From First Things come two articles well worth your time to read. The first is “The Pro-Life Movement as the Politics of the 1960s” by Richard John Neuhaus. It begins:
Whatever else it is, the pro-life movement of the last thirty-plus years is one of the most massive and sustained expressions of citizen participation in the history of the United States. Since the 1960s, citizen participation and the remoralizing of politics have been central goals of the left. Is it not odd, then, that the pro-life movement is viewed as a right-wing cause? Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about “the irony of American history” and, were he around to update his book of that title, I expect he might recognize this as one of the major ironies within the irony.
The second, “Abortion After Obama” by Joseph Bottum, contains the following insight:
It is, rather, in the state legislatures and in the grooming of local candidates that the movement has its best chances to advance.
Read them both.
