Help Bring Abort73 to Atlanta

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine from the Atlanta area asked if I'd ever given any thought to billboard advertising. I told him I had but that it had yet to get beyond the thought stage. I forwarded him a link to the Lamar website, and a few days later, he had a content-approved quote for a digital billboard, north of Atlanta on I-75 – and an offer to spearhead the fundraising effort. Isn't it remarkable what a little outside energy can accomplish!

And though my friend has claimed responsibility for raising the $800 necessary for this grand experiment, I want to at least invite our supporters from the Atlanta area to join the cause – while urging everyone else to consider supporting similar projects in their area (assuming this one proves successful). To that end, I've added a drop-down menu to our online donation page which allows you to specify where your donation goes.

After a fair bit of deliberation, this is the design we've landed on.

And here's why I feel this design gives us the most bang for our buck:

The GUNS design is by far the most provocative graphic we have. It turns heads on shirts and I trust it will turn heads in traffic. And because of the relative width of the billboard, it gives us a perfect opportunity to pair the GUNS graphic with a picture of a GUNS shirt. This accomplishes a number of things. First, it gives personality and credibility to the message. It's long been an advertising maxim that people are drawn to the human face. Second, since we're trying to pique viewer's curiosity, I like the subtle dissonance between a harsh slogan and a pretty face. Third, having a young, female model combats the stereotype that opposition to abortion is driven by aging, anti-women men. Finally, having a shirt on the billboard lets people know that this same message exists on shirts that they can buy and wear themselves. Not only does it invite people to immediate involvement, but it also opens the door to a more financially-sustainable advertising model. If some of the cost of the billboard can be offset through increased regional shirt sales, then that's less money that needs to be raised through donations. Win, win.

Having said all that, it's still entirely possible that this advertising endeavor will be a flop. But here's the good news. If it is a flop, we'll know it. Because of the increased advances in web analytics, I'll be able to monitor regional web traffic (and regional shirt sales) before, during, and after the campaign to see what kind of influence it actually has. If it proves successful, we'll look to expand the billboards into other markets. If it doesn't, we can turn our energies to something else. And one of the great things about digital billboards is that it cuts the cost of month-long advertising almost in half by eliminating the hefty up-front cost of printing a billboard that size.

To help get this billboard off the ground, donate here, and come back to the blog to check our progress. I'll post periodic updates in the comments section.

 Thanks so much!

Abortion Ethics in a Christ-Haunted Culture

A few weeks ago, a friend suggested that I add a quote from Peter Singer to Abort73's Medical Testimony page. Singer is a renowned though controversial author and philosopher who has taught bioethics at Princeton University since 1999. He is an ardent public defender of abortion. Nevertheless, he openly admits that "from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being." Here is the full quote from his book, Practical Ethics:

It is possible to give ‘human being’ a precise meaning. We can use it as equivalent to ‘member of the species Homo sapiens’. Whether a being is a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically, by an examination of the nature of the chromosomes in the cells of living organisms. In this sense there is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being. (85-86)

The quote above has now been added to our Medical Testimony page. It sits alongside the remarks of numerous other public abortion advocates who all admit that abortion kills a human being. Before the quote went up, I took some time to read Practical Ethics for myself. From Abort73's inception, I've made a conscious effort to never quote something I don't have direct access to. This helps ensure that the quotes are real, that they're rendered correctly, and that they're being considered in their proper context.

Having now read Professor Singer's work, I must commend him for offering what is the most philosophically consistent defense of abortion I have yet encountered. Don't get me wrong, I could not be more opposed to the utilitarian conclusions he arrives at, but much of what he says is hard to argue with. For instance, he denies that ethics is "relative or subjective" (4). "No ethical line," he says, "that is arbitrarily drawn can be secure. It is better to find a line that can be defended openly and honestly" (77). He says that for a person to be living according to ethical standards, "a justification in terms of self-interest alone will not do" (10). He requires that "self-interested acts must be shown to be compatible with more broadly based ethical principles [because] the notion of ethics carries with it the idea of something bigger than the individual" (10). He rejects the premise that just because a certain behavior is natural it is right (71). "Ethics," he believes, "requires us to go beyond 'I' and 'you' to the universal law, the universalisable judgment, the standpoint of the impartial spectator or ideal observer" (12).

In regard to abortion, he goes to great lengths to demonstrate why "the standard liberal responses" in support of abortion are completely "inadequate" (137). He admits that "there is no obvious sharp line that divides the fertilized egg from the adult" (137). He states that "the location of a being – inside or outside the womb – should not make that much difference to the wrongness of killing it" (139). He further notes that "it is not plausible to suggest that the dependence of the nonviable fetus on its mother gives her the right to kill it" (141). Later, he points out that most of the arguments people make in support of abortion are "argument[s] against laws prohibiting abortion, and not an argument against the view that abortion is wrong" (143). He criticizes abortion advocates for assuming "the point that needs to be proven," namely that "abortion does not harm an 'other'" (146).

To this point, I agree with everything Professor Singer has said. In fact, you'll find virtually all of these arguments on the Abort73 website. But this is where the overlap ends. Despite all of the concessions above, Singer believes that abortion should remain legal throughout the entire pregnancy, for any reason at all (so long as the embryo or fetus does not suffer any pain during the abortion). How does he arrive here? By arguing that though the embryo and fetus are "indisputably members of the species Homo sapiens", they are not "self-aware", they do not have "a sense of the future", they are incapable of "[relating] to others" and are therefore, not persons in the proper sense of the word (86). He states that "on any fair comparison of morally relevant characteristics, like rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, autonomy, pleasure and pain, and so on, the calf, the pig and the much derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy" (151). For these reasons, he says, "the fetus has no right to, nor strictly speaking even an interest in, life" (164), and he suggests that we "accord the life of a fetus no greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, etc." (151).

There is nothing particularly unusual in his argument so far. It is not uncommon for abortion advocates to appeal to similar, functionality-based rationales in an attempt to discredit the moral significance of embryos and fetuses. In so doing, they argue that the essence of humanity is not biological; it's functional. It's not what you are at the cellular level; it's what you can do at the cerebral level. It is a move from firm and measurable criterion to much more fuzzy and speculative fare. Generally, the best way to combat such thinking is to point out that if we withhold legal protection from human beings that lack the requisite characteristics Singer lists (rationality, self-consciousness, autonomy, etc), we will be withholding legal protection from all sorts of people who have already been born. This sends most abortion advocates reeling since they cannot adequately explain why it's OK to apply this criterion to human beings inside the womb, but not OK to apply the same criterion to human beings outside of the womb.

It is here where Peter Singer distinguishes himself, as you'll see in his remarks below:

The strength of the [anti-abortion] position lies in the difficulty liberals have in pointing to a morally significant line of demarcation between an embryo and a newborn baby. The standard liberal position needs to be able to point to some such line, because liberals usually hold that it is permissible to kill an embryo or fetus but not a baby. I have argued that the life of a fetus (and even more plainly, of an embryo) is of no greater value than the life of a nonhuman animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, etc. and that since no fetus is a person, no fetus has the same claim to life a person. Now it must be admitted that these arguments apply to the newborn baby as much as to the fetus. A week-old baby is not a rational and self-conscious being, and there are many nonhuman animals whose rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, and so on, exceed that of a human baby a week or a month old. If the fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either, and the life of a newborn baby is of less value to it than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee is to the nonhuman animals. Thus while my position on the status of fetal life may be acceptable to many, the implications of this position for the status of newborn life are at odds with the virtually unchallenged assumption that the life of a newborn baby is as sacrosanct as that of an adult. (169-170)

Killing a snail or a day-old infant [are morally comparable since] snails and newborn infants are incapable of having [future] desires. (90)

On purely ethical grounds, the killing of a newborn infant is not comparable with the killing of an older child or adult. (172)

If we can put aside these emotionally moving but strictly irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants. (171)

My comparison of abortion and infanticide was prompted by the objection that the position I have taken on abortion also justifies infanticide. I have admitted this charge – without regarding the admission as fatal to my position. (173)

Once abortion is accepted, euthanasia lurks around the next corner... I do not deny that if one accepts abortion on the grounds [I've argued], the case for killing other human beings, in certain circumstances, is strong. (175)

Just when it seems Singer has painted himself into a corner, he frees himself by publicly advocating the moral legitimacy of infanticide and euthanasia. Unlike so many others, who refuse to go to the only logical place their principles can take them, Singer makes the leap. He says what almost no other abortion-advocates can bring themselves to say, namely that if their reasoning is correct, then it is no more wrong to kill a baby after it's born that it is to kill a baby before it's born. And instead of apologizing for this conclusion (or seeing it as a weakness to his position), Singer encourages other abortion-advocates to take the same plunge.

And this brings us to the title of the piece, "Abortion Ethics in a Christ-Haunted Culture." A few years ago, I heard Tim Keller speak at the Desiring God National Conference. His talk centered on evangelism in a post-modern culture, and he emphasized the unique and unprecedented challenge of sharing the gospel in what he called an "ex-Christian mission field" – a culture that used to be predominantly Christian, but now is not. He borrowed the term "Christ-haunted people" from Flannery O'Connor to describe this strange paradigm where we have people who have rejected the central tenets of Christianity but still cling to some of its foundations. These are people who do not generally believe the Bible, but "they have a cultural memory that is fairly long and they're still traditional… in their values" (Keller). Peter Singer recognizes this same reality and says the following:

In discussing the doctrine of the sanctity of human life I shall not take the term 'sanctity' in a spefically religious sense. The doctrine may well have a religious origin... but it is now part of a broadly secular ethic... The view that human life has unique value is deeply rooted in our society and is enshrined in our law. (84)

If we go back to the origins of Western civilisation, to Greek or Roman times, we find that membership of Homo sapiens was not sufficient to guarantee that one's life would be protected. There was no respect for the lives of slaves or other 'barbarians'; and even among the Greeks and Romans themselves, infants had no automatic right to life. (88)

Our present attitudes date from the coming of Christianity. There was a specific theological motivation for the Christian insistence on the importance of species membership: the belief that all born of human parents are immortal and destined to an eternity of bliss or for everlasting torment. With this belief, the killing of Homo sapiens took on a fearful significance, since it consigned a being to his or her eternal fate. A second Christian doctrine that led to the same conclusion was the belief that since we are created by God we are his property, and to kill a human being is to usurp God's right to decide when we shall live and when we shall die. (89)

During the centuries of Christian domination of European thought the ethical attitudes based on these doctrines became part of the unquestioned moral orthodoxy of European civilisation. Today the doctrines are no longer generally accepted, but the ethical attitudes to which they gave rise fit in with the deep-seated Western belief in the uniqueness and special privileges of our species, and have survived. (89)

If these conclusions (in support of infanticide) seem too shocking to take seriously, it may be worth remembering that our present absolute protection of the lives of infants is a distinctively Christian attitude rather than a universal ethical value." (172)

The change in Western attitudes to infanticide since Roman times is, like the doctrine of the sanctity of human life of which it is a part, a product of Christianity." (173)

Peter Singer here recognizes something that is foundational to the success of the Abort73 website. The secular arguments against abortion all assume one massive Christian tenet: the sanctity of human life. Abort73 doesn't need the Bible to prove that abortion is immoral and unjust, so long as the person visiting the website already believes that it is wrong to kill a baby. But once someone stops believing that it is wrong to kill a baby, the secular case against abortion ceases to exist. And so does the secular case against murder. It is extremely difficult to find a solid, ethical basis for submission to the rule of law when God is removed from the equation.

In his last chapter, Singer attempts to answer the question that threatens all of his moral directives. The question is this: Why Act Morally? In the absence of God, why should anyone feel compelled to act a certain way? Put differently, if human beings were not created for a specific purpose, then why should we be restrained by specific, moral expectations? I give Singer credit for addressing the question. As he notes, most of his ideological colleagues simply ignore it. His response goes like this:

Don't we have to accept, in the absence of religious belief, that life really is meaningless, not just for the psychopath but for all of us? (330)

If this world had been created by some divine being with a particular goal in mind, it could be said to have a meaning. (331)

When we reject belief in a god we must give up the idea that life on this planet has some preordained meaning. Life as a whole has no meaning. (331)

Now that it has resulted in the existence of beings who prefer some states of affairs to others, however, it may be possible for particular lives to be meaningful. (331)

If our life has no meaning other than our own happiness, we are likely to find that when we have obtained what we think we need to be happy, happiness itself still eludes us. (332)

I am now suggesting that rationality, in the broad sense that includes self-awareness and reflection on the nature and point of our own existence, may push us towards concerns broader than the quality of our own existence; but the process is not a necessary one and those who do not take part in it – or, who in taking part, do not follow it all the way to the ethical point of view – are neither irrational nor in error. Psychopaths, for all I know, may simply be unable to obtain as much happiness through caring about others as they obtain by antisocial acts. Other people find collecting stamps an entirely adequate way of giving purpose to their lives. There is nothing irrational about that; but others again grow out of stamp collecting as they become more aware of their situation in the world and more reflective about their purposes. To this third group the ethical point of view offers a meaning and purpose in life that one does not grow out of. (At least, one cannot grow out of the ethical point of view until all ethical tasks have been accomplished. If that utopia were ever achieved, our purposive nature might well leave us dissatisfied…) (335)

The reason that Peter Singer and I have arrived at such radically different positions (despite agreeing on so many points) is because we started at radically different places. He begins his book with the "conscious disavowal of any assumption that all members of our own species have, merely because they are members of our species, any distinctive worth or inherent value that puts them above members of other species" (ix). I began Abort73 with the conscious assumption that all members of the human species do have inherent value beyond all other species because God made us in his image and placed us in authority over other species.

When you start where Singer starts, it's hard to morally defend or condemn anything. Singer makes a valiant effort, but you can hear the uncertainty in his final remarks. It's as if he wants life to have meaning, believes it has meaning, but can't find a rational, evolutionary basis for giving it one. The only reason that more abortion advocates do not sound as extreme as Peter Singer does is because they're not being consistent. They're still Christ-haunted. They're eager to throw off the personal, moral demands of scripture, but averse to letting go of the notion that human life is sacred and meaningful. Even Peter Singer is reluctant to go this far. Nor should he.

People know intrinsically that life has meaning – that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. "For when [those] who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them" (ESV Romans 2.14,15). If you believe that it is morally acceptable to kill a human being inside the womb, but not morally acceptable to kill a human being outside the womb, you've got a problem. Peter Singer says the problem is you haven't gone far enough. I say the problem is you've already gone too far. There is freedom in suppressing a belief in God. Most profoundly it is freedom from hope, freedom from meaning, and freedom from ultimate joy. Don't embrace the notion that life is meaningless because you've bought into the notion that life is God-less. Fix your inconsistency the other way! No matter how many PhDs you have to your credit, it is only the fool who says there is no God (Psalm 14.1). Thankfully, God is in the business of rescuing fools, and let's face it, at one time or another, we've all acted the fool.

Keller, Tim. "The Supremacy of Christ and the Gospel in a Postmodern World." Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God National Conference, Sept. 20, 2006. MP3.

Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. 2nd ed. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print.

The Unfathomable Brutality of School Attacks in China

America is no stranger to violent school attacks, but over the course of the last 2 months, China has seen a wave of school violence that dwarfs anything we've seen in the states – not in terms of total numbers, but certainly in terms of the makeup of the victims and the methods of the assaults. As the BBC reports, "media reports of [these incidents] have been minimal, perhaps in an attempt to discourage the copycat attacks that many parents now fear." So in case you've missed it, here is a selected timeline:

• May 12: A man with a meat cleaver hacks seven children and two adults to death at a kindergarten in Hanzhong city in Shaanxi province. He then kills himself.
• April 30: A man attacks and wounds five kindergarten students with a hammer in Shandong province's Weifang city before burning himself to death.
• April 29: A man stabs 28 nursery students with an 8" knife, most of them 4-year-olds, in Jiangsu province. He was sentenced to death in a half-day trial on May 15.
• April 28: A teacher on sick leave breaks into a primary school in Leizhou city in Guangdong province in southern China and stabs 18 students (fourth and fifth graders) and a teacher.
• March 23: Zheng Minsheng, 42, kills eight young children in a knife attack at the Nanping Experimental Elementary School in south China's Fujian province. Zheng is executed April 28.

In at least three of these attacks, the victims were of kindergarten age or younger. None of the attackers used firearms. Instead they turned to meat cleavers, kitchen knives and hammers. I can hardly fathom anything more gruesome. With a gun, there's distance, detachment. It provides the assailant a modicum of separation from the carnage. But a kitchen cleaver?! On 3, 4, and 5-year-olds?!!! It is no wonder that these men either immediately killed themselves or were quickly sentenced to execution. The shame–the social stigma is off the charts. As a parent... as a human being, the blood curdles just to think about it. Grown men. Helpless children. Tools of violence. And therein lies the horror. The more innocent and helpless the victim, the more heinous the assault. The more violent and tortuous the means of execution, the more terrible the attack.

Imagine if the victims were even younger. Imagine if they were even more helpless and less capable of defending themselves. Imagine if the assailants didn't just stab the children to death, but actually pulled their arms and legs off in the process. And imagine if it wasn't just happening in China but right here in America – with the full support of the medical community and the President. And imagine if these men were paid for their gruesome services, while the rest of society argued that these children were so small, helpless and dependent that they shouldn't even be counted as human beings at all. Wouldn't that be something that every man and woman of conscience would stand up and do something about?! I wish.

How to Pray for Abort73 in Your City

I recently asked some friends of mine to join me in praying for Abort73's influence in Jacksonville, FL this month. To that end, I've put together a sample prayer to help identify some of the specific things I'd like to pray for. Though some of the requests in this prayer are specific to Jacksonville, it can easily be used as a prayer model for cities around the nation and world. I want to be more faithful in daily entreating God to use Abort73 to help eliminate abortion, and I'd love it if thousands of you joined me. Pick your city and start praying that God would grow the influence of Abort73 and shrink the influence of abortion. Not sure what to pray for? Hopefully this sample prayer will help...

Lord, you are high and lifted up. You are the Creator and Sustainer. You rule over all the earth. You do exactly as you please. You do not need me, but you love me and are pleased to use my weakness to show off your strength. In your presence is fullness of joy. Through trials comes endurance!

Oh God, I pray for the city of Jacksonville. You are intimately acquainted with all of the 1.3 million people who live there and each of the visitors who find themselves in the city today. I pray that you would use Abort73 to influence the way they think about abortion. I pray you would use Abort73 to help eliminate abortion in Jacksonville. I pray for the women who are scheduled to have an abortion today in this city. Statistically , there are 23 of them. Dissuade them. Use the people in their lives, use the Abort73 website to change their course. May a crisis of conscience overwhelm them. May they seek out the truth and find the truth. Protect the children whose lives hang in the balance. And provide for them all the things they need for life and godliness.

I pray for the churches in Jacksonville – for all the people who claim the name of Christ. Give them a heart for abortion-vulnerable women and children. Give them courage to step out in defense of the "least of these". Make them aware of Abort73. May they embrace Abort73's work and ministry, and use the resources to help educate their people and more effectively be a witness against abortion in their community. May the high school and college ministries partner with Abort73 in reaching their campuses. Create a culture of practical, loving service to the people in their community. Free the church from materialism, self-absorption, and fear. May the watching world look at your people in Jacksonville and marvel at what makes them tick.

I pray for the University of North Florida, Jacksonville University, Florida State College at Jacksonville and all the other colleges in the region. Hold Planned Parenthood back. Expose their agenda. I pray for the campus Christian clubs, that they would be willing to suffer the persecution of publicly condemning abortion. May Abort73 be a help to them and may their courage have eternal ramifications that go well beyond the abortion issue. Give them creativity and discernment as they combat abortion – innocent as doves and shrewd as serpents. May students become broadly familiar with Abort73 and may it wipe away the notion that abortion is a matter of personal choice.

I pray for the public and private high schools in Jacksonville. I pray for the school nurses and teachers. May they be instruments for good and not evil. May the Christians on campus care more about justice and mercy than they do about their reputation. I pray that Abort73 would infiltrate these campuses in ways that more traditional outreach models cannot. May your Spirit move to compel students to visit the site. May their curiosity get the best of them, and may the selfishness of abortion be exposed from campus to campus.

I pray for all the Abort73 shirts in Jacksonville. May they be worn often and strategically. I pray they would come out of their drawers and closets today. Place them in front of the right people at the right time, and may their numbers grow! May the Abort73 promo cards be left on right benches and tables and gas pumps. May Abort73 stickers find their way onto many bumpers and may all these pointers work in concert to bring more and more of Jacksonville's populace to Abort73. Overcome all of the social biases to open the eyes of the people in this community to the atrocity of abortion.

I pray for a faithful contingent outside the abortion clinics in Jacksonville – at Planned Parenthood and Jacksonville's Women's Health and Florida Women's Center and All Women's Center. May they consistently, humbly, and effectively intervene on behalf of the children whose lives hang by a thread. May the Abort73 signs be a means of pointing these men and women to Abort73.com at the 11th hour.

I pray for the pregnancy care centers in the region who are working to provide alternatives to abortion – for Women's Help Center and First Coast Women's Services and Emergency Pregnancy Services. Bring more women through their doors. Use Abort73 to drive women away from abortion and into the arms of ministries that will love them and help provide what is needed for their unborn child. Raise up people in this city who won't just be a witness against abortion, but will be actively involved in meeting the myriad physical needs of all those around them.

And Lord, over and above all this, I pray that you would be magnified in Jacksonville – that people would see your worth and would throw off their rebellion and the lesser, damning pleasures that characterize their rebellion. May the vanity and hopelessness of unrestrained, self-indulgence be exposed for all to see. Bring people to the end of themselves to say with CS Lewis, if nothing in this world satisfies, then we must be made for another world! May you be exalted and may I be filled with joy and thanksgiving, today and forevermore!

Yesterday’s Health Care Vote

As stated in my last health care related blog, I can hardly be called a political junkie. I only loosely follow the politics of abortion and continue to maintain that education (not legislation) is the best investment we can make towards the elimination of abortion. That's not to say I don't want to see the law change; I just think we need to change the cultural understanding of abortion first. Having said all that, yesterday's health care vote does bear some comments. Is this a victory (as Bart Stupak maintains)? Is this a defeat (as virtually all the pro-life groups maintain)? Or is it something in between (as most of the news outlets seem to maintain)? The strongest indication I've seen so far that this is not a victory for the pro-life movement comes from today's headline on the Planned Parenthood website: "VICTORY!" Here is the full statement from PPFA President, Cecile Richards:

We regret that a pro-choice president of a pro-choice nation was forced to sign an Executive Order that further codifies the proposed anti-choice language in the health care reform bill, originally proposed by Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska.  What the president’s Executive Order did not do is include the complete and total ban on private health insurance coverage for abortion that Congressman Bart Stupak (D–MI) had insisted upon. So while we regret that this proposed Executive Order has given the imprimatur of the president to Senator Nelson’s language, we are grateful that it does not include the Stupak abortion ban.

Lila Rose, the president of Live Action, expresses her frustration with Congressman Stupak's compromise well in pointing out the huge, potential problems that are created by trusting a pro-abortion president to cap pro-abortion spending:

We are dismayed that Congressman Stupak has made a backroom deal with pro-abortion forces. Stupak and his colleagues have appointed President Obama to do their job for them, making the President the sole guardian of pro-life integrity in the health care plan. The chickens have elected the fox to guard the henhouse. It is absurd to trust that Obama, the most pro-abortion president in our history, will stop taxes from paying for abortions.  We can only imagine the foul pressures brought upon Congressman Stupak by Obama’s Administration and Pelosi’s Majority. If this bill is not stopped, the consequences of Stupak’s deal with pro-abortion forces will lead to the deaths of countless more defenseless, unborn Americans. With this bill, the IRS will be Planned Parenthood’s cashier as Americans are forced to fund this horrific human rights abuse.

In reality, the ultimate fallout of this vote (at least as it relates to abortion) is likely to remain unknown for quite some time. Because abortion frequency is generally reported a few years after the data is collected, it may take years to determine what the overall effect on the frequency of abortion will actually be. For Abort73's part, nothing has changed. We are not a political-activist group. We have never pinned our hopes of eliciting social change on political engagement. If public funds do become more broadly available for the funding of elective abortions, it simply makes our educational endeavors that much more important. Relatively speaking, abortion has never been a particularly expensive endeavor. For most women, their willingness to abort does not hinge on whether or not the government will pay for it. Seventy-five percent of aborting women indicate that they are having an abortion because they can't afford a child. When placing abortion and parenthood side by side, abortion is already the cheaper option, in a landslide! Therefore, we can't expect to eliminate abortion by keeping it marginally more expensive than it would be if the government subsidized it. We eliminate abortion by demonstrating that is an act of violence that kills an innocent human being.

Whether the mother has to pay out the $400 herself or Uncle Sam picks up the tab, there is a much bigger, ideological issue at play. If we focus primarily on the finances of abortion (instead of the mechanics of abortion), we make a grave strategical error. Obviously, I don't want the government paying for abortions, but for most women considering abortion, government subsidization is a fairly minor point of consideration. If a woman is convinced that she can't afford to raise a child, and if she's convinced that abortion is a morally-neutral way to not have a child, she's going to find a way to have an abortion – whether the government pays for it or not. We must move the debate away from the financial cost of abortion and place it squarely on the moral, human cost of abortion. By God's grace, this can and will happen, no matter what ends up being decided in the halls of Congress. Join us towards that end!