Is This the Best Prolife Operatives Can Do

I should perhaps apologize for my preoccupation with the arguments being test marketed by the "pro- life" political circle as it loses time after time across the country. Now that it is so obvious it will lose big time in Congress and the Presidency I would think we would see something reflecting smarts emerging. A new effort by what I would consider the best source for pro-life political ideas put his out there in the New York Times. 

That source is author David French. He was an anti-abortion attorney, became a widely read author and was recently taken on by the Times. Perhaps there were many liberal people like myself who did an eye roll when he was hired as a columnist. I would classify him as a "wise man" in the forced-birth circle. While he does not understand much of the secular world, I read his columns because he comes at things a bit differently. 

In his column this week he tries to present a solution to the growing support for abortion rights. Here is a link to his column but I'm sure readers will find a pay wall. That being the case, I'll try to summarize his advice to the forced-birth political establishment.

French was delighted at the overturn of Roe. But, he says, forced birth operatives were not ready to deal with the support for abortion rights that became obvious. He believes there are abortions because women in our society have "lost hope." He thinks if "hope" could be restored, women with unwanted pregnancies would give birth. French is so influential I could see force-birth ads for "hope" appearing in the future.

French's vague and undefined notion of "hope" is just as worthless and the long-standing notion a fetus "is a human being." Neither address the dilemmas of individual women with unwanted pregnancies. When one reads reputable studies like Turnaway one sees a list of individual problems as long as your arm, each different from the others. It is parents, a bad boyfriend/husband, too many existing children, college, teen pregnancy, debt, job loss, and others. To persuade a young woman to abandon a cheap abortion the forced-birth community needs to make her individual problem evaporate. No matter what her problem, abortion has remained the go-to solution. Forced birth operatives have presented no other. 

French and other forced-birth advocates need to face reality. I can't say they never will find an answer. It is clear they have not yet found one.