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Generation
Pro-Life
by Colleen Carroll Campbell
America’s pro-life activists have labored
for more than 30 years to overturn Roe v.
Wade, to defend the sanctity of human life,
and to uphold the self evident truth that
all men are created equal. For their
trouble, they have often endured defeat and
disappointment. They have witnessed the
coarsening of our culture of death and
watched as new threats to human life emerged
with each passing decade. Many have wrestled
with despair, fearing that their prayers and
sacrifices would never bear fruit.
To their credit, most veterans of the
pro-life movement have clung to the hope
that St. Paul preached to the Romans. They
have learned to “wait with endurance” for
what is not yet seen.
Now their patience appears to be paying off:
A new generation of Americans is taking up
the mantle of the pro-life cause and
beginning to rebuild a culture of life.
Marching for Life
I first saw this new face of the pro-life
movement four years ago at the March for
Life in Washington, DC. I was researching my
book, The New Faithful, and I had
heard that the young pro-lifers who
converged on the National Mall each January
were a must-see.
Of course, I had not heard that from the
mainstream media. The images of the annual
march on my TV screen and in newspapers had
left me with an uninspiring impression. The
protesters in those images always seemed to
be standing alone, scowling at the cameras,
or screaming about God’s vengeance. I saw
almost no young faces, hardly any crowds,
and few signs of life.
But attending the March for Life in person
was a different experience entirely. When I
arrived, I saw what the mainstream media did
not spotlight: Tens of thousands of
marchers—the overwhelming majority of them
young—conducting a peaceful, prayerful,
joyful demonstration in defense of life.
I saw swarms of teenagers and young adults
who had come from every direction after
riding buses all day and sleeping in church
basements all night. They smiled, sang
praise songs, and prayed their rosaries as
they walked into the biting wind. They
carried pro-life placards from such schools
as Cornell, Princeton, and Notre Dame, and
from towns and dioceses all across the
United States. The mood of these young
pro-lifers was upbeat, but there was no
mistaking their resolve. They had come to
stand for the sanctity of life and they were
sustained by their shared faith.
Counter-cultural Activism
These young adults, and so many others, are
part of a trend toward faith-based, pro-life
activism that has begun to surface in
national statistics. A recent study
conducted by the Higher Education Research
Institute at UCLA found that one-fifth of
American college students are “highly
religious,” and these students tend to be
morally conservative and pro-life. More than
three-quarters of them oppose legal
abortion, and they oppose the death penalty
by a much wider margin than non-religious
students.
Yet the appeal of the pro-life cause is not
limited only to these highly religious young
adults. A recent New York Times/CBS
News poll found that among young adults,
support for legal abortion—which has been
steadily dropping since the early 1990s—hit
a new low in 2003, with less than four in 10
young Americans agreeing that abortion
should remain generally available. That is
down from nearly 50 percent who supported
abortion rights a decade earlier. Those
findings confirm earlier polls by Zogby
International and the University of
California at Berkeley, which found that
young Americans are significantly more
likely than their elders to support
restrictions on abortion.
The anti-abortion sentiment among these
young adults often perplexes their elders,
who may consider it a result of ignorance or
even brainwashing. But the view from the
inside is different. These young pro-lifers
describe their stand against abortion as
more countercultural than conservative, a
rebellion against a culture that has failed
to defend its weakest members. One t-shirt I
spotted at the March for Life seemed to sum
up the defiant character of today’s young
activists. It said, “You will not silence my
message. You will not mock my God. You will
stop killing my generation.”
A Hopeful Future
Since my first visit to the march, I have
interviewed hundreds of young adults all
across America whose passion for defending
life is bearing fruit in concrete action. I
have met students at Harvard Law School who
spend their weekends doing pro bono legal
work for pro-life groups, young staffers on
Capitol Hill who push for pro-life and
pro-family legislation, young Sisters of
Life in Manhattan who care for unwed mothers
and abortion survivors, and college students
affiliated with Crossroads, who spend their
summers walking 3,200 miles across America,
spreading the pro-life message on foot.
These young adults and a growing number of
their peers see legal abortion as a social
injustice akin to segregation or slavery.
They feel particularly motivated to defend
the unborn as members of the first
generation to be born—or not born—under Roe
v. Wade. Steve Sanborn, one of the founders
of Crossroads, put it this way: “Our motto
has really always been that it could have
been us . . . . I do consider it to be our
fight more than anybody else’s.”
Like many young activists, Crossroads
walkers often meet older pro-lifers who are
surprised at their commitment. While walking
through Denver, Sanborn met one elderly
woman who approached him with tears in her
eyes. She said, “I never expected this. I
thought this was going to die with us.”
Sanborn answered, “We’re not going anywhere.
We’ll be doing this the rest of our lives.”
That’s good news for the Church, the
culture, and the pro-life movement. And it
is a powerful reminder that those who wait
in hope for the Lord are never disappointed. |
