Many plead, "Will somebody please be consistent about issues of life and death? Where did all the anti-war folks go when the abortion issue came along? And why can't the conservatives who oppose abortion understand the immorality of nuclear weapons?"
Good news: Somebody is consistent. There really are people who are pro-life in a consistent way. They think that the child in the womb, the prisoner on death row, the elderly, the poor, and everyone threatened by the bomb (which is to say all of us) have a right to life. They believe that life is sacred, or a great joy, a wondrous experience, an exciting adventure, or all of these things.
Jesse Jackson and Dick Gregory are consistently pro-life. So are Richard Neuhaus, Graciela Olivarez, Sen. Mark Hatfield, Rep. Mary Rose Oakar, and others who do not fit the neat media stereotype of a Left which opposes every kind of violence except abortion.
Some pro-lifers on the Left are strongly influenced by religious teaching, whether by specific theological positions or by a general spirit of reverence for life. Others are influenced chiefly by medical and scientific evidence that the fetus is a human being.
Some feminists believe that abortion exploits women, both physically and psychologically. They say that "freedom of choice" is a mockery when so many teenagers are pressured by their parents, and older women by husbands or boyfriends, to abort children they want to bear and raise.
Some radicals view societal pressure for abortion as an ultimate cop-out whereby the establishment tries to eliminate poverty by eliminating poor people. A radical organizer, herself from a poor background, recently said of legalized abortion: "Of all the rights that poor people have demanded...this is the right that we've never asked for but we got."
Among the activists at the grassroots level who consistently oppose violence is Juli Loesch. Early in 1979, she started organizing a national network called Prolifers for Survival. This group, called P.S. for short, is working for a world free of nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and abortion. They march and picket and write, consciously providing a pro-life presence on the Left and an anti-nuke presence in the right-to-life movement. Its members range from people who strongly support a Human Life Amendment to ones who view themselves as "pro-choicers for life."
An older group, Feminists for Life, began in 1973. Feminists for Life (FFL) have two key positions: support of the Equal Rights Amendment and support of a Human Life Amendment. FFL members try to build bridges from the pro-life movement to the feminists and vice versa. They try to counter the strong economic and social pressures which push women into abortion clinics. The Minnesota group, for example, recently helped enact a law banning most types of landlord discrimination against families with children. The FFL chapter in Wisconsin, with its Pregnancy Aftermath Helpline, aids women who suffer emotional anguish after abortion, miscarriage, or giving up a child for adoption.
Similar support is given through a publication called Reflections, which describes itself as "a newsletter and healing dialogue for women and men who have experienced abortion." It is a quarterly which features interviews with women, men, clergy, doctors, therapists, and others who have dealt with abortion.
The National Youth Pro-Life Coalition (NYPLC) has a progressive outlook and about 5,000 members around the country. (Despite its name, it is open to persons of all ages.) It has an annual convention, a newspaper, and a summer intern program in Washington, D.C. The interns study and lobby for the Hyde Amendment, aid to the handicapped, and other civil rights issues. Firmly committed to a "consistency position," the NYPLC opposes abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and war. One NYPLC activist sums up the group's positive attitude by saying, "There is no such thing as a necessary evil."
Mary Meehan was a freelance writer who was active in the antiwar movement when this article appeared. She lived in Washington, D.C.
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