Faith on Freedom: The Audacity to Hope to Save the Unborn
Faith J.H. McDonnell
January 23, 2009
The following originally appeared in a recent Religious Liberty e-newsletter. If you would like to receive our weekly e-newsletter, click here and select "Religious Liberty."
Yesterday, January 22, 2009, was the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and of the March for Life.
If you’ve never participated in a March for Life, you’ve missed out. Some years there have been as many as two hundred thousand or more men, women, and children marching down Constitution Avenue. It is inspiring and convicting.
My first March for Life was in the mid 80’s. It was brutally cold – I think it may have been the same year as the second inauguration of President Reagan, which was the coldest on record. I was a novice at rallies and demonstrations back then. My introduction to full-fledged protests and demonstrations such as those at the Sudanese and Chinese embassies, the State Department, and elsewhere was yet to take place, so the combination of energizing camaraderie and wrenching grief at the March for Life was a new experience.
I was feeling pleased with myself for facing the freezing temperatures and inconvenience until I took a look around the gathering place. Buses that were unloading passengers named their origins as “Providence, Rhode Island,” “Steubenville, Ohio,” “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,” “Fredonia, New York,” and other places – even farther away. Families arrived pushing strollers and carriages. Deceptively frail-looking elderly men carried huge banners. I was humbled to see how thousands of people around the country were willing to make great sacrifices of their time and their finances to witness for the sanctity of human life.
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Over the years since that time the pro-life movement has made some great advances. There have been pro-life members of Congress who have worked ceaselessly and faced tremendous hostility on behalf of the unborn. And there have been some presidential administrations that have been friends to the pro-life movement. One such administration was that of George W. Bush. Just days before leaving office, President Bush signed the Presidential Proclamation of National Sanctity of Life Day 2009. In it, President Bush said:
The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.
There is fear that all of those advances will be lost in the new administration of President Barack Obama. During his presidential campaign, Obama expressed his support for a broad range of goals sought by pro-abortion activists, including appointment of Supreme Court justices committed to extending Roe v. Wade, public funding of abortion, inclusion of abortion mandates in "health care reform" legislation, and enactment of the “Freedom of Choice Act.” And now both houses of Congress have a pro-abortion Democrat majority.
But there is one way that the pro-life movement has advanced that cannot be taken away no matter how many pro-abortion officials swell the ranks of the Obama administration, or sit in the houses of Congress. More and more, we see young people – high school and college age – ardently pro-life. They participate in the March for Life, they stand in silent prayer and protest at the Supreme Court, they open the eyes of their friends to the evil of abortion, and together with pro-life advocates of the generations before them, and they are learning to open their hearts to young women in crisis pregnancies. And they are bringing hope and mercy to those young people, both women and men, who have lost a child through abortion.
The witness of these young people is particularly compelling and persuasive. Why? Because they are the survivors.
Last summer I met a group of young men and women from the pro-life activist group Survivors that were witnessing for life on the boardwalk at Venice Beach, CA. They reminded me that anyone born after 1972 is a survivor in a culture of death that has taken the lives of 53,167,075 babies (as of 1/22/09 4:59 PM). They have lost a third of their generation to abortion. The memorable message on one of their t-shirts shows two people on surfboards accompanied by one empty surfboard. It says, “One third of our generation never made the ride.”
Whereas the pro-abortion movement seems largely to be comprised of middle-aged, post-menopausal angry women, the pro-life movement is vibrant with life, and strengthened by young people who understand that but for the grace of God, they may have been a “product of abortion.” Is it any surprise that they are quite passionate about life?
So in spite of a climate in Washington, DC that is growing less friendly to the unborn, these young pro-life activists will prove true President Bush’s words in his recent proclamation, “History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.” We still have the audacity to hope that we will save the unborn.