January 22, 2009 Reporting from Washington, D.C.
As I walked along an abbreviated March for Life in balmy weather, i was once again struck by the energy and optimism of the pro-life movement as the hundreds of thousands gathered in the nation's capitol to pray for and end to this American Holocaust and to protest the apathy of the American people and the government over this terrible evil eroding the the foundation of this country.In past years the March has started either at 14th and Constitution or at 7th and Constitution. This year the Park Service told the organizers that due to the inaugural clean-up, the March would have to start at 4th Ave. No Matter. Over 300,000 thousand people descended upon Washington D.C. and drew strength from the consistent message that the movement must take this time to build at the grass roots.
The sense of purpose was also echoed by the speakers and various pro-life leaders. All of us realize that the efforts to change hearts are not affected by the change in administration. If anything, the presence of an adversary demands a greater commitment to the life principles and the need to advance them in the public square.
More tomorrow - but for now all I can say is that there is much work to do and we need to get about doing it.
c
posted by Jakubczyk on Life @ 9:52 PM
1 Comments:
Sir,
As you allude, the right-to-life movement has always shown itself able to emotionally rebound from electoral losses (in the case of 2006/2008, an undeniable catastrophe) and/or judicial outrages (the Casey decision in 1992, in which three Supreme Court appointees, O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter, of officially “pro-life” Presidents Reagan and Bush, upheld the absolute legal abortion-on-demand effects of Roe v. Wade, while conceding that the original decision was constitutionally baseless, simply by inventing a new set of non-existent rationales). However, at this point, more than 40 years into this fundamental human rights debate, just enthusiastically re-plowing the same ground is certain to produce the same negligible (and now largely reversed) political results as have been achieved since 1973. (The early pro-life movement’s pre-Roe rearguard actions were about as successful as could have ever been expected under the circumstances, but of course The Big Lie illegally took most direct democratic action off the table.) And this reality remains immutable even with the wonderful participation of a new generation of pro-life young people; the ones you (and others) report constituted a major portion of this year’s Washington DC commemoration. But as sincerely committed as many are, just ask them if they ever remotely expect to see the day when pre-birth children’s lives are provided the forcible legal protection of the state. Given their (unfortunately, very understandable) utter disbelief in, or even understanding of, this essential basis of the entire “movement,” most “pro-life” supporters born since Roe can not be genuinely considered “right-to-life,” precisely because they have never experienced any tangible progress whatsoever toward this ideal (through overturning Roe/Doe/Casey and/or eventually passing the HLA).
So unless and until the DC “leadership” of the pro-life “movement” abandons its logically and arithmetically challenged approach to supporting politicians who never actually deliver anything (but who, undoubtedly, pay excellent lip service at cocktail parties in return for unearned votes), this generational turnover can be expected to continue so far past the prevailing 50,000,000+ corpse count that eventually no one will even pay attention to the figure anymore….
John K. Walker
Phoenix, AZ
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