Michael Voris is not happy with the direction of the March for Life. He's afraid it's losing its Catholic character, that the pro-life movement is "compromising" on contraception -- or at least its Catholic wing is-- and he's upset that Carly Fiorina -- who believes in rape and incest exceptions-- was a headliner.
I am of two minds on this video.
I think that he has a point about not compromising on contraception and exceptions. I would add to that, embryonic stem cell research, IVF, and so on.
A true culture of life will come to see that contraception is the problem, and that we can't make any exception for embryonic life, whether it's because of rape or the fact he's a surplus or handicapped embryo.
But pragmatically, speaking, you can't make ideological purity a condition of participating in a political movement. If we expect abortion opponents to reject contraception before we count them as fellow travelers, we 're going to have a pretty thin political movement. The same goes with feminism, gay marriage, Wicca and so on.
This is why I believe we need to adopt the concept of fetal rights that everyone can rally around.
"Pro-life" is a philosophy that encompasses a number of political and moral positions that not everyone can support. I believe in pro-life. But not everyone does.
Should that mean we reject the alliance of those who understand that an unborn child is an equal human being? That would be ludicrous. We need everyone we can get to fight for the unborn. If we don't bring everyone aboard, we won't win.
This will mean that we may share a stage with a variety of people who do not share the culture of life philosophy, including people who support euthanasia, the death penalty, bombing the crap out of Iran, gay marriage, IUD's etc.
At this stage of the game, we cannot afford to expect that everyone have perfect ideological purity or consistency. Babies are dying. Plus, I believe that ideological diversity will be a strength, because no longer will our opponents be able to say that fetal rights is a purely right-wing Christian concept. That takes away an argument, and it also makes our movement more attractive because people contemplating joining our movement will be able to identify with the people there and know that they will find like-minded people with whom they can can advance their case.
This kind of approach will have its growing pains. We will annoy each other. We will have to learn to accommodate one another. Christians will feel that, yet once again, they will have to cede ground to cultural left-wingers who are part of the problem in the first place. Secularists will have to put up with Christian religiosity, which is part of the problem, in that it makes the fetal rights movement look a bunch of half-baked religious loons.
We have to learn to work together even as we exercise our different approaches. While we may have different explanations as to why abortion is so prevalent, and different solutions on how to reduce it, we need to stick together when it comes to one point: The unborn child must be legally and culturally acknowledged to be a human being and deserving of the right to life. Full stop. The rest is details. This unity is the only thing that will advance our cause politically.
Have you ever noticed that other movements have ideological diversity? They were not dogmatic or exclusionary about who joined them. They simply figured out what it took to win politically, and they fulfilled that requirement. We must do the same.
Does that mean Catholics stop being Catholic? No. It doesn't mean we don't stop pushing the truth about contraception or any number of pro-life issues. It could mean, though, that we might have to create Catholic- or Christian- specific rallies or events to promote our ideas. That's okay. If we want to win the fight for fetal rights, this fight can't be about us. It has to be about what will make us win. We may have to change the way we do things, but it will be for the greater good.
