I'm glad that she is favourable to a more "life-respectful" society.
I think the majority of Canadians feel this way.
However, I would like to point out a few things.
I would advise moving away from the rights of the fetus, which arouses defensiveness and hostility,
That defeats the point of the pro-life movement.
The pro-life movement is based on the premise that all human beings have a right to life, and this right should be recognized by government and society.
nor are abortions performed by political fiat for the purpose of furthering solidarity amongst some dominant group.
The average woman who goes in for an abortion doesn't have politics on her mind.
The abortion lobby does.
The reason why we have no abortion law in Canada has to do with feminists.
Feminists believe that any restriction on abortion more or less makes women subject to the whims of the patriarchy.
This is a political stance.
That political stance must be combatted with another political stance.
Nazis did not kill some Jews, and cultivate friendships with others; they hated and considered subhuman all Jews.
"Hate" can be taken in many ways. Do people who fight for legal abortion have strong feelings towards the fetus? In general, the answer is "no".
But hate isn't just an emotion. It's a lack of disregard for another that amounts to contempt. It is the refusal to see oneself in the other. It does not have to be an emotionally-loaded disregard.
And in this sense, there is a hatred of the fetus: a refusal to acknowledge who he is and value him for his own sake.
I wonder if those who think the GAP campaign is defensible have really assessed the damaging image it creates in intelligent observers’ minds. It brands you as people who feel passionately, but who do not think clearly. High emotion and the absence of reason are the marks of extremists and conspiracy theorists.
I don't think the Genocide Awareness Project lacks reason.
It is that opponents of the right to life do not want to consider the actual message.
The message is that human beings throughout history have been relegated to the status of "non-humans" and when this happens, people are allowed to kill them.
This is precisely what has happened to unborn children on a mass scale.
You must consider whether the emotional impact of your message is so important to you that it is worth burning the narrow but sturdy bridge you could be using to reach people like me.
The secret of any movement is not to based oneself on any one tactic. Any tactic will convince some and repulse others.
The Genocide Awareness Project is one means among many to present a pro-life message.
I think that anyone outside the pro-life movement who would like to give it advice should remember that no movement for social change is a one-note Annie.
Talking about the harm of abortion, seeking to reduce their number,or helping pregnant women-- these, in and of themselves, cannot be the sole focus of the pro-life movement. And neither can politics, might I add.
That's why I think it's waste of time to tell pro-lifers what peaceful tactics they shouldn't use.
Because those tactics have worked on some people. They are the reason the pro-life movement exists today.
The issue becomes: how do make ourselves more effective?
And again, no one strategy will automatically make us more effective. There's no magic bullet in this fight.
We can't put all our eggs in one basket. If there's one message I'd love to impart to all pro-lifers readings, it's that no one thing will solve the issue of the disrespect of the unborn, because it's rooted in a number of problems that can't be easily resolved.
That doesn't mean it we shouldn't engage in this fight.
