Pro-Life or Anti-Abortion (pro-birth)? A 3-part series.

Part Two....

What were the strategies? How did right-winged fundamentalists hijack the Pro-life movement? How did they redefine it? Can the movement be reunified under the banner of Unconditionally Pro-Life?

Strategies shifted in the abortion debate and the pro-life movement in general. While some of us began to attack the justifications for the culture of death: expediency, national interests, and personal stigma, desperation etc. Others decided to broaden the appeal for new soldiers in the fight against abortion.

Those in the leadership of the anti-abortion flank of the once unified pro-life movement began recruiting our Protestant Evangelical brothers and sisters. These newcomers to the cause did not necessarily hold to the historic teachings of the Church regarding the dignity of all human life. They were, however, already waging their own battle in the area of morality specifically against gay rights and especially against gay marriage. Despite the fact that many of these same Protestant Christians do not hold to the guidelines of the Catholic Church on things like “artificial” contraception and “artificial” conception , opposition to the death penalty or unjust war, not to mention their often voiced disdain for the Catholic Church in general, they needed the help of the Catholic Church to bring back a more Puritan national morality. At the same time, the Catholic, anti-abortion, pro-lifers needed the Evangelical’s support in the fight against legalized abortion. Compromises were made on both sides: The Catholics had to tone down the “artificial” contraception and artificial conception (like in-vitro) issues and ratchet up anti-gay rights issues. In order to court the help they needed they became strange bedfellows with those who in some cases, outright condemn the Catholic Church on many levels and who do not hold to John Paul II’s call to be: unconditionally pro-life, from natural conception to natural death. Including the fight against gay rights as a pro-life issue, alienated many of us who were veterans in the pro-life movement—it just didn’t add up. In addition, the angry rhetoric used by anti-abortionists to insist that only “innocent” life is worth defending, ran against what we had always been taught.

The anti-abortion movement found political clout by joining with their Protestant friends who had already established the “Moral Majority” and had effectively co-opted the Republican Party. They thought they had everything they needed. Although both sides compromised to make this happen, in my opinion, those with a traditional, more comprehensive Catholic world view lost the most: a consistent and coherent basis for their fight, that being that all life is sacred. When the (anti-gay, subjugated women) Moral Majority, the (nationalistic, war mongering, Calvinist) Republican Party and the “new” Prolife movement joined forces, some of us were forced for the first time to rethink our original edict as pro-lifers: from conception to natural death and to form new strategies and in some cases choose new bedfellows as well.

Part Three:How do we (the unconditionally pro-life) take back the pro-life movement?