POLITICAL BECAUSE IT MATTERS!

By Edwin Cooney

According to a feature article in the Sunday, July 28^th, 2013 Erie (Pennsylvania) Times-News, a Millcreek Township, Pennsylvania group is doing something about abortion, a public policy it opposes on moral grounds.  They’ve formed a nonprofit organization called “Save Unborn Life” and they are putting their time, energy, organizational skills, money (theirs and others), as well as their hearts into the organization’s mission.  Their mission is to save the lives of the unborn.  Their strategy is to pay $3,000 to every mother who contracts with them to carry her baby to full term.  Their president Laura Merriott reports that they’ve saved the lives of forty-four babies, five of which have been put up for adoption, and they currently have contracts with four more women including a mother from Texas -- the first woman outside of Pennsylvania to contract with them.  In addition, they’re making plans to let every crisis center know that “Save Unborn Life” will pay women considering abortion $3,000 to avoid the procedure.  Before commenting further on “Save Unborn Life” and its mission, I’m going to get a little personal.

I was born prematurely and out of wedlock in 1945 to a young widowed woman who was already the mother of a baby daughter.  I’ve never known my father’s name.  It’s my guess, and only my guess since my mother has never confided in me, that had a safe abortion been available, I might not have been carried to term.  Not knowing my father has often left me with an empty and anchorless feeling.  Even more, living as the object of my mother’s rather resentful indifference has been, at some very sensitive and crucial times in my life, quite dehumanizing.  Thus, over the years (and especially since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973), while I appreciate the idea that a woman is a woman before she’s a mother and should have control over her productive capacity, I’ve also been intensely sensitive to the fate of unwanted children.             

Now, as for the mission of “Save Unborn Children,” I applaud it long and loudly. Some will be critical of its strategy of “bribing” women to carry their children to term.  However, I’ll argue that if you strongly insist upon the individual’s freedom of choice as the proper way to handle this sensitive moral question, you must cheerfully allow women who choose to carry their children to term the same “freedom of choice” you insist upon for yourself.

Whether the abortion option should be legal is, quite naturally, both a practical and moral question.  Sadly, throughout our history, moral questions regarding slavery, civil rights and human rights have, prior to their ultimate solutions, fueled the ambitions of politicians from all political parties.

While most anti-abortion advocates reside these days in the Republican Party, Ellen McCormack’s 1976 presidential candidacy in the Democratic Party constituted the original effort to overturn Roe verses Wade.  Due to the overwhelming demand by Democratic women who insisted that the rights of the unborn were the business of mothers rather than politicians, Republicans have inherited the anti-abortion issue.

As political practitioners of both parties learned from FDR, still the Twentieth Century’s most masterful politician, in politics issues matter much more than solutions.  Hence, the following realities go begging: 

First, while there’s serious debate as to when life begins, there is absolutely no doubt that life continues after that precious baby’s birth.

Second, to be truly “pro-life” is to be pro-life no matter whose life may be in the balance!

Third, principles matter until they cost money.  It’s cheaper to advocate for the unborn than it is to pay for their care once they’re with us.

Fourth, everyone is against killing until they think their individual well-being is at stake.

Fifth, and finally, neither “pro-lifers” nor “freedom of choice” advocates have a monopoly on morality when it comes to our national abortion agony.

When “freedom of choice” advocates become really concerned about the dilemma of vulnerable mothers, we’ll see them be more sympathetic to the concerns of parent’s efforts to influence their teenagers’ sexual activity.

When conservatives become really and truly concerned about the fate of the “unborn,” they will advocate for a public policy that cares for children once they’re born regardless of the cost or even if it requires the establishment of a little more government.

Meanwhile, Laura Merriott (the organization’s president), Laura’s sister Terri Dworaczyk (vice president), Teresa Augustyniak (treasurer), and Joanna Sanzo (secretary) of “Save Unborn Life” carry forth their mission.  It should be applauded because it both meets the demands of their religious faith and beckons the rest of us to care for its progeny some distant day even if it costs money.

Finally, because it matters, both liberal and conservative politicians and ideologues will insist their positions are moral when they are mostly political.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY