Also, concerning a matter not directly related to abortion, yet directly related to holistic respect for human dignity, too many pro-life Christians are in ignorance, sometimes willful, of the unjust and life-wrecking punishment that child-prisons wreak on troubled inner-city youths.
The work of Heidi Neumark –a “leftist” Lutheran minister—offers a valuable witness to your point. Although she hasn’t yet grasped the embodied, integrated, reasoned anthropology that Erika Bachiochi articulates–her charitable work in youth-prisons incarnates an unconditional respect for the dignity of human life. Of course, the disembodied anthropology that implicitly informs Neumark’s social/political views logistically—in theory– undermines the value of embodied social-justice work. Yet, absent an incarnate care for all human life–regardless of whether that life, at any age, is sinful in any sense–a care visibly embodied in Neumark’s work, an integrated and embodied anthropology becomes a moralistic disincarnate set of principles incapable of moving anyone to an unconditional concern for others.

I add only that caritas and reason aren’t opposed–rather, caritas is the highest form of reason. The eternal Logos desired and loved us before we were anyone and before there was anything. His desire and love for all his sons and daughters is engrained in the human heart. The desire and love to give the caritas given us–a desire that is distorted and misunderstood in original-sin–is the natural-law of human existence. Thus, the logic of human life is a logic of caritas—a logic that moves one to recognize all human life as signs of the infinite Caritas they image.

I am dubious about how effective your proposals would be in encouraging women to carry a pregnancy to term.

In the UK we have

1) A health service, free at the point of use, so a pregnant woman incurs no medical expenses at all, for herself or her baby.

2) A statutory right to paid maternity leave, with 90% of average earnings for the first six weeks and £135.45 ($198.48) for the next 33 weeks. Those not in employment get £135.45 a week for the full 39 weeks. There is also a statutory right to take a further 13 weeks of unpaid maternity leave. In addition, it is illegal for employers to refuse to give pregnant employees time off for antenatal care or to refuse to pay their normal rate for this time off.

3) An Equality Act that gives pregnant women protection against unfair treatment, discrimination or dismissal.

There were 196,083 in 2011, (189,931 for UK residents). 36% of these women had had a least one previous abortion. There were 688,120 live births during the same year.

peg,

I think Bret Lythgoe was making a point similar to mine. I was making a distinction between the pro-life movement “on the ground” and the political pro-life movement (pro-life politicians, pro-life legislation, and so on).

It’s an inconvenient truth to abortion supporters and enthusiasts, so it is quashed before it gets into their sealed habitats.

I think it is not a matter of a truth being “quashed,” but rather a matter of the politics of the anti-abortion movement being highly visible, and the good work of pro-lifers “on the ground” being largely invisible. For example, Arkansas’s ban, enacted yesterday, on abortions later than 12 weeks is front-page news nationwide. It would be difficult for crisis pregnancy centers to make it into the news in with equivalent prominence.

I think the article was discussing pro-life groups, not Republicans. I agree with others above, in that any pro-life group or people that I know of also support the pregnant women and their dignity. It’s an inconvenient truth to abortion supporters and enthusiasts, so it is quashed before it gets into their sealed habitats.

It’s not the help, or paying for the help, we disagree on, it’s the delivery system and where the money should go first.

Who agrees with the following?

[I]t is the task of law to pursue a reform of society and of conditions of life in all milieux, starting with the most deprived, so that always and everywhere it may be possible to give every child coming into this world a welcome worthy of a person. Help for families and for unmarried mothers, assured grants for children, a statute for illegitimate children and reasonable arrangements for adoption – a whole positive policy must be put into force so that there will always be a concrete, honorable and possible alternative to abortion.

I contend that the pro-life movement does emphasize the dignity of all human life, but is ignored when it does so, partly because this emphasis is inconvenient to the opponents of the pro-life movement and partly because ignoring it causes people not to know about it at all. My own area has several pro-life ministries designed to help and support mothers to bear and raise their children, but they are rarely mentioned publicly (in newspapers or on TV news, for example).