By Dave Andrusko
It’s like there is a timer in the pro-abortionists’ collective consciousness that goes off every few hours/days/months: hey, did we tell you that abortion is under siege and that you (millennials) better get with the program?
Such was the here-we-go-again jeremiah against pro-lifers written by Natalie Smith and published yesterday at www.policymic.com.
It’s the usual list of pro-life aggressions—laws that, for example, require that abortionists actually be in the room with the woman who is ingesting powerful abortifacients. Smith only alludes to other pro-life legislation—“one of the many similar cases”—which presumably is a reference to ultrasound legislation and the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which says you can’t abort unborn children capable of feeling pain, which takes place by no later than the 20th week, to name just two.
But her beginning (and her ending which circles around to the same conclusion) is what’s interesting:
“According to research published by NARAL Pro-Choice America, while 61% of the millennial generation identifies as pro-choice, only 21% are ‘passionately active’ on the issue.
“Meanwhile, 40% anti-choice millennials say that ‘pro-life’ values are critical for them. That intensity gap means that, when it comes to young people, the largest hurdle facing the pro-choice community isn’t winning the argument with anti-choice opponents — it’s convincing a generation born more than a decade after Roe that the argument around abortion still matters at all.”
Smith’s link is back to an interview then-outgoing NARAL President Nancy Keenan gave to Salon’s Irin Carmon. Here are the concluding two questions and answers:
“You made some controversial comments in Newsweek about millennials being less pro-choice. Some younger feminists felt like you were saying that they didn’t exist or that they were less active.
“I was not speaking about the young women who have committed their lives and dedicated enormous energy to this movement, men and women. I’m talking about that group of millennials out there under 30 who have not connected the personal to the political on this issue. They are a very large generation, there are about 76 million of them. They are pro-choice, but they don’t put the issue of protecting this decision at the top of their list. So there is an intensity gap. If you put five pro-choice millennials in a room, probably one of them would vote their pro-choice values as a very critical factor for them, but if you put five anti-choice millennials in a room, almost two of them would vote their anti-choice values [based on our research]. By 2020, the millennials will be about 40 percent of the voting population in this country.
“Do you feel like this year you started to see that engagement from millennials?
“Absolutely … [But] this generation has to also connect the relationship to their voting, their values. And I’m not sure that we’re all the way there. There’s a lot of work to be done on that front. It is not the No. 1 item on their list in terms of things to protect.”
Here are three thoughts. First, this assumes that NARAL’s numbers are correct, which I strongly believe they are not. Six in ten? Nonsense.
Second, where once being a “feminist” was seen as synonymous with being pro-abortion, that is no longer the case. Some of the very best pro-life commentary comes from pro-life feminists—and from women who have gone through an abortion.
Third, Keenan and NARAL did get one thing right for sure: the intensity factor which is on display at the annual March for Life, the state rallies around January 22, and the influx of young people educated by pro-life organizations such as National Right to Life with its internship program and NRLC’s summer “Academy.” You can’t be around them and not be uplifted by their energy and enthusiasm.
Likewise, Smith is correct on one score: Roe v. Wade is NOT “settled law.” However this is not because of the “far right” (name calling is the last refuge of the pro-abortionist) but because the American people have never subscribed to Roe’s abortion on demand conclusion.