Rarely do pro-life advocates turn to the New York Times to prove the point that abortion is the game-changing issue in any election cycle. But this week, the Gray Lady said what we have known for years: Young voters may be turned off by some GOP policies in general and reluctant to support President Trump in particular, but the issue of abortion, the human rights issue of our day, delivers their vote for life.
The New York Times reported: “Polling of conservatives indicates that abortion ‘is becoming a bigger issue to their identity as Republicans,’ said Melissa Deckman, a political scientist at Washington College who studies Generation Z. ‘This is an issue that’s just become nonnegotiable, even among younger people.’”
Is it too early to say we told you so?
When it comes to abortion, the popular culture dulls the cutting edge of the issue with language such as “choice” and “access,” never detailing what is chosen and what access to abortion buys you. With the COVID-19 pandemic in the headlines, abortion was debated as “essential” or “nonessential,” with governors choosing sides over whether ending lives by abortion was vital and a good use for scarce personal protective equipment.
But those verbal fig leaves didn’t cover up the ugly reality of abortion, especially for those of us on the front lines of the fight for life.
I, Kristan, am the head of Students for Life of America, an organization of more than 1,250 groups in all 50 states that works with the generation targeted by the abortion lobby. In the last 14 years, we’ve trained more than 100,000 students. At events and on campuses nationwide, my team engages in conversations, provides support, and sponsors events for those who have been written off as pro-abortion. That’s not a mistake we make.
And I, Abby, lived the nightmare of legal abortion as a clinic director of Planned Parenthood, where I saw too many babies’ lives ended — until I was asked to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion.
On a day I’ll never forget, I watched a 13-week old baby fight for life and then die mere inches away from where I held that ultrasound probe on the mother’s stomach. No marketing slogan could camouflage what I saw. I’ve touched the body parts of babies when I pieced them together, making sure that all of the remains had been removed, and I have seen their bodies being sucked out of the womb. During an abortion, the doctor waits for a particular suction sound, the loud and distinct noise of a baby’s head making its way through the tube. I know that sound.
The euphemisms of abortion can’t hide the ugly truth of how pre-born lives end and how women are harmed mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. That reality requires pro-life voters to put aside infighting over the search for the “perfect” candidate and demands that we don’t waste our votes on nonviable candidates or by failing to vote.
The pro-life movement follows in the footsteps of the great social movements in the past.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin that energized the nation to finally end the evil of legal slavery, noted that so long as the law ignored “human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the master,” who could dispose of them at will, society could never become “beautiful or desirable.”
A culture that legally labeled people as disposable property, vulnerable to the whims of another, could never truly rise to greatness. And that is true today.
Putting a good face on abortion changes nothing. Even the best-regulated abortion vendor deals in death. To transform that legal reality, we need to win elections.
For the most part, the pro-life movement focuses on political realities, not fantasy football-team politics where we pick and choose from those who are not on the field or even capable of winning at all. No candidate is perfect, and no party is perfect. But as the abortion industry’s political overreach during the coronavirus crisis illustrates, the political allies of abortion vendors will use every opportunity to push their deadly agenda.
Our passion for a pro-life nation and world demands that we use our votes for the protection of all, both mother and pre-born child. We can’t waste our opportunities or relinquish that responsibility. As even the New York Times has observed, we vote pro-life first.
Abby Johnson (@AbbyJohnson) is the founder and director of And Then There Were None and ProLove Ministries. She’s also the author of Unplanned, which was made into a major motion picture of the same name in 2019. Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) is the president of Students for Life of America, with more than 1,250 groups on college, university, and high school campuses in all 50 states. She hosts the Explicitly Pro-Life podcast.
