The Unborn Rights Campaign

by: athanmaxwell

Fri May 13, 2011 at 15:40:46 PM EDT

It's tough to be a motivated pro-lifer over time. Being active in pro-life affairs means constantly recruiting and watching other people burn out, get tired, and try to focus on less emotionally exhausting things. We've all felt it, we all know the emotional drag. The let-downs by politicians, political parties, organizations and even churches and religious leaders. We work, act and try hard to win hearts and minds, support legal and political change, and try to work on the culture. Too often it never seems like it's changing, that the pro-life movement is stuck. It's hard to keep perspective.

Our underlying principles are true, accurate and good. We know that they're good. And we know that when presented with an honest explanation as to the "choice" of abortion or the choice of life, people resoundingly choose life.

Often, though, working within the pro-life movement means we only end up talking and persuading fellow pro-lifers. We often get into minor squabbles about tactics and divide between ourselves over minor, slight and trivial things.

We lose perspective on who our friends are, we muddy the debate by letting our frustrations override the truth of our movement.

You and I are joined by people across the country. People of differing faiths, politics and backgrounds into a movement for life. It's not directed from Washington and it's not commanded by the Vatican. There are no four-star generals of the pro-life movement. There is no one who can stop someone from taking effective action.

It is a truly grassroots movement. It is wide and varied. For as many ideas about tactics, there are divergent groups. There are elderly people in need of help, which some groups focus on. There are young high school students who need education and there are people working on that as well.

There is much to be thankful for, but our movement is not one that is well-served by the term the 'pro-life movement' - for we are broader, wider and more diverse than that. Our setbacks are felt by a wider group of people than just those within one membership organization.

The pro-life movement is an active, relevant and powerful agent of change, a modern civil rights movement.

As agents of that change we should see ourselves not just as part of a movement, but specifically as part of a campaign to end abortion. And once abortion ends the challenges don't stop, as there are enormous underlying problems to be fixed within the culture.

It's easy to lose perspective on that longer-term vision. It's tempting to look at only the one dispute one has with one organization, or one individual who makes us frustrated. It's easy to burn out when one sees only the frustrations of the moment and not the glories of the longer-term.

The pro-life movement has saved millions of children from surgical abortion. The pro-life movement has helped to stall the abortion rate and keep it historically low. The incremental laws chipping away at abortion has brought about the first ban on an abortion procedure validated by the court. Roe was decided by a 7-2 majority, and today that has changed to a slim and weak 5-4 majority.

These are not reasons to get lazy or complacent. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done. But we are part of a long-term and resilient movement, and we are engaged in a campaign to return legal rights and status to the unborn, to protect them in law and in the minds and hearts of society.

You and I are the unborn rights campaign and we are all a part of the pro-life movement.