Beyond Abolition: The New Pro-Life Activism

Timothy Kirchoff
By | November 11, 2014

He thought he had them pegged.

A Notre Dame student had written a letter to the editor of the school paper, anticipating Notre Dame Right to Life’s annual display of the Cemetery of the Innocents (a set of hundreds of white crosses set up on the main campus quad, each representing a baby killed by abortion over the course of the average Notre Dame football game) and taking it as an occasion to excoriate the club’s anti-abortion stance. The Cemetery of the Innocents, the writer thought, was emblematic of the shortcomings of the pro-life group’s limited perspective: their single-minded focus on protecting the rights of the unborn prevented them, this author argued, from recognizing that criminalization would neither end abortion nor the need for abortion.

The very same day, the letter to the editor section also featured a letter by Erin Stoyell-Mulholland, the President of Notre Dame Right to Life, explaining the club’s decision to replace their usual display of white crosses with a field of roses centered on a single cross. “Each white rose represents lives lost due to abortion. The other roses represent those who have suffered emotionally, spiritually and physically because of abortion, including mothers, fathers, families and friends. The garden is centered around the cross, the source of hope and healing for all.”

She explained further: “With these roses, we seek to raise the same awareness and commemoration, while simultaneously extending a deeper invitation to love. The flowers demonstrate the fragility, beauty and value of every human life. We acknowledge there are many students on this campus who have been affected by abortion, both directly and indirectly. This display is a loving way of reaching out to acknowledge those wounds and offer hope for healing.”

Meanwhile, Choose Life at Yale (CLAY) was in the midst of a year-long provisional membership in Dwight Hall, Yale’s umbrella group for social justice and service organizations. Over the course of the 2013-2014 academic year, CLAY participated in numerous Dwight Hall events with the hope of being admitted to full membership after a vote by the Dwight Hall board in the early spring.

The application process was uneventful until the vote itself loomed, at which point Dwight Hall officers informed CLAY’s leadership of quietly mounting opposition to CLAY’s full admission to the group. When attempts to identify the precise objections of the opposition proved as fruitless as the attempts to identify the individuals in opposition (who apparently preferred to remain anonymous), CLAY president Christian Hernandez and his predecessor, Courtney McEachon, decided to take their case to the general student body with an editorial in the Yale Daily News.

Over CLAY’s 10-year history, the editorial explained, the club had mostly focused on fostering an ongoing campus conversation about social and philosophical issues related to abortion, but had recently expanded its activities to include service work in the local area, particularly with a pregnancy care center that had recently opened nearby. As these authors put it, “We believe strongly that any comprehensive definition of social justice must affirm pregnancy and childbirth. Our goal is to advocate for women who decide to have a child, to provide the kind of support grossly lacking on a campus where pregnant women often feel they have no option but to abort in order to preserve their opportunity for success.”

This newfound interest in service, in the eyes of the CLAY officers, went hand-in-hand with a renewed commitment to advocacy: the year of CLAY’s provisional membership was also the year of its inaugural Vita et Veritas conference, designed to “actively foster an atmosphere of open support and discussion” on a sensitive set of issues.

This appeal seems to have failed to convince CLAY’s opposition: CLAY was denied entry into Dwight Hall without further explanation.

Notre Dame Right to Life unveiled a new display that demonstrated a thoughtful understanding of abortion’s personal and social effects the very same day that the group was criticized for being stuck in too narrow and political an approach to a complex issue; CLAY’s attempt to engage in open discussion with its campus’s other social justice groups was met with a covert campaign to make it the first group in recent memory to be denied entry into Dwight Hall.

One could hardly ask for better illustrations of the energy and creativity of college pro-life groups and their leaders. Although their opponents seem incapable of imagining these groups as doing anything other than simply pushing for the legal abolition of abortion, these pro-lifers are as sincere as their opponents are incredulous. They have developed and adopted increasingly comprehensive approaches to the abortion debate, taking into account the many causes and consequences of abortion so as not simply to abolish abortion through the law, but to end it entirely by changing social perceptions and practices for the better.

This new approach to pro-life activism has wide appeal among young pro-lifers, who increasingly see the need to regard women contemplating abortion with compassion. Although many if not most of these young activists started out with either simple religious or philosophical objections to abortion, they have since found that a more comprehensive and compassionate examination of issues surrounding abortion deepens and strengthens both their argumentation and their motivation. This narrative describes both Stoyell-Mulholland and McEachon rather well, as they each revealed in responses to a set of e-mailed questions from which the following quotes are excerpted.

Erin, as a cradle Catholic, was nominally pro-life by default, but her commitment to the pro-life cause profoundly deepened during her senior year of high school.

My senior year, I started going to the abortion clinic with my high school’s pro-life group. For the first time, I saw the effects of abortion firsthand. I saw women going into the clinic who looked disheartened and hopeless. I could see that this was not an empowering decision. [That same year], one of my friends got pregnant and decided to have an abortion. I saw what a difficult decision this was for her. She named her baby. I saw the pain that she went through. The pro-life issue has never been a political issue for me. It’s a personal one. Being pro-life is about how one views all persons, both born and unborn. Being pro-life means loving everyone and respecting the dignity of each individual.

Erin’s willingness to change Right to Life’s annual display, then, stemmed in no small part from her realization that the unborn child is not the only victim of abortion: “We wanted to better portray that we care about every human life, and that we cared about the women who are hurting from abortion, and from all those affected by abortion. It’s not just about the unborn children, although they are, of course, very important.”

Courtney’s development into a dedicated pro-life activist also began in high school, when she wrote a term paper on stem-cell research for her 9th grade biology class. She recounts her experience thus:

After that paper, the nagging began: if the product of conception really was a baby, and if a baby really was a person with intrinsic moral value, then abortion is murder 6 billion times over. And worse than the injustice itself was perhaps the silence surrounding it. I was truly appalled at mankind, the adults I considered role models, especially those who knew about it and recognize the same facts and yet refuse to entertain conversation about it.

Although she was initially drawn to some pro-life groups’ use of graphic images to force people to confront the direct effects of abortion, she no longer thinks such confrontational tactics are particularly helpful in convincing people to think carefully about pro-life arguments. “We have to open hearts rather than close them,” she says, and suggests that those who are turned off by graphic images “will have to understand [abortion’s] effects on women and men in society and the grim reality that the culture of death presents for us. While I do think that while the first goal should be to stop as many abortions from happening, the long term and more difficult goal is to change the culture so that even in an America with legal abortion, no one would choose it.”

Erin and Courtney are but two examples of young pro-life leaders who are encouraging their peers to think about abortion more comprehensively and for whom the recognition of the dignity of the unborn has led to a radical commitment to building up a culture of life that includes all of the vulnerable members of society. Their aims are political in the broad sense rather than the partisan one: They want to change society as a whole, not just the civil laws by which it is governed. The recognition of the dignity of the unborn is the foundation for a radically different way of looking at all sorts of political issues, and young pro-life activists, having established that foundation, are building on it brick by brick.

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  • Austin Ruse

    If in the summer time you go to the Lincoln Memorial you will see young kids sliding down the slick sides of the long steps to the top. Each child is almost certain he is the first one to discover this neat trick.

  • lyle

    Children, family is the greatest asset of any and every civilization..the greatest gift from God. IN that recognition the United State is the poorest nation on earth, for we want Instant gratification, and less children is the price of instant gratification..
    Wants of instant gratification is a long list, combined today with acceptance to what (prior reformation) our now we call ourselves of God directed religious fail to stand against, wars of revenge, borrowing and acceptance to, debt. Much of at one time was seen as not accepted, is now widely accepted.. Poverty , in the United State is almost 20% of the people due to taxes and now socialism, forced on the people by Obama care, all strip away the freedom of the people.
    Today we are brain washed we want instant gratification, new cars, retirement accounts, and a fictional economy of money breeds money to maintain a not family, but wealth for a few..
    Yet we tolerate low wages for our fellow man in the US, that leaves a sector of our work force in poverty, across the United STates, in acceptance to our personal demand of instant gratification for ourselves, devoid of our moral obligation to our neighbor..

  • lyle

    abortion is the end result of a civilization that demand instant gratification, I want it now mind. and a removal of denial of ones self, to pickup our cross and to put our neighbor first, and ourselves last..
    in recent time it was noted a poor African nation only had a few hundred left in the countries account, and oh how poor they were, but, they were 17 trillion richer than the United States..
    IN an educated time, it was against the catholic faith to borrow money, for how does one come to be the slave of another, is often in you are now owned by the government and the fact of the nation debt sets on the backs of the workers.. debt slaves, wage slaves.. socialism was seen as against the Catholic faith for socialism strips away your freedom to chose for yourself what you want to do with your fruits of labor. hospitals originated as institutions of Charity,, today they are institutions of profit…and insurance is seen in the educated world, as calculated gambling.
    if you don’t know these issues, as fact, then your uneducated, or, can we say, we are extremely uneducated to our Religious mind we should have, even if we don’t follow it, we should know it..

  • lyle

    The issue of abortion is bad, but so is an acceptance to a war that is a war of revenge to a people who have never done anything to the US.. and a war that now defuncts our government, by a war that has no basis and is against what our fore fathers said should not come tobe. Founders of the US noted, the US should have no foreign ties to any government, we have no obligation, no entanglements. Yet today the US sustains state like Israel, executes people with the military, and has taken out many a democratic leader, as the US did in Iran in 1953, instilling the corrupt and evil leader , Sha of Iran, till the Islamic called for his exile in 1978.

  • lyle

    in short, its against virtue of the Catholic religion to borrow money, yet today schools of higher education now “demand” children to borrow money to attain a “documentation” you are educated.. yet education calls one to EXIT DARKNESS, or to be not superstitious of mind..

  • wayfaring65

    These are young people seeking to do good work. It would be best to encourage them instead of making snarky comments.

  • http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

    Right on- it is the women who are beginning to understand they have been hoodwinked. Nothing we do from here on, should be done by marshaling law, but rather through marshaling evangelism into the hearts of each individual.

  • Austin Ruse

    Perhaps you would also be surprised to know that the pro-life movement does an enormous amount to encourage the work of young people.

    But please don’t suggest that what they are doing is substantially new or different from what heroic pro-lifers have been doing for a long time.

  • http://newarkistheplace.com Thomas Mullally

    Gee, I thought he was celebrating the energy of the children, but you discerned the real meaning!

    Yes, that is a shame to mock the new pro-life blood in such a fashion. There is absolutely no detraction here, from heroic and noble efforts to fashion the law. It is just that the battle was lost and we have only to affect the free will and hearts of everyone. “Pro-choice” laws will then be rendered moot, and perhaps only then, we might finally formalize again to law.

  • Timothy Kirchoff

    You make a fair point in that I should have given more explicit
    recognition to the people who, for example, run the pregnancy centers
    with which Notre Dame Right to Life and CLAY are partnered. I might have pointed out, for instance, that the Women’s Care Center (http://www.womenscarecenterfoundation.org/) was first founded back in 1984 and has done excellent work since then.

    Nonetheless, I think this approach can be fairly called “new” in that they recognize that this part of the pro-life movement should be more integrated into the public image of the movement (a need demonstrated through the two anecdotes with which I began the article; if this were already the face of the pro-life movement, then those outside the movement would recognize it). They themselves may have began as pro-lifers with the recognition that the baby’s life has dignity, but they recognize that other people might be more easily convinced with a different starting point.

  • Austin Ruse

    The thing about the pro-life movement is that it is broad and deep and vast. There is something for everyone within the movement. You want to do politics. You can. Prayer. Lots of that. Outreach to women in need. Yes. Work at local level, state, federal, global. All there. Want to try and affect the culture? Many places. Post-Abortive counseling etc etc etc

    I do not mean to put these students down. All this is great and important work. My quibble is to suggest that these approaches are somehow new. They aren’t. But they fit in perfectly with the larger movement. They make perfect sense. And any pro-lifer, not matter their age, would welcome and support them.

  • http://whiteravencry.blogspot.com/ Ross

    Laudable and necessary efforts, certainly. This mode of action is the vocation of many.

    But yet the heart of the issue remains largely untouched.

    We have discerned well that addressing the “consumer” aspect of the abortion issue is important and requires circumspection. This is good.

    However, how do we respond to the genocide that actually occurs, that is occurring now, as I write? Are we to leave physical resistance in the dust with Operation Rescue? Are we to allow unjust laws aimed specifically at punishing pro-life resistance to abortion to forestall the necessary actions to combat such a great evil?

    Are we, in other words, Germans betraying the Jews?

    It has been said many times recently that abortion CANNOT be viewed as simply another social issue. We ourselves say this, but continue in much the same vein as LGBT activist groups.

    What the situation truly requires is the sacrifice of our lives.

  • lyle

    pregnant women often feel they have no option, but to abort in order to “preserve THEIR opportunity for success.”
    Success? Definitely not the success of eternal salvation to be in Heaven, for we have ruined not only our soul, but also the soul of those we have taught to not be disciplined to deny ourselves, to pickup our cross and follow Jesus, not our will be done but Gods will..
    Infanticide, the instantanouse murder of children as they were born, was one of five normal everyday accepted acts of the Roman Empire, and marriage was a mere civil contract, human life had no value.
    Jesus recognized the leadership of both gov. and religious leaders as pits of vipers, for their enslavement of the people and misleading them..no diferent today would Jesus call the leadership in the US.. If you ruin or kill the spirit or the good name of another, Human, its a sin that can be seen as, YOU could not “expect” to be forgiven to contributing or being the deliver of..
    Sin sends you to Hell for ever, and those don’t belive in the effects of sin, or Hell, will when they get to Hell…
    Preserving our “opportunity” for success involves killing the spirit and good name of others, that is wrong to teach to others, and to do other, and ourself. Getting into that better to never be born, we are the Judas in the story of life..
    Premarital sex, eliminates our Opportunity for real success should be the mind of virtue, for our acceptance to instant gratification is not of our following of Jesus and what he called us to..it our demand for I want it now, and to call other to failure of, teaching sin and lust as accepted. When in the course of life will you teach different, or change to seek and teach others, real success is the question, to be educated, exit from the darkness you now live in, superstition of mind to success.

  • Jason Suggs

    Bravo. Excellent article.