Planned Parenthood in Aurora: aftermath

June 22, 2:08 AMChicago Christianity ExaminerMick Noppen

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PHOTO: FVFAPP

It seems almost as if it were yesterday. A new Planned Parenthood facility opened Oct. 7, 2007 amid the tumult and shouting of protestor rallies, supporter counter-rallies, prayer vigils, and legal positioning. Those were turbulent days here in the Fox Valley. On August 9, 2007, opponents of the facility announced a 40-day prayer vigil. A week later, four hundred pro-life advocates rallied at the facility’s site, and nine days later, a thousand or so gathered for yet another rally, during which representatives from the Pro-Life Action League, Illinois Right to Life, Priests for Life, and Operation Rescue squared off against a couple dozen members of the National Organization for Women and the Socialist Workers’ Party. On September 25, 2007, two-hundred or so Planned Parenthood supporters rallied in front of Aurora’s city hall.

On October 7, 2007, the Planned Parenthood facility opened, and the fuss has since died down.

Speaking from a pro-life perspective, it is a troublesome regret that, for all practical purposes, there is no longer any active opposition to the Aurora Planned Parenthood facility. If, as so many pro-life advocates were proclaiming twenty months ago, abortion clinics are the progeny of Holocaust gas chambers, why are these folks not still actively engaged in the sort of rallies we saw back in ’07? Is it because the media is no longer interested, and why bother if you can’t get quoted by Fox News or the Associated Press? Or is it because, in retrospect, pro-lifers have concluded that placard-waving, insult-shouting, rabble-rousing displays of frenetic noise are not the most effective means of proclaiming God’s love for the unborn? (That would be nice . . . but not likely.) Twenty months seems a very short period of time to forget a Holocaust.

From one pro-lifer to another, here are a few suggestions:

1) Put a quick end to those loud, fist-pumping gatherings we euphemistically call “rallies”. Abort them, if you will. These mob scenes, for the most part, are organized and sponsored in the name of God’s love for all human life. The sort of frenzied cacophony that comprises them has about as much to do with divine love as does a Saturday night beer bust at the local frat house.

2) Replace those mob events with dignified, quiet prayer.

3) Don’t go home when the media does. A movement which, in the name of God, can attract over a thousand people to shout insults and wave placards, but can’t slap together even a tenth of that crowd to gather in prayer isn’t of God. Unless you’re prepared to stay the course in anonymity, and in the same numbers as when the media was preening your collective egos, go home and stay there.

4) Disassociate yourselves from people and organizations such as Joe Sheidler and his Pro-Life Action League. This is a guy who, a few years back when the bombing of abortion clinics was in vogue, reportedly passed the time by sticking his nose inside Planned Parenthood facilities, and calling out, “Have a blast!” This is a guy who takes photographs of license plates on the cars of people employed by the Aurora Planned Parenthood clinic in an effort to intimidate them. Bombings and intimidation appeal to madmen and thugs. Nobody who claims the name of Christ has any business trafficking with them.

5) If you happen to be male, step back. Issues surrounding pregnancy and birth are issues only a woman can fully comprehend. No man, particularly in matters of rape, incest, or the life of a mother, has a capacity to completely understand the agonizing difficulty of choice imposed on so many women on so many occasions. If you happen to be female, step up. Reach out in love, not in anger, to your sisters. You give pro-life advocacy the only real credibility it can claim. Use your advantage and insight charitably.

6) Stop advocating legislation that would define life in terms of Christian belief. If you give a legislative body, state or national, the competency to define when life begins, you have, by implication, also given that legislative body the competency to determine when meaningful life ends. If you must legislate, try doing so on constitutional grounds. Nobody, pro-life or pro-choice, can deny that a fetus, left undisturbed, will eventually enjoy life. Does abortion on demand arbitrarily deprive that fetus of a constitutional right to life? Perhaps so; perhaps not. But if the answer to the abortion dilemma is to be legislated, that legislation must be founded on our Constitution, not on our Christianity. Religious freedom depends on it.

7) Stop treating the other side as if they were, to the last man and woman, imps of Satan. They are not. Most of them have come to their beliefs honestly. Some believe in God; many do not. But if the Christian undertaking is really to save lives and souls, how do we accomplish this by building walls and spewing hate? We need to find common ground, not only to save babies, but to engage their mothers. If, when I meet my maker, he asks me, “What did you do to reach the living, in order that they might, when given the opportunity, protect life?”, I respond, “Nothing, God. But me and my placard sure as shootin’ gave ‘em hell!”, it’s not likely God will be amused.

A lot of pro-lifers need to be reminded of what the Old Testament prophet, Elijah, once discovered. We do not hear God in rushing winds or raging fires. We hear him, rather, in still, small voices.