What the Pro-Life Movement Needs Right Now is a Swift Kick in the Pants

So here's an article about an enormous pro-life concert taking place in L.A. which is supposedly "aimed at strengthening young people in their pro-life convictions":

Pro-Life Youth to Fill Dodger Stadium in Event Celebrating Life http://www.lifenews.com/2012/10/15/pro-life-youth-...

Forgive my typical skepticism, but this just screams "Waste of Time". Have we learned nothing whatsoever from the past 40 years of marching in Washington?

Have we learned nothing whatsoever from the past 60s years of "Christianity is fun" revivals and worship services?

Churches have been trying to sell Jesus like this for decades, and the culture has only gotten worse. Now the pro-life movement is making the same stupid mistake.

It does absolutely no good to get people all excited and emotional and energized about a cause if you then ask them to do......nothing.

If anything, it deadens our consciences because we feel like we've accomplished something when we've really just entertained ourselves.

Most of the 400,000 people who participate in the March for Life each year go home and wait on the world to change. Foolish pastors and foolish pro-life leaders have fostered this sort of behavior until we no longer even know what "taking up the Cross" means.

Even worse, I think, is the effort being put into making this event FUN. Just check out the website: http://go2bat4life.com/ . It's all focused on making the audience have a good time. One would never think there was a holocaust going on.

This year we reach 40 years of legalized child killing and we respond by Celebrating????!!!! By congratulating ourselves? What's their plan to end abortion? What are they asking people to do and sacrifice?

Music, fellowship and fun are not going to make anyone ready to go out and end abortion.

What we need is a massive move of repentance. We ought to be wailing in agony, begging God for mercy. We need an outpouring of grief.

We need to tear our clothes, roll in the dirt, pluck out our eyes, cut off our hands and wish that we'd never been born. If we knew what was good for us, we'd cry out to the mountains to fall on us and cover up our guilt. Frankly, we ought to examine the state of our own souls, because faith is supposed to produce works, not self-satisfied complacency.

We must face up to the fact that 56,000,000 kids are dead because Christians didn't care enough to defend them. We were too busy "being pro-life".

Words cannot express how sick I'm starting to feel about this thing. I'd better wrap this up until such a time as I can better articulate myself.

You can bet Walter Hoye is going to get a message asking for an explanation. Please reply with any comments you may have.

By the way, Go2Bat4Life.com takes place on my birthday. Maybe that's a sign of some sort.

Jonathan Darnel

"The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilizing the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel."

- C.S. Lewis as the demon Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters, Chapter 13

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Jonathan Darnel

I'm glad we're having this discussion. Debates like this are long overdue. I'm afraid my answer is gong to be long. I apologize in advance.

To answer Maria's question, we should respond to abortion the same way we would respond to our own friends and relatives being killed. We would work tirelessly night and day, at great expense to ourselves, until abortion was either illegal or as rare as infanticide currently is. This would mean marching in the streets every day (not just once a year), constant, massive sit-ins at abortion mills, demonstrations outside high schools and on college campuses, embarrassment campaigns launched against every single abortionist (most cherish their anonymity), pro-lifers speaking out constantly at city hall meetings, standing outside congressman's homes, determined boycotts against companies that support abortion, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

There are actually more than enough pro-life people to accomplish all these objectives. If half of us sold all our possessions and moved in with the other half so we could work as full time activists, we might even have people left over.

Does this sound outlandish? It only sounds weird because we fail to take abortion seriously. It is a radically evil phenomenon that calls for a radically sacrificial response.

The Rescue Movement of the late 80s and early 90s was a good example of this, but it died because government cracked down on the Rescuers and very few churches came to their aid. Most pastors of all denominations avoided involvement with this noble effort. It wasn't "Christian enough". Martin Luther King, Jr. talked about this sort of cowardice in his essay, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". And, as Rescue leader Joeseph Foreman noted in his book "Shattering the Darkness", most of the Rescuers were simply not willing to be arrested over and over again. The majority dropped out of active pro-life work and returned to enjoying a normal life.

Now as to Suzanne's concerns, I'm glad you mentioned the Partial Birth Abortion Ban because it is a perfect example of the sort of fake "victories" characteristic of mainstream pro-life-ism. Guess what? PBA Ban doesn't ban partial birth abortion. So long as the doc doesn't pull the kid out past the navel he can do the procedure. Most pro-lifers don't know this because NRLC has covered it up. The Hyde Amendment and Mexico City Policy are, in my opinion, nice things, but they are both more than 20 years old and since then haven't been improved upon. As for the state legislation, there are many who say such regulatory incremental-ism has done more harm than good. It permits politicians to walk the line, throwing a bone to the pro-life community while avoiding any serious commitment that might attract unwanted criticism (Romney). The elephant in the room is that after 40 years will still have abortion on demand in every state. Sure, the rate of surgical abortion has gone down, but the rate of chemical abortion might very well have increased.

And the great tragedy is that most Americans don't support abortion! They only think they do because they have no idea what it entails. I do a lot of work on street corners and on campuses, and most people have never bothered to think the issue through. They don't think it through because pro-lifers aren't bringing the message to them!!!!

Who are these thousands of people who are working to end abortion? I know many of the leaders of major pro-life groups and their staffs are tiny. ALL has about 30. SFL around 12. CBR has maybe 20 people, Operation Rescue perhaps 10 and NRLC, the grand-daddy of them all, cannot have more than 200 individuals including all the state affiliates. I suppose if you include every person who prays during the 40 Days for Life or wears red tape over their mouths on the Day of Silent Solidarity, we might get thousands of people. But really, such meager efforts are pathetic considering what we are capable of.

The American Founding Fathers drew the line in the sand over the issue of taxes. Within 10 years of King George's decision to encroach upon their rights, they had declared independence and were fighting a war to defend themselves. We flatter ourselves that we would like to have been with them, and yet here is an injustice far more grave and we've let it continue for much, much longer! Where is our shame? Where is our outrage?

Pro-life Americans live under a harmful (but very convenient) delusion that all that can be done is being done and there is nothing more than they could contribute to speed up the process. I hope to change that soon.

Thanks for reading all that.

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October 18, 2012
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Suzanne Fortin

Jonathan, this IS a very useful discussion. I'm also happy we're having it.

One reason why the mobilization you're talking about hasn't taken place is that people have kids, mortgages and other interests.

You can't fault people for living their lives. You really expect me to sell my house, incite major marital discord (cuz my hubby would not go for this) and have my kids like in a tiny apartment to fight abortion?

I'm Catholic. And what I think the world needs is a group of Catholics (Christians or anyone) who are single, whose vocation is fighting for fetal rights. THEY would get arrested, they would mobilized, they wouldn't care if they got sued, they would spend ALL of their waking hours fighting for life. If there were 10 000 people like that in the US, it would be a powerhouse.

Part of the reason why it is difficult to mobilize against abortion in the manner you're speaking of is that our institutions are pro-abortion. It's all well and good to engage in grassroots efforts, but if the institutions don't change, nothing changes.

I was thinking about the situation of abortion in Canada. The reason why abortion is legal is because doctors want it to be legal. If they don't want it to be legal, it won't be.

I guess what I'm trying to drive at is that it's more complicated than simply mobilizing and speaking out. It's not just a matter of votes. The culture of death is a cancer. It's everywhere. People being against it and speaking out won't necessarily make it go away. In Canada, most people SUPPORT the death penalty (I oppose it, but I use it by way of example) but there is no chance in hell of it being re-instated because the institutions are against it. Even if all the Canadians who supported the death penalty mobilized, nothing would happen, because all our institutions are against it. Grassroots is not enough.

This is why I'm for ALL efforts. I get why Pro-life PR can seem a bit pollyannish because there are still a million babies killed every year in the US, but notwithstanding the evil, YOU ARE MAKING PROGRESS. As a Canadian, I would love to have the crumbs of your progress.

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October 18, 2012
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Jonathan Darnel

I am in complete agreement with Suzanne's second sentence.

I am in complete disagreement with the third sentence.

Yes, Suzanne, I DO expect pro-lifers to take drastic steps to end abortion, just as I would expect them to take drastic steps to end the wholesale slaughter of any other people group.

I was...

October 18, 2012
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1 person

Suzanne Fortin

Do all people fight in a war? No. Only the soldiers. There is a homefront. We need more full-time soldiers -- more people willing to go the distance. On this point, I think we agree. The people on the homefront don't stop buying and selling to fight a war.

But institutions are not democratic. At all...

October 18, 2012
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Jonathan Darnel

Quite true. Only Soldiers do the actual fighting, but the home front is hardly a passive player. Lots of people had to make lots of sacrifices in many ways to win WWII. Not just prayer. Not just buying war bonds (equivalent to making CPC donations).

And I think we have good reason to believe th...

October 18, 2012
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1 person

Suzanne Fortin

I used to wonder why all Catholics weren't pro-life activists. And I read the passage in the New Testament about how the Church is one body with many body parts. One is an eye, another is a mouth, another is an arm. God mysteriously decides that some people are called to be pro-life activists and ot...

October 18, 2012
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3 people

Jonathan Darnel

I fear that passage (1 Corinthians 12) is often misused. Not always, but often. Paul's main point was that people who exhibit the miraculous gift of glossolalia (speaking in tongues) shouldn't lord it over those who don't.

We error if we extrapolate too much from the passage. Paul lists 8 spirit...

October 19, 2012
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St. Michael's Helper

Matthew 4:18-22

(18) While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

(19) And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (20) Immediately they left their nets and f...

October 20, 2012
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0 people

St. Michael's Helper

Matthew 19:24

(24) Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

October 20, 2012
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Carl G. Oehling

Why not follow God and be against murder? Maybe He will bless the efforts of His followers. He isn't blessing the efforts of the PersonhoodUSA. He isn't blessing the efforts of pro-life.

October 31, 2012
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