Testing Rhetoric Against Reality: The Christian Coalition's Failure
by (Mrs.) Judie Brown, President, American Life League, Inc.
The following statement is in response to the Christian Coalition's Contract
With the American Family. All or part may be used with our full permission.
The Christian Coalition has released its Contract With the American Family,
and the document addresses "Restoring Respect for Human Life" (p. 20).
Reading only the introductory statement, one would be left with the definite
impression that the Christian Coalition sees the child in the womb as a
human being, deserving of total protection by the laws and the social
policies of our nation. However, under scrutiny this flowery preamble is
deceptive and misleading.
While, on the one hand, the Christian Coalition seeks, as an ultimate goal,
"to establish the humanity of the unborn child and to see a day when every
child is safe in their mother's womb," on the other hand the Christian
Coalition is urging Congress to begin achieving that goal by limiting
late-term abortions, protecting children in the latter months of pregnancy.
Let's stop right there and think this pragmatic concept through to a logical
conclusion.
First of all, the preborn child is a human being at fertilization, and
throughout the nine months of pregnancy that human being simply grows and
prepares to be born. However, when a chemical, device or instrument is
willfully used to kill that human being, life ends.
If a proposal given to a group of politicians invites them to focus on less
than one percent of the 1.5 million human beings who are killed by
decriminalized abortion, two things will result:
First, politicians who support this proposal will be considered "pro-life"
without having to address the heart of the matter, which is that every
abortion kills a human being.
Second, the rest of the "unwanted" preborn children will continue to die, as
activists, professional lobbyists, and public figures focus public
attention on the atrocity of only some abortion acts, thus relieving the
constant pressure needed for the public to see the child, even as early as
his or her first hours of life, as a fellow human being. This is a grave
error, because apathy is grown in the garden of pragmatism and compromise.
As we have said so often, when a human being's life is on the line, there
can be no exceptions.
Preborn children should not be political pawns, and those who use them in
that deadly way are destined to be accountable for their flawed proposals.
The pro-life movement must not, indeed we cannot, allow others to deny the
inviolability of any human being's life for the sake of cheap and
meaningless political victory or a front-page story. Our role is to renew
the commitment of our fellow Americans to the protection of all human
beings, and to do it now-popular or not! Every moment that we waste is a
moment during which another child will die. We cannot afford to be timid in
our goals; we must be firm and unyielding, not pragmatic and weak.
Further, when the Christian Coalition writes in their Contract With the
American Family that "Children at any stage of pregnancy should not be
subject to this cruel and inhumane form of death, but such treatment of
those who can clearly survive outside the mother's womb is particularly
cruel," what do they mean?
Human beings in the womb can and will survive if allowed to be born. Every
human being who dies by abortion is cruelly destroyed, so why protect only a
few of the thousands of children who die each day?
Are there degrees of death? Do some innocent babies die less cruelly than
others? Are some decisions to destroy the innocent less heinous than others?
Is some intentional killing more acceptable? Do some acts of abortion kill
to a lesser degree than other acts?
Have we forgotten the demands of morality? Pope John Paul II points out, in
<Evangelium Vitae>, that "Before the moral norm which prohibits the direct
taking of the life of an innocent human being 'there are no privileges or
exceptions for anyone.'"
Please, let's get our priorities in order and come together by first
recognizing that life is a gift from God; He gives that gift and only He may
take it away. The United States Congress does not have that authority, so
why pretend that it does?
Let us resolve, as we stand together at the foot of the Cross, serving Him
who loves us so much that He suffered and died for each of us, that we will
never condone, encourage or foster any proposal that will deny legal and
social protection to even one of His children.
We are dedicated to the principle that all men are created equal, and that
principle knows no party, knows no label, and knows no boundaries, including
those established by pollsters and pundits.
American Life League calls on the Christian Coalition to withdraw their
Contract With the American Family and revise it to include the principles
embodied in the Paramount Human Life Amendment, so that it reflects honestly
and with apologies to no one, "Thou shalt not kill."
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