Testing Rhetoric Against Reality: The Christian Coalition's Failure

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 , 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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