Today is my late mother’s 90^th birthday. We sometimes had words. For starters, she couldn’t abide George W. Bush. Of my last visit in 2005, however, my memories are sweet. I did not know how ill she was. She told me how my dad had proposed to her. They shared a love of poetry, especially Robert Burns. Praising the Scot’s lyrical “Mary Morison, Ma Jo (My Joy),” my father said: “If you marry me, your name will be Mary Morrison.” What poetry lover could resist?

My mother told me how she’d walked across the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight during World War II. She crossed over walking arm-in-arm with her young sisters-in-law. The kicker: “I was carrying you then,” she said. We differed strongly on abortion, but I will always cherish those stories she gave me as her parting gifts.

Frieda was the mother of one of my best friends in high school. Often, I’d drop by their home, looking for my friend. I’d often linger talking politics with Frieda and her husband, Irv, even if my friend was not at home. Irv was a Democratic zone leader in our town. Frieda did not suffer from polio. She suffered from nothing. Her lively talk distracted me from the special shoes and hobbling gait that polio had inflicted on her. She was totally like her beloved FDR. He, too, used witty repartee to distract everyone from his polio. Frieda and Irv named their black Scottish terrier after FDR’s little dog, Fala, and they moved to his town of Hyde Park when they retired. Frieda and Irv instilled in me an indelible memory of the Holocaust and a deep concern for Israel.

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Yesterday, my pastor and friend Rev. Tom Joyce preached one of the finest messages on the biblical and scientific basis of the sanctity of life I’ve ever heard.  On this Sanctity of Life day, It is well worth taking 30 minutes to listen to Tom’s compelling sermon.  You can watch it here.

FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE from IBC on Vimeo.

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For years, Christians and other people of conscience have worked to undo the great damage done (53 million unborn lives lost, and countless women deeply scarred) by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling known as Roe v. Wade.

Thus far, we have been unsuccessful in correcting Roe, which is why, after nearly four decades, there are those who say we should evacuate the public square, abandon political activism, support our local pregnancy care centers, and admit legislative and jurisprudential defeat.  Focus on personal and ecclesial acts of charity, they say, but let politics alone.

Such an attitude betrays a weak understanding of the nature of political change.  Such change is almost always incremental, involving two steps forward and one step back, over and over again.  This process is tedious and sometimes discouraging.  It is also necessary and intrinsic to any system of representative self-government.

At some point in the future, a Supreme Court that honors life might end Roe’s legacy of death.  Until then, however, conservatives and champions of life will have continued opportunities to hem-in unrestricted access to abortion on demand.

For example, under President Bush, we were successful in enacting the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, a ban on partial-birth abortion, and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.  We ended U.S. funding for organizations that perform abortions in the developing world and prevented federal funding of embryo-destructive stem cell research.  Mr. Bush appointed a series of pro-life judges to the federal courts and actively fought efforts to clone human beings.  This is only a partial list.

Under President Obama, some of these have been reversed: Our country now funds groups that perform abortion abroad and subsidizes abortion at home.  The President’s most recent Supreme Court nominee was a leading advocate for the legalization of partial-birth abortion. Yet some of the progress under the previous President has not been, nor likely will be, reversed.

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One of highlights of the various 2011 state legislative sessions is the successful passage of many solid pro-life bills.  According to a recent report by Guttmacher, 80 bills restricting abortion were passed in 19 states, more than tripling the 23 passed last year.  This impressive number not only sets a record for the most life-affirming bills passed in one year, but it also more than doubles the previous record of 34 bills in 2005.

Some abortion advocates suggest that this is an example of legislators with extreme right-wing social ideologies “pushing” their agenda on the people in their state who likely do not agree with them on these issues.  They even go so far as to assert that there has been an all out “attack on women” by these state legislators. 

Now, thanks to Gallup poll data released today, we can check those assertions.  Are these pro-life legislators out of touch or do they reflect the feelings of the majority of Americans?  Are women feeling attacked and fighting back, or do they support and advocate bills that require their doctor to fully inform them of potential abortion risks, show them an ultrasound, and get parental consent for minors to receive an abortion?

Gallup says:

 “Of seven abortion restrictions tested in a July 15-17Galluppoll, informing women of certain risks of an abortion in advance of performing it is the most widely favored, at 87%. Seven in 10 Americans favor requiring parental consent for minors and establishing a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions. Nearly two-thirds favor making the specific procedure known as “partial birth abortion” illegal”

Data from this poll also affirms a striking consistency in polling data that abortion is not a man verses woman issue, with men pushing pro-life views on women who just want to make choices with their pregnancies.  To the contrary, four out of seven pro-life measures addressed in this poll scored a higher percentage of support among women than men!   

Read the Poll results in their entirety for yourself here.

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Since the Adjournment of Idaho’s 2011 legislative session on April 7^th, a wide spectrum of adjectives have been used to describe this year’s proceedings.  Governor Otter called it “very succesful,” while Senate Democrats called the session “the worst in their collective memories.”  Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis said it was “a difficult session among some of the worst economic times in memory” and Representative Erik Simpson summed it up by quoting Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

From a pro-life and pro-family perspective it is easy to agree with the Governor and call Idaho’s 2011 session very successful indeed.  According to Julie Lynde, Executive director at Cornerstone Family Council, Governor Otter signed every piece of pro-life legislation that crossed his desk.  And many of those measures were quite significant.

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Polling data affirms that more Americans now consider themselves “pro-life” than “pro-abortion” with the percentages coming in at 51% to 42% according to a Gallup poll conducted May 7th – 10th, 2009. This pro-life view was voiced at the polls last November resulting in the election of many pro-life legislatures across the states. Pledging their commitment to support the rights of the unborn child, legislators in many states have sponsored a broad range of pro-life bills. These bills range in subject matter from requiring ultrasounds, to parental consent, to stricter abortion clinic regulations, to bills that would outlaw abortions from the point at which the unborn can feel pain, but all are uniformly based on the fundamental idea that life is precious and should be protected at all stages of development.

The following maps will begin to give you a picture of the state of pro-life legislation in the states.  More maps documenting pro-life legislation will be forthcoming.

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I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who passed away this week, several times in the course of my own pro-life witness. This prolific author and teacher was the highest profile convert to the pro-life cause.

He had been a co-founder with Lawrence Lader in New York of NARAL–originally the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws. He was an OB/GYN who had, by his own admission, supervised some 75,000 abortions. In his later writings, he showed how intelligently he and Lawrence Lader strategized to overturn U.S. laws for the protection of the unborn child. Lader famously said: “Abortion is central to everything in life and how we want to live it.”

Pro-lifers who underestimate the hideous strength that comes from that determination will be unprepared for the furies that are unleashed against anyone who tries to prevent abortion-on-demand from being fully funded and included within ObamaCare.

In the late 1960s, Lader focused on the Catholic Bishops, not Catholics in general. As New Yorkers, Lawrence Lader and Bernard Nathanson knew that they could not stage an anti-Catholic campaign. There were too many Catholics in New York for that. They also knew that many lay Catholics groused about the Bishops, especially those who onsidered themselves liberal, sophisticated New Yorkers.

Being pro-abortion in those days was like reading your Sunday Times over a cuppa and your bagel with. It’s what you did and who you were. Why, the Bishops had not even repudiated Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, (Of Human Life). If you weren’t going to listen to your Bishops about contraception, you were far less likely to follow their guidance about abortion. Lader brilliantly exploited those fault lines, artfully blurring all distinctions between preventing the conception of a child and killing the child in utero.

When he first broke with Lader, NARAL, and the pro-abortion ranks in 1972, Bernard Nathanson took pains to emphasize that his newfound opposition to abortion was based on his medical and scientific discoveries alone. He continued to describe himself as a “Jewish atheist.” He did not want the secular media to dismiss him as a religious fanatic. It’s interesting to note that for all his documented anti-Catholicism, the mainstream media never dismissed Lawrence Lader as an anti-religious fanatic.

In his 1979 book, Aborting America, Dr. Nathanson wrote of how seeing the unborn child on ultra-sound had changed his mind about abortion. The scientific reality was–for this brilliant thinker and writer–inescapable.

I first met Dr. Nathanson in the early 1980s when he addressed a Lutherans for Life national convention. He brought his beautiful wife, Christine, with him and she memorably related how she welled up with tears upon hearing us sing “Beautiful Savior,” a hymn she recalled from the Lutheran churches of her childhood. Still, Dr. Nathanson took pains to emphasize his reasons for now opposing the “satanic world of abortion” were non-religious.

In Kansas City in 1984, I again encountered Dr. Nathanson. This time, he was to present his compelling film, The Silent Scream. The convention of the National Right to Life Committee eagerly awaited this video. So many convention goers crowded into the room for the screening that organizers had to move the showing to a larger room. Dr. Nathanson asked me to help set up the TV monitor. We had to put the heavy television on stage on two chairs so that people in the back of the hall could see the grainy ultra-sound footage.

I told Dr. Nathanson I would have to stay up there to hold the monitor or it might pitch forward into the crowd of watchers below. “My God, Bob, I hope not!” He said it with such emphasis that I thought then he was not going to be able to maintain his “Jewish atheist” shtick much longer.

That film was later described by Planned Parenthood, the outfit that kills as many as 350,000 unborn children yearly, as “the most powerful thing the right to life movement has put out.” I thought, I hoped, that if we could only get everyone in America to watch this overwhelming film, we could put an end to abortion. I still believe that.

Dr. Nathanson later wrote, in his 1996 book The Hand of God, about the power that ultra-sound images have over us:

For the first time, we could really see the human fetus, measure it, watch it, and indeed bond with it and love it. I began to do that.

It was in 1996 that I saw Dr. Nathanson for the last time. He spoke to a Capitol Hill meeting of pro-lifers. He was to speak to us about his recent conversion to Catholicism.

We were all interested to hear what he had to say, but before he could affirm his new faith, he wanted to confess to us his sins.

He described how he had performed an abortion on his girlfriend, killing his own child. He admitted driving the children of one of his wives into mental institutions. It was a heart-wrenching confession, painful to hear. Then, he recited the Apostles’ Creed and all present wept.

Except, perhaps, Professor Hadley Arkes. Hadley was viewing all this with evident emotion, but with a certain distance. Jim Jatras, a respected Hill staffer and noted Greek Orthodox believer, with a flowing beard, innocently asked Hadley if he, too, had not converted to Catholicism. Arching a bushy eyebrow, Hadley gave a shrug and said: “Not yet.”

Dr. Nathanson now goes to his Beautiful Savior, asking for His mercy. The power of love is what brought Bernard Nathanson around. It may yet bring around those professional killers, Warren Hern and LeRoy Carhart. That, and no violence on our part, is our best hope.

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Check out an op-ed that was written by FRC’s Bob Morrison that appeared on American Thinker.

President Reagan spoke of the unborn in his Inaugural Addresses. He appealed for their lives in his State of the Union Addresses. These are the most august ceremonies in this Great Republic. By bringing the fate of unborn children into those state occasions, he said he knew and he cared. He said we must all know and must all care. He would not be silent about what he called “the slaughter of innocents.”

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Liberals have a favorite slam on pro-lifers: “They believe life begins at conception and ends at birth.” It is a base slander of people who give more time and money to Christian charities–and non-Christian charities–than many others in America.

It is indeed a lazy and despicable slander of pro-lifers. Helen Alvare and her co-authors are certainly right in their recent Christianity Today column. Theirs is a powerful defense of the defenders. They demonstrate pro-lifers’ commitment to social justice and to lending helping hands.

But the liberals’ slam raises another pertinent question: What’s wrong with saving human lives? I served in the Coast Guard for nine years. I took part in rescues at sea. The Coast Guard recently claimed to have saved 1 million lives since its founding in 1790.

In 230 years, not one of those million persons whose lives were saved ever complained that the Coast Guard did not teach them to read, or help them obtain a job, or give them a breakfast. (Actually, we did give them breakfasts, but only until we got them safely on shore). In the Coast Guard, we did nothing about illiteracy. Or poverty.

Still, Americans honor the Coast Guard all the same.

The entire charge against pro-lifers is as offensive as it is absurd. When 3,000 unborn children are unjustly killed every day, there is an urgency that life alone can command.

Several years ago, I was writing a paper late on a Friday afternoon. We were then living at the U.S. Naval Academy. I was struggling to convey to the reader the enormity of 3,000 lives a day.

My wife, a Navy captain, pulled me away from my word processor to a ceremony on the Parade Field. With the band leading the parade, the Brigade of Midshipmen marched by the reviewing stands.

There were young men and women, from every state, marching by. They formed up nine abreast. It took eleven minutes for this company to pass the Superintendent and take the salute.  And there were three thousand of them.

Watching these vital young Mids marching by, it struck me with a pang: we lose the equivalent of this wonderful brigade–a hopeful brigade of future Americans–every day.

For anyone to say that stopping the fatal parade of abortion is not urgently needed–or to slander those good Americans who are trying lawfully and lovingly to stop it–is cruel and unjust. It is as morally wrong as those who take innocent lives.  God bless the pro-lifers. I’m still happy to throw them a line.

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This compelling video the debunks myths about abortion and when human life begins and it closes with a strong call to action.

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I’m pro-life because Thomas Jefferson was. What’s that, you say? Jefferson never spoke about abortion. Of course not. Surgical abortion was so dangerous prior until about 1800 that it killed the mother as well as the unborn child. But Jefferson was assuredly pro-life.

“The care of human life and happiness is the first and only legitimate object of good government,” he wrote when he was president. They had a balanced budget then, because the president had his priorities straight. In 1774, young Jefferson had written “the god who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.” That was his ringing phrase in the Summary View of the Rights of British America. God gives us life; God gives us liberty. Pretty clear. Later, of course, Jefferson would give us his best lines: “…all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Under the misrule of Roe v. Wade, 52 million Americans have been denied their inalienable right to life. It is, as it has been from the beginning, wholly illegitimate. Jefferson thought there should be more Americans, not fewer. When he purchased the Louisiana Territory, he said there would be room enough on those fruited plains for Americans to the hundredth generation.

I’m pro-life because Benjamin Franklin was. Well, if you were the tenth son of your father, you’d probably be pro-life, too. Franklin, we know, was not always chaste. He had a child out of wedlock. And he immediately brought him into the family circle, where he raised his son as his own. When that son also had a son out of wedlock, Benjamin loved and cherished this grandson and kept him close to his heart. I don’t recommend this as a way of enlarging a family, but it is surely a pro-life sentiment to love and guide your flesh and blood. Franklin, too, welcomed more Americans. In 1762, before we were even a nation, he calculated what our population might be one hundred twenty years thence.

He predicted that America would be home to 162 million people in 1882. The U.S. Census of 1880 showed Old Ben to have been off by less than one percent! When Dr. Franklin served in Paris, he rode out in his carriage to see the first manned ascent in a hot-air balloon. Fashionable French women fainted to see the balloon rise high above Versailles. (Well, maybe it was those tight corsets or those heavy hairpieces.) Four hundred thousand Frenchmen had come out to see the great event. Someone in the crowd was skeptical, however. They asked Dr. Franklin of what practical use the manned balloon was. With a twinkle in his eye, the most practical man in the world replied: “Of what practical use is a newborn baby?” Now, that’s pro-life!

I’m pro-life because George Washington was. He spoke often of his hopes for America, for millions yet unborn. He noted, in words that were not included in his First Inaugural, but which revealed his heart, that he and Martha had not been blessed with children.

One of Washington’s successors seems to think of children—at least those born out of wedlock as Franklin’s son and grandson were—as “punishments.” Washington knew that children are a blessing from the Lord, and said so. Washington looked West, as Jefferson did, so that America could have room to expand, room to become “the haven for the oppressed of many lands.” No one comes to America to do away with their unborn children.

In signing the Constitution, Washington joined with the childless James Madison in seeking “the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” Now, just who might these men have been thinking about if they did not have children of their own? Us. They thought of us as their posterity. Pro-lifers care about our posterity. We welcome every child in life and work to see them protected in law.

I’m pro-life because Lincoln was. He rejoiced that America’s population was growing—even in the dreadful days of civil war and slaughter—Lincoln welcomed the swelling chorus of the Union. He had put the slavery issue in this context: “Nothing stamped in the divine image was sent into the world to be trod upon.” FRC welcomed President Obama to Washington with those words and this most civil and respectful question: Are not unborn children so stamped?

I’m pro-life because Ronald Reagan, my great chief, was pro-life. In fact, Reagan was the first president to use the term pro-life. He wasn’t just anti-abortion, as the liberal media constantly said. He understood that being pro-life inspired us to oppose abortion and euthanasia—as well as standing up to an evil empire that killed to keep itself in power.

It was Reagan who said “abortion is a great wound in the soul of America.”

And, yes, I’m pro-life because, more than any of these, Jesus is pro-life: “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.” His Word tells us “therefore choose life.”

Do we need a better reason?

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Register today on Facebook for our new contest, “I’m Pro-Life because…” There will be some amazing prizes for the best video, including an Amazon Kindle 3G.

If you want to see a sample, check this out.

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European Dignity Watch is new pro-family, pro-life group founded to strengthen collaboration between like-minded organizations in Europe and Internationally. Based in Brussels, this leadership group will be keeping an eye on the EU and keep people up-to-date on major policy happenings related to family, freedom and life. This week the group is reporting on a new “Principle of Equality” which will, in essence, place sexual orientation rights above and beyond other rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, in the EU.

See their website for more information and to sign up for the Network.

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Tomorrow from 8:30-11:30 a.m., Blogs for Life will be taking place at the Family Research Council. This year’s lineup provides some amazing speakers, who will be talking about advancing the pro-life message through new media, in addition to hearing about some emerging technologies.

Here’s the schedule and you can still register by going here.

Schedule

8:30 – 8:35a Jill Stanek, emcee introduction

8:35 – 8:45a Kristen Day, Democrats for Life

9:05 – 9:20a PANEL: “Hosting a winning pro-life blog,” American Life League’s Katie Walker and ALL’s Pro-life Blog Contest winners

9:20 – 9:33a Carol Clews, Executive Director, Center for Pregnancy Concerns, Baltimore, Md.

9:33 – 9:35a Kristin Hansen, VP of Communications, Care Net

9:35 – 9:45a Marjorie Dannenfelser, President, Susan B. Anthony List

9:45 – 10:05a Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo.

10:05 – 10:15a Break

10:15 – 10:25a Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D, President and CEO, Americans United for Life

10:25 – 10:45a Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio

10:45 – 11:05a PANEL: Emerging Online Technologies, Molotov Mitchell,Illuminati Pictures; Peter Shinn, President, Pro-Life Unity; Founder, Blogs for Life; Krystle Weeks, Web Editor, Family Research Council

11:05 – 11:15a David Prentice, Ph.D, Senior Fellow for Life Sciences, FRC, StemCellResearchFacts.org

11:15 – 11:30a Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council

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FRC has recently noted the contradictions of the position of Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who calls himself “pro-life” but was actually drummed out of the Democrats for Life of America because his plan for reducing abortion is to give more money (for contraception) to America’s largest abortion provider (Planned Parenthood).

But this quote from Rep. Ryan in a LifeNews.com article about the split with Democrats for Life really jumped out at me: “I can’t figure out for the life of me how to stop pregnancies without contraception.”

Really? He “can’t figure it out”? Not “for the life of” him?

Perhaps Rep. Ryan is under the impression that engaging in sexual relations is mandatory. It’s not. Perhaps he thinks people will die if they don’t have sex. They won’t—but thousands die each year (of sexually transmitted diseases) because they do.

If Rep. Ryan “can’t figure out . . . how to stop pregnancies without contraception,” let me spell it out for him.

A-B-S-T-A-I-N.

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Veterans of the pro-life movement will remember Joe Barrett. No, they will find it impossible to forget Joe Barrett. Barrett, who died last week at 71, was described as a stormy petrel. That’s too pale, too pastel. Try screaming eagle. He was forever urging us to fight. He liked to compare politics to a barroom brawl: “Just walk in, throw the first punch, and see who lines up on your side.”

Joe had some unfortunate prejudices. He didn’t like Protestants, Republicans, or Yankees. William Allen White was all three of those things. White was a Kansas editor who wrote about FDR the day he died: “We who hate your gaudy guts salute you.”

I never hated Joe’s gaudy guts. But he was nothing if not gaudy and gutsy. Joe loved marching into Paul Weyrich’s weekly meetings on Capitol Hill-especially if someone from the Bush White House was there, or perhaps a congressional GOP leader. He would start off a blast: “The trouble with you Republicans…”

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