So this seems like a good time to reiterate my point that Roe<\/em> is not going anywhere, that our abortion regime is 100% the creation of GOP Court appointees, that Trump and his party of nihilist predators who have refunded Planned Parenthood six times since he took office have zero interest in Roe<\/em> except as a means to get the vote of \u201cprolife\u201d Christianist suckers, that Trump\u2019s sole interest is in the hope that Kavanaugh will protect him from Robert Mueller and bow down to a Trump Imperium<\/a>, and that\u00a0 this all means that the Old Prolife Movement shall, once again, try to kick the football and wind up flat on its back again.<\/p>\n The chronic unteachability of the Old Prolife Movement is simply breathtaking.\u00a0 It settled on slogans and mantras 35 years ago and no amount of failure or betrayal by the GOP has ever been able to persuade it to approach the problem in a new way.\u00a0 Indeed, attempts by Pope Francis and other obvious friends of the unborn to blast it off the rock of the GOP or to get it to think with the Church and embrace a Consistent Life Ethic have only made it hunker down more and cling more tightly than ever to its true Pole Star: the defense of the GOP and whatever sadistic cruelty it advocates today while it dangles the carrot of the repeal of Roe<\/em> before the most gullible demographic of suckers in the known universe.<\/p>\n And while the leadership of the \u201cprolife\u201d movement says that abortion is their focus, what they in fact do is fritter away their time, energy, and above all credibility, defending, not the unborn, but whatever their GOP paymaster tells them to instruct the faithful to approve.\u00a0 Here, for instance, is the man who desecrated an altar with a dead body to get a sex predator, grifter, liar, and kidnapping child abuser elected<\/a>:<\/p>\n What, you may ask, does apologetics for the traumatization of children and destruction of families\u2013in direct contradiction to the teaching of the pope and the bishops\u2013have to do with ending abortion (which is supposed to be \u201cthe focus\u201d)?\u00a0 Nothing at all.\u00a0 But it has everything to do with ginning up support for the dimestore antichrist in the White House and, above all, with keeping up the funding from a base that sees Trump as savior and the pope as their enemy (funding that, by the way, he has done a bang up job<\/a> of keeping in the dark<\/a>).<\/p>\n So to return to the actual focus, saving children from abortion, one important thing to do is live in reality and not in slogans.\u00a0 People interested in actually making progress do that.\u00a0 People who just want to fit in to a culture war in-group refuse to do that.<\/p>\n Take, for instance, this reply to the umpteenth iteration of the cry \u201cObama was pro-abortion\u201d offered by my ardently prolife chum\u00a0Elaine L. Larson Wickstrom:<\/p>\n He was and is in favor of women choosing to abort or not, rather than the state enforcing continuation of a pregnancy. Yes.\u00a0 Exactly.\u00a0 Very few people are \u201cpro-abortion\u201d.\u00a0 \u00a0Most people don\u2019t want the state making anybody get an abortion (except for those who supported the One Child Policy in China).\u00a0 What they want is to not be involved in whether a private citizen decides to avail herself of an abortion. Roughly 20% want that on demand and without apology.\u00a0 These are the fanatics like Michelle Wolf<\/a>, who appall normal people with their gleeful zeal.\u00a0 But even these people don\u2019t want to make<\/em> anybody have an abortion.\u00a0 They just want to give the finger to those who believe (as I do) that abortion is the destruction of innocent human life.\u00a0 Their universe of discourse simply has no room whatsoever for the unborn child (rather like the Christianist\u2019s universe of discourse has no room for the unborn children of neglected brown mothers at the border who were left to miscarry by an Administration\u2013and its heartless Christianists supporters\u2013who just do not give a rip about that class of human)<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then there are the 60% who dislike abortion and who, like Brett Kavanaugh, have no intention of overturning Roe<\/em>, much less outlawing abortion.\u00a0 They are not \u201cpro-abortion\u201d either.\u00a0 They dislike it.\u00a0 They just have no intention of telling somebody else what they can and cannot do about it.<\/p>\n I think that distinction between \u201cpro-abortion\u201d and \u201cpro-choice\u201d matters if we have any hope of furthering the prolife cause. Every time a prolife person says, \u201cYou just want to kill babies!\u201d the pro-choice person says, \u201cNo. I just don\u2019t want to tell some 15 year old kid who is terrified of\u00a0what Dad will do to her that she can\u2019t have an abortion.\u201d That\u2019s about 80% of the public the prolife movement is trying to persuade. About 80% of the public also dislikes abortion and would prefer it go away or not happen, but does not know what to say to that kid. Calling them babykillers is not the way to win hearts and minds, which is why the polling numbers don\u2019t move on this question and have not moved for years. Elaine L. Larson Wickstrom\u2019s point is that if we want the number of abortions to drop we had best focus on demand<\/strong> and not just supply<\/strong>. Seems reasonable to me.<\/p>\n The problem we face is a \u201cprolife\u201d Party totally dedicated to two things: pretending they are just about to overturn Roe<\/em> (while having zero intention of doing that) and working incredibly hard to put intense economic pressure\u00a0on the poor to kill their children. The other party, meantime, advocates, rather tepidly, policies that ease those economic pressures while urging, not a \u201cpro-abortion\u201d position, but a laissez faire<\/em> approach to abortion. They don\u2019t order<\/em>\u00a0anybody to abort (unlike, say, China) but it\u2019s their go-to pressure valve for economic stress. It\u2019s a depraved form of compassion in contrast to the GOP\u2019s even more depraved form of being \u201cprolife\u201d.<\/p>\n Understand.\u00a0\u00a0I agree that abortion is taking of innocent human life and is a grave sin. (I always have to tediously reiterate this because the Old Prolife Movement, so far from trying to make converts, is hyper-focused on burning heretics). I\u2019m<\/em> focusing on how to make abortion less frequent. That\u2019s because, in the real world, Roe<\/em> is never<\/em> going to go away in our lifetime, nor in our children\u2019s children\u2019s lifetime. (And indeed, even if it did\u2013hey!\u00a0 I\u2019m not infallible!\u2013abortion will still be legal in the majority of states.)<\/p>\n So we need to focus more on reducing demand<\/em>. And we also need to focus on methods of persuasion of our neighbors that work and not simply prolife group identity reinforcement catharses like \u201cLook at that proabort! All she wants to do is just kill babies all day long!\u201d<\/p>\n No. She doesn\u2019t. She just does not. Nor does he.\u00a0 What they want is to not have to think about abortion, which they dislike, and, above all, not have to tell somebody else what she can and cannot do in a crisis pregnancy. That\u2019s 60% of your neighbors. Calling them babykillers does nothing to change that. So do we want to do catharsis about our hatred of abortion or do we want to actually reduce the number of abortions? Our call.<\/p>\n One reader, noting the relationship between the abortion and the gun control arguments, asked, \u201cIsn\u2019t this just the same argument the Pro-2A groups make; \u201cit is a matter of the heart\u201d and access doesn\u2019t matter? Not agreeing\/disagreeing just trying to work it out.\u201d<\/p>\n No. Pro 2A groups argue that all law is futile and that we need a total laissez faire<\/em> approach to accessing gun technology since \u201csin is in the heart, not the gun.\u201d My challenge: Let\u2019s try that with really big guns called \u201cNuclear weapons.\u201d Give Kim and ISIS unfettered access to them and then just pray for God to change their hearts. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n I (and Elaine L. Larson Wickstrom) argue that legal solutions are part<\/em> of the approach to reducing our abortion rates\u00a0 just as legal solutions are part of reducing our gun slaughter rate. So sure. Shut down clinics and limit access to abortion technology. Pursue, if you like, the delusional fantasy of overturning Roe <\/em>that will never happen in our lifetime or the lifetime of our grand-children. But without looking at the economic pressures that the \u201cprolife\u201d party is putting on women to abort, the whole claim to be \u201cprolife\u201d is just wind. If you are prolife, then you address the whole <\/em>person, not just forbid them to abort and say, \u201cYou\u2019re on your own when we cap your benefits to punish you for obeying the Church\u2019s command on artificial contraception.\u201d Every day the \u201cprolife\u201d movement makes clear it is profoundly unserious when it condemns a poor family for the sin of being large. Read John Zmirak\u2019s rather creepy and obsessive fascination with calling Simcha Fisher a welfare parasite for her sin of obeying the Church on being open to life. This is the normative<\/em>\u00a0message Freak Show American Conservatives send to large families. Go swimming, but don\u2019t get wet. Obey the Church. Be open to life on pain of mortal sin\u2013and when you are, we will<\/em> punish you for needing state assistance, you parasite.<\/p>\n These people don\u2019t really<\/em> care about abortion. They care about imposing rules, punishing the weak (especially poor women), and clutching their stuff.<\/p>\n I would love to say I believe Roe<\/em> will be overturned. But I just don\u2019t. I see zero evidence that either party or 80% of the American people have the slightest interest in doing so. Meanwhile, I see a prolife movement absolutely focused on that fantasy and that alone as their excuse for not merely ignoring, but making open war on the rest of the Church\u2019s teaching on the dignity of human life. I totally agree that the absurd choice between attacking supply and demand is ridiculous. But we need to face the fact that it is up to the prolife movement to stop forcing that choice. We are the ones who claim to have access to the fullness of truth. We are the ones full of millions of Catholics who spit on the Consistent Life Ethic as though it were heresy and not an obvious statement of the truth. We prevent our own success and give proponents of abortion every reason not to trust us.<\/p>\n The smart approach is to agree with the Left wherever it agrees with Holy Church. To applaud them for defending children at the border. To side with them when they oppose the death penalty, or fight for a living wage. As Jesus says, \u201cAgree with your opponent while you are on the way with them.\u201d Find whatever can be found in common with them in the Church\u2019s teaching. That\u2019s a helluva lot by the way.<\/p>\n Then you are in a position to say, \u201cHow can you be so blind to the dignity of the weakest when you are right about so much else?\u201d It\u2019s a powerful argument. And it will save lives, which is the point, not which political tribe gets power.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brett Kavanaugh has been nominated for the SCOTUS and is on record as saying, \u201cI would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully. That would be binding precedent of the court. It\u2019s been decided by the Supreme Court. . . . \u201d and (when not even asked by Chuck Schumer to discuss anything more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[772],"class_list":["post-104770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-be-more-prolife-not-less"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net\/v\/t1.0-9\/36511215_10216577059880914_9042540264287109120_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=8147cc2286ffb867d084edd48349e960&oe=5BDA8F85\")
<\/p>\n
\nWHEN are pro-lifers going to understand it\u2019s PEOPLE we have to change, not government. Not laws, primarily.
\nYou want a pro-life world you need to work for justice \u2014for women, for the impoverished,etc.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n