The pro-life movement doesn’t act like it, though. Consistently, over and over throughout the last 30 years, the pro-lifers have depended solely on moral arguments to win the debate of life over choice. You can believe that abortion is morally wrong, yes, and at the appropriate moment, appealing to the emotions can be effective, but too much time is spent on arguing about why abortion is wrong morally instead of why abortion is wrong logically. We have real people of all walks of life in America – Christians, yes, but also non-Christians, atheists, Muslims, agnostics, hedonists, narcissists - and it’s foolish and ineffective for the pro-life movement to only use the morality argument to people who don’t share their morals. It’s shortsighted and it’s also absolutely pointless.
It is relatively easy to convince a person who shares your morals of a point of view – you simply appeal to whatever brand of morality that binds the two of you together. However, when you are confronted with someone that you completely disagree with on every point, to what can you turn to find common ground? There is only one place to go, one thing that we all have in common – and that is our shared instinct to protect ourselves, our humanness.
It seems that the mainstream religious pro-life movement is not so clear when it comes to reasons not to have an abortion beyond the basic arguments that it’s a sin and you’ll go straight to hell. Too much time is spent on the consequences of abortion and not enough time is spent convincing people why they shouldn’t have one in the first place.
What about the increased risk of breast cancer in women who have abortions? Why don’t we hear more about that? What about the risk of complications later in life with other pregnancies? You have to research to even find something mentioned about any of this. The pro-life movement should be front and center, shouting the statistics to the world. Instead, they use Biblical quotes and morality to argue their point.
Don’t get me wrong; morality has its place. However, the average Joe who doesn’t really know much about the pro-life movement - and doesn’t really care too much for the obnoxious neighbor who’s always preaching at him to go to church and stop drinking - may not be too open to a religious sort of editorial written by a minister concerning abortion. He’d rather listen to those easy going pro-abortion people – they appeal more to the general moral apathy that he so often feels.
Tell him that his little girl has a high chance of suffering from a serious infection or a perforated uterus due to a botched abortion, however, and he’ll take a bit more notice. Tell him that he’s likely to suffer sexual side effects from the mental trauma of his own child being aborted and he’ll take even more notice. But these aren’t topics that are typically discussed by the local right-to-life chapters.
It isn’t that the religious right is wrong. However, it boils down to one question: Do they wish to be loudly moral or quietly winning?
It is so essential that the right-to-life movement in America galvanize behind the idea the logic, not morality, will be what wins the day in this fight, because sometimes, despite the rightness of the intentions, morality has to be left out of the game. Morality doesn’t bind everyone together. The only thing that does that is humanness and the logic of protecting ourselves; and that is what has to be appealed to if we are going to make a difference in the fight to lessen and eventually eliminate abortion.
Cathryn Crawford is a student from Texas. She can be reached at feedback@washingtondispatch.com.
Wow. I'm sorry, but that sort of apathy is precisely what is killing babies.
Well you turned out to be a homosexual so I don't have a lot of confidence in how you were raised.
You haven't been to one of my parties! WHOO HOOOOO Pass the Thesaurus! YAHOOOOO!! glugglugglug (Evian water) WHOOO HOOOO! HOW DO YOU SPELLCHECK ON THIS PROGRAM!! (Laughter, clinking glasses)
I knew you'd say that.
The amount of bliss in your life must be extraordinary.
That's interesting that you say that. Have you ever watched that show "Six Feet Under" on Showtime? They had an awesome episode a few weeks ago. One of the main characters, Claire, is this art student who gets pregnant by her ex-boyfriend. She decides to have an abortion, and they actually showed the whole process! Along the way they made so many awesome jabs at the hypocracy of the pro-abortion movement:
1. They film her going to Planned Parenthood, making an appointment. The nurse (or whatever she is) suggests Claire find someone to bring her home afterwards since it is a rough procedure and she will feel sick afterwards. Claire is nonchalant, asserting, "Oh, I'll just take a cab."
2. Back at home, Claire does ponder asking someone from her family to take her, but everyone is busy (plus she doesn't want to tell anyone about the upcoming abortion). Finally at the last minute, her brother's ex-girlfriend happens to visit and asks her "What's up?" Claire blurts out, "Oh I'm going to have an abortion today, want to take me?" again revealing the nonchalance.
3. So now they are at the clinic waiting. A nurse comes out, and reads out six names, and six girls file in, go to some locker room, and all don surgical gowns and get ready for the abortion. The way they filmed this scene, you really got the impression that this abortion thing is like some factory line, where they do these things in batches. My fiance pointed out, "And they don't think abortion is used at a form of birth control???"
4. So then they actually have a scene where Claire is hooked up, put on the table, with her legs spread, falling asleep as the doctor ducks between her legs to begin the procedure. I don't know how many other people would be bothered by this, but seeing the scene where the abortion was about to be done was grotesque to me.
5. The next scene is very unsexy indeed. You see the same six girls in a row in post-op, (again think factory line), all throwing up and generally feeling pretty sick and looking pretty crappy. Abortion is not as glamourous or simple a procedure as you'd think!
6. Then as Claire and her friend leave the clinic, passing by the waiting room, you see the nurse come out again, calling yet another six girls to the factory line. (Another dig to those who think abortions are rare and only performed in serious situations. You really got the sense that getting an abortion was about as trivial as ordering a BigMac from McDonalds!)
7. So then Claire goes home, still feeling sick. There is some reference to her still feeling nauseous and (sorry guys) "changing her pad," making people realize that you bleed afterwards and that it is not a simple procedure. (More gross stuff.)
8. So then in another episode you see Claire playing with her baby niece, and she starts staring off into space, and you realize she feels guilty about the baby she killed.
9. In the last episode, there is this scene where she visits "heaven" (or something like it), and meets some of her dead friends, including her father. She runs into another friend as well as a tiny little baby boy. She looks at it, and realizes, that's her kid, and her friend tells her, "Don't worry, I'll take care of him."
But the last two scenes were cool because it showed that many women do realize that they killed their own child, and feel grief for it. Perhaps there are a lot of girls who have abortions, but don't realize they killed a person until afterwards (like Claire). So maybe this show will make them realize this before it is too late.
He's not admitting so much as bragging....
The crux of the issue is, how can the prolife movement more effectively convince others to agree with it? Or stated slightly differently, how can the prolife movement sell others on the value of prolife principles?
There is a general sales principle that says to speak the language of your target audience. If one wants to speak to a Frenchman, one should speak French. Even if the target understands more than one language, the target will be most accepting of arguments presented well in their native tongue. If one wants to convince those who are not currently part of the prolife movement, one should speak their language. Making religious arguments to an atheist or an agnostic is simply not going to work. That is common sense, which naturally means that too often it is not followed. Religious conservatives would be more effective prolife advocates if they kept this in mind.
There is another aspect of this, however, that can only be the onus of those in the prolife movement who are not Religious conservatives. Those who are prolife for reasons other than religion are going to be more naturally conversant in the other reasons for being prolife, since those are their reasons. Going back to the sales analogy, if a software shop wants to sell a web application solution to a customer, they will find the greatest chance of success sending someone who has a background in web applications than if they send someone who does not. The groups you identified outside of the religious prolifers need to have leaders step forward and become more forceful advocates. Religious prolifers can learn to speak the lingo of the non-religious, but they will always be faced with the handicap of being 'different' than those they are trying to sway. People are generally more succeptible to persuasion from their own than from outsiders.
It isn't glamourous??? I thought it was so trendy and hip that I was planning to have one, and I'm a man!
Hey, you'd brag too, if you worked as hard on it as I did!
You show up entirely to be rude?
How shocking.
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