The pro-life grassroots movement would be more effective if it were to focus its collective energies on the cause rather than the effect. By providing education and information on preventative measures, making birth control readily available and inexpensive or free, pro-lifers would be able to establish and promote more empathetic and efficacious life-saving goals. For those most at risk, this support would help to obviate the rate of abortion. It woul, arguably, be more cost-effective than lobbying for social welfare programs to support the mother and child. And more effective than marches, protests and shouting matches. This goal would also help to ameliorate our public health crises by reducing the critical mass of STDs caused by unsafe sex.
Pro-Lifers In Obamaland
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But the Obama team may still have a hard time bringing the two sides together—even in the early days of an administration pledged to bipartisanship. In the past, the "common ground" approach to abortion politics has stalled. Although both camps want to reduce abortion, legislators are loath to put their votes behind the other side's tactics. Pro-choice legislators push for access to contraceptives, while those on the pro-life side vote for increased funding to pregnancy-support programs. "If you want to get to 51 [votes], we think let's do pregnant women over here, and contraceptives over there," says Brown, in Senator Casey's office, who recently introduced legislation to support pregnant women.
The feeling is mutual; pro-choice groups have been reticent to support legislation that does not make provisions for contraception. NARAL Pro-Choice America opposes the Support Pregnant Woman Act because of "the absence of important pieces, like contraception, and the presence of some parts tinged with anti-choice values," says Donna Crane, their policy director. Legislation promoting both types of reduction strategies in one bill has floundered without enough support from either camp. On the Hill, says Brown, "they're two different issues," even though they have identical goals.
The issue is so polarizing, that even if a piece of legislation does not have an overt "pro-life" or "pro-choice" label, some legislators and activists are determined to categorize it anyway. "I think the biggest obstacle [for abortion-reduction legislation] is that people look at it and they're going, 'okay, what's the angle here? What are you pushing?'" says Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life. "It's support for pregnant women. There's no hidden agenda here."
There are hints that Sharon Dillon and her group aren't the only ones open to compromise. Take Stanek, the pro-life blogger. Asked if she could ever see herself participating in this new approach, she answers definitively: "We will never, ever agree; we will never, ever come together on our worldviews on how to reduce abortions." But as she reads over an advertisement published that day by Real Abortion Solutions, she takes a different tack. "We would definitely agree with them on that, expanding adoption," she says. "That's an area where we could work. We would definitely agree with them on increasing pre-natal and post-natal healthcare."
But then Stanek moves back toward her doubts. "Then again, how? You have look at how they want to expand adoption. It's very, very tough to find areas of agreement." That is one point where she, the pro-choice, and pro-life community, have found plenty of common ground.
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