The latest edition of news magazine Newsweek includes an interesting article by Sarah Kliff entitled, “Remember Roe! How can the next generation defend abortion rights when they don’t think abortion rights need defending?” The article paints a bleak picture for the future of the pro-abortion movement in America.
The author interviewed NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan for the article.
“Keenan considers herself part of the ‘postmenopausal militia,’ a generation of baby-boomer activists now well into their 50s who grew up in an era of backroom abortions and fought passionately for legalization. Today they still run the major abortion-rights groups, including NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women.”
Keenan is distraught that they are losing the abortion debate among young people. This distress was illustrated by her story of getting off the subway at Union Station in Washington, D.C. only to be greeted by a “swarm” of pro-life activists gathering for the 37th Annual March for Life.
“‘I just thought, my gosh, they are so young,’ Keenan recalled. ‘There are so many of them, and they are so young.’ March for Life estimates it drew 400,000 activists to the Capitol this year. An anti-Stupak rally two months earlier had about 1,300 attendees.”
Indeed, this year’s March for Life was one of the largest in recent years, and by my estimation, a clear majority of marchers were young people, many of whom traveled on buses from across the country with school pro-life groups or church youth groups. This year’s Students for Life conference, held in Washington the day after the March, was the largest one ever, attracting over 1,000 pro-life students from across the country, as well as attendees from two other countries.
The article goes on to make the point that since “Milennials”, the term used to describe those currently under 30, have lived with legal abortion all their lives, pro-abortion young people are less motivated to defend the “right” to abortion. On the other hand, pro-life young people have a greater passion for the issue. This is backed up by a NARAL poll showing 51% of young voters who oppose abortion consider it a “very important” voting issue compared to just 26% of abortion supporters who consider it as such.
It shouldn’t be such a surprise that young voters are overwhelmingly moving to the pro-life side and are passionate about the issue. Why? Because we are the generation abortion has hit the hardest. Abortion was legalized in 1973, and we have lost 50,000,000 of our friends, husbands, wives, policemen, firefighters, doctors, soldiers, etc. since then.
Young people are finally starting to get the picture. We see abortion as the human rights issue that it is. We have grown up with constantly advancing technology such as four-dimensional sonograms that show us the liveliness and humanity of the unborn child. We are questioning the idea that abortion is a woman’s “choice” and we should stay out of it. We will fight for the truth.
