The Pro-Life Battle is Primarily Spiritual and Demographic, Not Political

By Dave Armstrong (1-16-09)

Some comments I made on the CHNI board:

My two older sons (17, 15) are on their way to Washington to attend the March for Life. I'm so proud of them. Hopefully there will be a huge turnout this year, to send a clear message to the new President: "we will never give up this fight."

Like the abolitionists of old, or the civil rights folks, or Native American grievances, and other just causes, ours, too will one day be victorious. History shows us this.

All our side has to do is have lots of kids and raise them as true disciples of Jesus (and for that matter, to stop voting for pro-abortion politicians). It's all up to us. We have the numbers and the power, if we would only get smart and use it. That would end legal abortion in a generation (or two at the most: after the young pro-lifers attain to voting age), but of course Christians aren't doing that. Our birth rates are about the same as the general public.

So we see again how contraception directly enables legal abortion to continue for now over 35 years with no end in sight in the near future. It also did so philosophically and legally in the days before Roe, because contraception laws were used as a precedent for the notorious "right to privacy."

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I'd like to reiterate my firm contention and conviction that the pro-life battle will not be won by any tactics whatsoever, or efforts to reach out: CPCs, etc. (which I fully support). Politically and legally, the landscape is very bleak, now that we have ruined our chance for a pro-life Supreme Court for possibly another 20-25 years. A constitutional amendment has no chance of passing anytime in the foreseeable future. We have failed in our task of changing public opinion through education and protests.

We can be perfect saints in our attitudes and behavior towards post-abortive women or unwed pregnant teens or pro-abortion people who just don't get it and are often rationalizing their own sin (sexual sins always being prevalent in any list of widespread sins). We should seek righteousness and saintliness; of course!

But people are very flawed, so (let's be realistic) we never will have perfect attitudes towards others. None of that will end legal abortion, anyway, because it is too entrenched in our culture, with its wholesale adoption of Sexual Revolution ethics and lifestyle. What will end it is two things:

1) true spiritual revival,

and (closely related):

2) Catholics and other Christians profoundly embracing the culture of life by having lots of children: the way we used to, and raising them as disciples of Christ and pro-lifers.

The second will only follow from the first, because that is a longstanding trend as well in our society: hostility to the notion of children, as shown by the few children most couples choose to have. Christians have bought into that, wholesale.

This will end legal abortion in a generation; two at the most, because demographics is destiny. If we don't have the numbers to prevail, then all we have to do is be Christians like they were in former times, and have lots of children, and raise them in the faith. Proponents of the pro-death culture will kill off their Huge Death Machine (or its influence) by continuing to murder children or having few children even when they choose to do so (those children being the fortunate benefactors of their benevolence, and allowed to live, unlike their unfortunate siblings who were in the wrong place at the wrong time).

Then we'll dominate in numbers; the Baby Boomers will eventually die off (like the disobedient Hebrews in the wilderness with Moses) and our society can get back to rudimentary ethical sanity.

It's as simple as that. But this has clearly gone way beyond CPCs and marches and rescues and philosophical approaches and political tactics.

Actually, a third thing should be mentioned, that has been known to bring about revival: serious persecution. History shows that most revivals don't and won't begin (due to human rebelliousness) until things get very dark and bleak. That is probably (almost certainly) the case today. Revival itself is supernatural and spiritual in origin, not just a change of opinion and behavior. We will have to experience some profound suffering in this nation in order to wake up and enter into (by God's grace) spiritual revival. And once revival starts, maybe Christians will start having children again like we used to (throwing away our contraceptive devices and pills), and then abortion will be destined for oblivion, as it used to be in civilized societies until our country decided in the 1960s to reject traditional Christian sexual morality once and for all.

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