Cold weather and rosary-bead sightings were just about all the secular reporters appeared concerned with at this year’s national March for Life, many of them drawing more attention to the chill in the air than to pro-lifers’ resilient reasons to bear it. And that was when they reported on it at all. But chilling, whatever the journalists say, was the last thing marchers were doing this year, with the event’s overwhelmingly youthful crowd stretching over a mile on Constitution Avenue, voicing slogans that were resolute and bold, but not, as many would prefer to believe, “angry.”
Along with banners representing university pro-life groups and parish committees, something of the contemporary pro-life tone was evident in the protest signs on display. One light-hearted favorite was “Chuck Norris is Pro-Life,” and a more serious one read, “Children’s Rights End at Conception.” But none, however light or serious, were so unbecoming as the pained and agitated slogans so often heard at pro-abortion rallies, on the increasingly rare occasions they occur. There’s no pro-life equivalent to “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.”
We can hardly be blamed for giving this a simple explanation. Any coherent social movement must say yes to some ideas and no to others, and pro-lifers say yes to human life and no to the validity of abortion as a choice to end it. But there’s a certain cult of niceness in our public square today, one that says yes to yes and no to no, with the path of least resistance being the primary moral impulse of a “nice” person.
But through common sense, we can see that, for instance, while a toddler’s mother will gain kudos as a “nice” parent for always saying yes to her child, one can hardly blame the child for growing to disrespect figures of moral authority altogether, especially those who say “no.” While pro-lifers remain firm in their “no” to the horror of abortion, the youthful and energetic movement seems impenetrable to slanders of curmudgeonhood and naysaying, and remains cheerful in the fight, preoccupied with the “yes” and not indulgent with their “no.”
If pro-lifers can be cheerful while opposing abortion, it’s not hard to see why pro-abortion rallies are prone to focus their attention on pro-lifers, even while pro-life events always seem to focus, oddly enough, on abortion. If the soft “terminations” of human beings in the womb is complemented by the anger of the pro-choice movement, the tranquil moral assurance of the pro-life cause is the appropriate response to efforts made in anger—whether in abortions themselves, efforts to demonize right-to-lifers as fanatics, or to to glaze over the reality of abortion through the chilling, calculating language of reproductive rights.
After 37 national marches for life and dozens of others across the country, when can we expect mainstream coverage of the pro-life movement, whose gatherings handily dwarf rallies of opposing ideas, and yield crowds more diverse than any of them? Last year, NARAL president Nancy Keenan sighed that she was part of a dwindling “postmenopausal militia” clinging to the abortion-rights cause, amidst alarm about the generational and enthusiasm gap in support for abortion. If the hundreds of thousands of young adults at the March for Life can promise anything with certainty, it’s that the pro-life movement has a long and vital life ahead of it.
January 26th, 2011 | 2:43 pm
Let’s not forget the 50,000+ people who showed up to march in a warmer venue, if much chillier in atmosphere, in San Francisco. The pro-choice counter-protest was much smaller (if no less ugly and degraded: women dressed as the Blessed Virgin doing provacative dances, anyone?) than usual, and the pro-life crowd the biggest yet. One of the more poignant signs I saw was held by a 20-something: “We Survived the “Me” Generation – 50,000,000 Didn’t. We Speak for our Discarded Siblings.”
January 26th, 2011 | 3:34 pm
Another sign at the DC March, both clever and heartbreaking: “Life begins at conception and ends at Planned Parenthood.”
January 26th, 2011 | 5:15 pm
I was at the DC March, and as a college student myself, I can say it is always heartening to see that many people (especially young people) there. It makes me very proud to be Catholic, but also to see the many non-Catholics who are there. It is extremely important to have this rally, because it really does help distinguish Roe from other SCOTUS cases that do earn respect (such as Brown v. Board of Education). In 1992, 38 years after Brown, there were no marches of 250,000 people protesting the ruling and praise for it only coming from part of one party. Roe is in that category of cases that the Court got wrong. Just because SCOTUS has ‘gotten it right’ in the past does not justify Roe.
Incidentally, if you want a good discussion of the process of drafting the Roe opinion, you should read the relevant sections of Bob Woodward’s book The Brethren. I’ve been reading it lately and it reveals that even the clerks at the time recognized that it was more a national medical policy than constitutional analysis. It also reveals a conflicted and tragic Justice Blackmun, who got progressively more liberal as he doubled-down on his decisions.
January 27th, 2011 | 2:57 am
Kevin,
I read through the Washington Post article that you linked to with the word “angry”, and at first I was confused since nothing in the text of the article referred to anger. Then I read the headline with “rips into”.
I find it interesting that they even covered it. Of course, it’s because of the GOP victories, and that’s the slant the article gave it with the headline and the focus on the statements of the members of Congress. Still, it struck me as otherwise neutral to mildly sympathetic with the quote from the man whose fiancée aborted their child. It also did not include the usual quote or two from a NARAL or PP representative denouncing the event.
Mike,
Interesting comments about contrast between “Brown” and “Roe” and about “The Brethren”. I’ve read “Roe” several times, although not recently, and that is how it strikes me. Justice White’s dissenting statement that it was a raw grab at power was quite apt. You may also want to read some of the articles that Mary Meehan has written about the writing of the “Roe” decision. She based them in large part on the research she did on Blackmun’s papers after they were made public.
January 27th, 2011 | 9:41 am
Ah, pro-choicers. The most self-defeating political movement in the history of American democracy.
January 27th, 2011 | 9:47 am
The one problem I see with this is that it’s a pendulum. Pro-choicers will slowly abort themselves out to the demographic margins, and pro-lifers will take over. But then pro-life policies will give rise to so many children in family situations (read: single motherhood) leading to social pathologies that people will once again come around to the need for abortion.
The pendulum never stops.
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