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Let’s Take a Large Step Forward

Sep 25, 2014

 

By Carol Tobias, NRL President

Editor’s note. The column from NRLC President Carol Tobias appeared on page three of the September digital edition of National Right to Life News. The entire 38-page edition can be read at www.nrlc.org/uploads/NRLNews/NRLNewsSeptember2014.pdf

From the day the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v Wade decision, the Right-to-Life movement has had as its goal the reversal of Roe and restoring legal protection to unborn children. One day, members of the Supreme Court will recognize the grievous mistake made over 41 years ago and overturn that deadly decision.

Sometimes we take large steps forward toward that goal and sometimes we have setbacks. It would be appropriate to say that, most of the time, we take “baby steps” forward. But to underestimate their importance is to make a huge mistake.

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We know that the Supreme Court is not yet willing to overturn Roe. In the meantime, in an effort to save as many children as possible as soon as possible, and in an attempt to undermine Roe piece by piece, we have taken an incremental approach. Pro-lifers have enacted laws in many states requiring that parents, at a minimum, be notified before their minor daughter gets an abortion; required that women be given information about abortion, its risks, and the available alternatives; prevented the use of tax dollars to pay for abortion; banned abortion on unborn children who are capable of feeling pain, as well as many others pieces of protective language.

Next time the pro-abortion community pretends to speak for “women,” remember that it has opposed these reasonable protections for unborn children and their mothers, even though the laws are supported by a large majority of Americans, including women!

In the next few weeks, we have an opportunity to take another step forward. You will play an instrumental role in deciding which direction this country goes. Will we elect men and women who will work with us to protect unborn children or will those elected be men and women who don’t care about the one million babies who die each year—or worse, actually work to increase the number of dead babies?

Will the newly elected or re-elected lawmakers vote to repeal or drastically change Obamacare, and pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act? Well they pass other badly needed pro-life protections for unborn children and their mothers? The life-denying alternative is a Congress that could push for the so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act” (more appropriately called the “Abortion Without Limits Until Birth Act”), and similar legislation that seeks to increase the number of abortions and expand access to the procedure. Which one will it be?

As you remind your pro-life family members, colleagues, and friends of the upcoming elections, help them to understand this stark reality. The results of the upcoming elections in the Senate will determine whether we enough new senators to help block President Obama’s pro-abortion initiatives; his abuse of subsidizing of insurance plans that cover abortion through Obamacare; and his appointments of radical pro-abortion judges.

How active pro-lifers are in the upcoming elections can determine whether more good laws are passed and more babies are saved, or bad laws are passed, lengthening this already much-too-long dark period in our nation’s history.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that the pro-life movement should concentrate on changing hearts and minds, and stay out of politics and legislation because that just alienates people. This is a false dichotomy. We do both. We help individual women facing crisis pregnancies and begin to change the legislative environment in a more life-affirming direction.

If you don’t think abortion’s legality is important, consider this. If you talk to women who have had an abortion, or read their stories, you will hear many of them say, “If it hadn’t been legal, I wouldn’t have done it.”

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Most state governments run public relations campaigns about why we shouldn’t drink and drive, or why we shouldn’t speed through construction zones. But they also back it up with laws to reinforce the campaigns. Changing the law is an essential component in the larger campaign to restore respect for the right of life of unborn members of the human family. And we change the law by electing pro-life candidates to office.

Our goal is to restore legal protection to the most defenseless members of our society who are threatened by abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. We continue to work toward that end. Let’s use the 2014 elections to take a large step forward.

Categories: Pro-Lifers