By a 54-45 vote, the Senate rejected language in its health care reform bill that would’ve further prohibited federal funding of abortion. The language, sponsored by Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), was nearly identical to that which was passed by the House of Representatives earlier. But pro-life advocates knew getting passage in the Senate was going to be more difficult, and we’ll likely see much teeth-gnashing as the day wears on today. Though some pro-choice advocates said the language put far tighter restrictions on abortion, Nelson said that wasn’t the case.
“We’re not here to debate for or against abortion,” Nelson said yesterday. “This is a debate about taxpayer money. It’s a debate about whether it’s appropriate for public funds to — for the first time in more than three decades — cover elective abortions. … Most Americans and most of the people in my state would say, ‘No.’”
And he’s right. While pro-choice advocates sometimes believe the country as a whole firmly supports abortion-on-demand, Roe v. Wade has always been incredibly controversial and polarizing. More people believe that there should be some limits placed on abortions (only 22 percent believe it should be legal in all cases). And, as Jennifer Senior notes in a fascinating (pro-life-tilting) story in New York Magazine, the pro-choice contingency is shrinking.
If forced to choose, Americans today are far more eager to label themselves “pro-life” than they were a dozen years ago. The youngest generation of voters—those between the ages of 18 and 29, and therefore most likely to need an abortion—is the most pro-life to come along since the generation born during the Great Depression, according to Michael D. Hais and Morley Winograd, authors of Millennial Makeover, who got granular data on the subject from Pew Research Center. Crisis Pregnancy Centers, dedicated to persuading women to continue their pregnancies, now outnumber the country’s abortion providers, who themselves are a rapidly aging group (two-thirds are over 50, according to a National Abortion Federation study from 2002).
I think it’s only a matter of time before the pro-choice movement becomes an obvious minority. If we acknowledge that human life is precious (and it’d be a rare politician who’d deny such a thing), then further acknowledges that deciding when a human life begins is quite the tricky thing (surely, there’s nothing magical that happens when a baby exits the birth canal, is there?), we, as a society, will grow more and more protective of the rights of the unborn. The pro-life movement, it seems to me, has logic on its side.
But that doesn’t mitigate the fact that pro-life Christians have a politically daunting, and potentially damaging, fight right now. Do we lobby to block health care reform as proposed by the Senate, when we know the withering fire we’ll come under?
Abby Johnson, I’d guess, would likely say yes: The risks are worth it.
Johnson, a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, according to the Baptist Press, was raised in a Baptist family, but she turned her back on the denomination (though not her faith) in order to, as she saw it at the time, help women in times of grave need. But on Oct. 6, she could no longer ignore what she felt was God’s calling. She walked out of the center and joined the Coalition of Life, just down the street. Bobby Reynoso, head of the Coalition, was shocked when Johnson came through his door.
“It’s not what we were expecting,” he said. “But as Christians, it should be.”
As Christians, we should expect eventual victory in this struggle against abortion — whether we see an incremental step forward in this health care reform bill or not. Logic is on our side. Justice is on our side. And let me just presumptive and say it: I think God’s on our side, too.
