What Does the New Prolife Movement Look Like in Action?

What Does the New Prolife Movement Look Like in Action? December 5, 2016

This past weekend I was informed by a reader I voted for Obama.  It was determined that I must have done so (despite the fact that I did not) because I was a “Utopian” who thought that reducing pressure on women to abort was a good idea in addition to working to overturn our permissive abortion laws.

Naturally, it is not at all utopian to imagine that overturning Roe and completely outlawing abortion in all fifty states is just around the corner.  That’s just cold common sense.  But actually believing the Church that human life is to be preserved from conception to natural death?  Wild-eyed socialism.

When I pointed out that I had not voted for Obama and was simply restating the Church’s teaching, I received a petulant demand to give an example of what I meant by this preposterous “reduction of pressure to abort”.

As it happens, Texas Republicans did me the favor of demonstrating my point by, in their utter passion for human life from conception to birth, voting to kill Medicaid funding for kids with disabilities–ten days before Christmas.  These guys, Good Christian Prolifers all, just committed an archetypal act of showing how the Old Prolife Movement *claims* to care about the dignity and sanctity of human life, but in fact invests its time and energy punishing the poor on behalf of the rich and hiding behind the unborn as human shields to do it.  And where are the leaders of the prolife movement as the Texas prolife GOP says “If the poor be like to die, they had better do it and help decrease the surplus population”?   Where are any of the voices who are supposed to speak out on behalf of the most defenseless in our society?

We hear them telling us to vote Republican.  We hear them say, the day after an election, that they will “hold their feet to the fire.”  But after that, we hear either silence (which implies consent) or we hear active support for and defense of the people who do such things.

The New Prolife Movement has a much simpler approach: respect human life from conception to natural death and defend the vulnerable least of these not only when they are in the womb, but throughout their lives.  Because that’s what Jesus said to do.


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