President's Message:  Making abortion unthinkable

Our friends at Tennessee Right to Life have a new bumper strip for sale: “I Miss Having a Prolife President.” I could end my column right there!

We are certainly witnessing that old political saying “elections have consequences.” I’m not sure that any of us realized how much change we would be living through in less than a year of the Obama Presidency.

On the negative side for our prolife movement and for those whom we champion, the unborn and their mothers, the scales of social justice are way out of balance. We hear and read the words of our President on the need for making abortions rare. Unfortunately, his actions do not match his rhetoric. Obama’s policies of insisting on using tax dollars for abortions will instead increase the number of abortions.

The President talks about the need to reduce abortions, then provides added tax dollars for Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider and promoter in the U.S. One of our local leaders has placed this idea of reducing abortions into perspective. He wrote: let’s reduce potholes; let’s eliminate abortions.

Another wave of change is coming this fall: an historic health care reform legislative package. We already know from past pronouncements and presidential actions that President Obama is in favor of abortion coverage being a part of universal health care. If abortion is a mandated, tax paid benefit, abortions will soar. The rhetoric of “rare and reducing” will be simply empty words used in an attempt to fool the public.

But all of these black clouds have a silver lining. We are now seeing through numerous polls and increased volunteer activity, people moving to the prolife position since the November 2008 elections. While the newspaper headlines about the polls may be misleading, the actual poll results are very encouraging and positive. Five polls:

• April 09 Pew Research Center— people saying that abortion should be legal in all or most cases has declined since August from a high of 54 percent to now 46 percent.

• May 09 Gallup Poll— 51 percent identify themselves as prolife on the issue of abortion versus 42 percent say they are prochoice. A year ago 50 percent said they were prochoice and 44 percent prolife. According to Gallup, this is the first time in their polling since 1995 that a majority have identified themselves as prolife.

• May 09 Opinion Dynamics poll for Fox News— 49 percent said they were prolife, 43 percent prochoice, 6 percent said a little of both, 2 percent didn’t know.

• May 09 Rasmussen Reports poll—58 percent say abortion is morally wrong most of the time with 25 percent disagreeing

• July 09 Harris poll—41 percent of Americans want it to be more difficult to get an abortion; only 14 percent want it to be easier.

In the words of RLM’s Legislative Director, we need to view the present with bifocals.

We need to have a short term view and a long term vision. There are some things that we cannot change immediately, but through planning, persistence and focus we can insure that our mission of preventing the killing of our nation’s future, through aborting innocent babies in the womb, will overcome any short term setbacks we may experience.

Now is the time to engage our fellow citizens in our life preserving work. Let’s turn those encouraging poll numbers into active participants working toward a day when babies in the womb will be protected, and the choice of abortion will again be unthinkable.

© RIGHT TO LIFE OF MICHIGAN, 2340 PORTER ST SW, PO BOX 901, GRAND RAPIDS, MI 49509-0901, (616) 532-2300
PRIVACY POLICY