5 January 2009 — Vol. 11/No. 01
Sometimes, through no fault of its own, the New York Times has been
known to stumble upon the truth. On pro-life issues, that’s generally
the best we can hope for.
On 7 December 2008, the Times ran an op-ed by Ross Douthat called
“Abortion Politics Didn’t Doom the G.O.P.” The pro-life movement,
Douthat condescendingly concedes, was not completely responsible for
John McCain’s defeat in the 2008 presidential election. Why? Because
pro-lifers have finally decided to leave the Stone Age and get with
the program.
According to Douthat, “compromise, rather than absolutism, has been
the watchword of anti-abortion efforts for some time now. Since the
early 1990s, advocates have focused on pushing largely modest
state-level restrictions, from parental notification laws to waiting
periods to bans on what we see as the grisliest forms of
abortion.”
“The culture of (sometimes violent) protest that once defined the
movement,” Douthat continues, “is largely a thing of the past . . .
Over the same period, pro-lifers—especially in the evangelical
community—have broadened their movement’s ambit, emphasizing poverty,
the environment and other non-abortion “life issues” more consistently
than an earlier generation did. Leading pro-life figures like Rick
Warren are more likely to be photographed touring poor nations
alongside Bono than protesting outside abortion clinics.”
Yay! Good for us. We have been upgraded from crazed,
clinic-bombing fundamentalists to well-meaning—if
simple-minded—folk. We can even be mentioned in the same sentence as
the Blessed Bono, icon of the Left.
Douthat may honestly think he’s doing us a favor, so it’s hard to
get too angry with him. However, one must remember that a
condescending pat on the head is really not any better than a slap in
the face in the long run.
It was, after all, the NYT that caricatured the largest peaceful
movement in American history as “violent” (at the same time that it
aids and abets the 4,000 violent acts against unborn children each
day!).
As far as compromising our pro-life principles, as Douthat
suggests, we are having none of that. Passing a law that puts certain
abortions off-limits is not a compromise. Real numbers of babies are
being saved. And even the NYT is, if this article is any indication,
beginning to sound a just little bit defensive.
Douthat pretends that our interest in poverty and “non-abortion
‘life issues'” is something new under the sun. Hardly. Why does he
think that we came to this fight in the first place? The unborn are
the poorest of the poor. A person is a person no matter how small,
and pro-lifers love people. That’s why it’s important to us to save
their lives.
The NYT is celebrating because they think that we’ve become a
little more like them. But in wandering a little closer to the truth,
they actually become a little more like us.
Colin Mason is the Director of Media Production for Population Research Institute.
