"Everything changes, yet everything remains the
same." A wise teacher will observe the above. All pro-life activists are teachers,
each in his or her own way.
Public opinion and public knowledge develops and changes. Methods of
arguing the pro-life cause that were effective 10 and 20 years ago, while still valid,
nevertheless may lose some of their effectiveness. New approaches may work better.
Accordingly, let us briefly explore how we have taught in the past and how we must now
teach in the 90s.
When abortion was first legalized in the U. S. and Canada, few
people knew much about fetal development or abortion. Most objections to abortion arose
from religious beliefs. Understanding this, the most effective methods of education then
centered upon two major objectives, both of which were directly related to knowledge of
fetal development. Education in the 70s and 80s had as its primary goal convincing the
listener that this in fact was a fully living human from the first cell stage.
Religious Belief vs.
Civil Rights
Opposition to abortion stemming from one’s religious beliefs,
is a very important and effective motivating factor. It, however, applies directly only to
those persons who share similar religious beliefs. The counter argument is very effective.
"If you oppose abortion because you think it’s against God’s will, I
respect that and you should live by that. However, I have a different religious belief (or
non-belief) I do not think that it is against God’s will and therefore you should
respect my approval of abortion. You should not impose your religious belief on me."
They had a point. The answer to this was as follows: "Medical,
biologic and natural science has long since proven that this is a living human from
conception. Our founding fathers, in the charter of this republic spoke clearly, stating
"we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights — of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness." The pro-life response accordingly, was very direct.
"Religious belief is a powerful motivator for the individual person. But this is not
merely a religious issue, it is primarily a human rights issue, a civil rights issue, and
our nation and other western nations, make laws to protect civil and human rights."
Fetal Development
The second major goal of teaching was equally related to the
teaching of fetal development. A typical lecturer in the first 20 years of this movement
would spend about half of his or her time giving a scientifically accurate presentation
proving that human life began at fertilization. Typically this was by slides, sometimes by
a movie and more recently by video. It would be a just-the-facts-ma’am type of a show
and tell presentation. If effective, those in the audience would be convinced that this
was human life and from the beginning. Their logical next step in reasoning was:
"Abortion obviously kills a living human. Abortion is bad.
Therefore we must stop abortion." Accordingly, teaching placed its primary emphasis
and most of its available time teaching fetal development. This worked beautifully. For
the first two decades of our movement this method of teaching educated our nations and
brought millions to a conviction that abortion was in fact a human rights issue and that
it must be stopped. Being convinced that this was a living human, millions of people came
to agree that — Abortion came to us through the law, lawmakers make laws,
lawmakers appoint judges, we elect lawmakers. This direct realization fostered what
today are major political forces, both in the U.S. and Canada.
By the late 80s and early 90s it was apparent to the pro-abortion
industry that the pro-life movement was accelerating its momentum and showed definite
signs of winning this battle. Accordingly, they took an entirely new look at the
controversy. They did extensive and expensive market research to determine what they might
do to change their approach to this issues with the goal of permanently locking in legal
abortion in our time. From their research, focus groups, etc. several facts became
apparent:
1) The industry renewed its commitment to never talk about the
passenger inside of the woman. They realized that when they debated the fact of whether or
not this is a baby, they consistently lost and pro-life teaching was consistently
effective. Ultrasound and other medical advances played a major part in confirming this.
Their conclusion was to never talk about what is inside of her. 2) The second conclusion
was that pro-abortion forces should quit arguing about abortion itself. They recognized
that when the facts of abortion was debated, the pro-life side consistently won.
3) They changed the question. Unable to win debating the issue as
they saw it on pro-life terms, they cleverly changed the question. They changed it from
"Is abortion right or wrong"? to "Who decides, the woman or the government?
We believe that the government should stay out of this very private matter. The real
question here is about a woman’s right to choose." It takes only a moment to
realize that this is an entirely different question. Over a period of several years, by
paid advertisements, by all pro-abortion leaders using the same party line, and by the
enthusiastic cooperation of the liberal media, they largely succeeded in changing the
terms of the debate.
Political Impact
Many political candidates were led to believe that the sleeping
"pro-choice giant" had awakened and would now sweep all before it. Judging this
to be a turning of the tide, many politicians across the country, who had been nominally
pro-life, now became openly pro-abortion. They jumped to the side they perceived to be
winning. With this there was a loss of pro-life political strength.
Counter Reaction
But the field of battle did not remain static. In the early 90s,
largely through the newly formed Life Issues Institute, your authors and others
devised a counter strategy. Answers to the pro-choice argument were developed and
disseminated. But this was not enough. A thorough going re-evaluation of the situation was
need-ed. This was accomplished using, as they had done, market research. What was revealed
was that there had been, within a few years, a tidal change in public opinion. As noted
above the logic had been: "I am convinced that this is a living human from
conception, that it is a human rights issue, and that abortion kills babies. Therefore
abortion is wrong and we must work to stop it." This had changed to "I am
convinced that this is a living human from conception, I believe that abortion is wrong, I
would not support it or have one myself. But, I am also convinced that a woman has the
right to chose to have an abortion and therefore I will not seek laws to abolish it."
Simply stated, the change was as follows. Only a few years ago, when a person was
convinced that this was a baby, they then concluded that abortion must be stopped. Now,
because of the "pro-choice" argumentation, even though they know it’s a
baby, that person now says that abortion should be allowed. This held potentially
catastrophic effects. What was to be done?
What To Do
Our market research went on to reveal the following. About 25% of
people hold strong pro-life views. A narrow 25% are weakly or strongly pro-abortion. There
remain almost 50% of the general public, which by its own admission feels that they have
not yet formed a firm conviction on the abortion issue. Almost four-fifths of this
"conflicted middle" admits that this is a baby, that abortion kills a baby, and
that abortion is wrong. But, about two-thirds of that same group also believe that
a woman has a right to choose to have one. Further research demonstrated that this
conflicted middle generally has a rather negative opinion of pro-life people. To take it
to its extreme they believe that we are right-wing religious zealots that we shoot
abortionists and burn down clinics, that we are fetus-lovers and care little for the woman
after she delivers. Coloring everything in terms of public opinion we discovered that a
significant percent of the general public feels that pro-lifers are not compassionate to
women. Because of this, many of them are turning a deaf ear and are no longer listening to
us. Therein lies our challenge.
Compassion
Further research and educational test marketing revealed that
therein also lay the solution to countering the pro-choice argumentation. Pro-lifers, far
beyond others in our culture and certainly beyond abortion proponents, are compassionate
to women. What is needed, therefore, is to shout from the housetops the details of the
pro-life movement’s obvious compassion for women. When this is done, the folks in the
middle once again listen to us. Herein lies the educational strategy needed for the coming
years. This has led to the title of this book. It is a one-liner that has proven its
effective-ness in countering and reversing their "pro-choice" argumentation.
Love Them Both?
