REALity – Volume XXXIV Issue No. 11 November 2015
By: Suzanne Fortin, blog at BigBlueWave.ca
The Canadian pro-life movement is comprised of good activists and organizations. Yet its issues, such as abortion and euthanasia, are never included in opinion polls. This appears to be a deliberate attempt to marginalize the pro-life voice in order to give the false impression that there is a consensus on these issues in Canada. There is not.
Here are four things that can bring the cause to the next level:
Injecting the Pro-Life Perspective into Every Field of Knowledge
By the time feminists were making their argument for abortion, the public had been exposed to feminist ideas for many years. Feminist ideology and feminist critical theory imbues supposed scholarship.
Sometimes American academic journals have some pro-life articles, notably in the area of legal scholarship. This scholarship contributes to the ability of American legislators to legislate restrictions on abortion, because those values have become accepted in the legal community.
In Canada, even topics that should be of interest to our community, like the history of the unborn child, fail to attract pro-life research. It is a feminist who wrote Ourselves Unborn (Sara DuBow), The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram (Janelle S. Taylor) and Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos (Lynn Morgan). We should be contributing to these discussions.
The audience for these books may be small but such publications tend to inform people of influence who in turn, pass on those same ideas and values to their larger audiences, creating a multiplier effect.
It is true that in our political climate, a pro-lifer will have a harder time getting material published. The solution is to continue to try to publish to the masses, and to use the internet to spread our perspective. We can do our own research, and launch more journals and websites. The key is to create a critical mass of information which cannot be ignored.
Becoming Cultural Creators
Art and entertainment have a huge influence on politics because most people derive their values from the predominant culture. Abortion isn’t usually discussed, but the values that justify abortion permeate our cultural climate. We need to reverse this trend.
Pro-lifers have produced excellent movies such as Juno, Knocked Up and October Baby. They certainly made their mark on the public. The problem though is one of scale. Pro-life ideas come on to the public’s radar now and then, but mainstream media expose the public to feminism and pro-abortion propaganda on a daily basis.
There was a time when the Canadian pro-life movement did have an important ally in Sun News Network, the only network to have ever openly supported the pro-life point of view. But, sadly, Sun News has shut down. It exposed the pro-life perspective. Hopefully, with subtlety and gradual exposure, which works best with an audience unused to our discourse, we will eventually prevail. This will happen in the not too distant future due to the cultural trend, especially in the US, which is becoming according to the polls, more pro-life with diminishing support for abortion and other anti-life policies.
Attracting Financial Resources
Successful social movements have wealthy supporters who assist in moving the agenda forward.
Converting the wealthy to our cause is a difficult task. Perhaps an easier solution would be to reach out to university students in fields that create wealthy and influential alumni, such as in Law, Medicine, Business and Engineering. We already have a campus network of pro-life groups, we need to expand our focus to reaching out to these future societal leaders.
Once we have a more solid financial base, we can consider establishing foundations that will finance not only our activism, but all the resources we need for research and cultural creation, like think tanks, film and recording studios, publishing houses and so on.
Developing the Pro-Life Communities’ Lifestyle
If we want our movement to be effective, we can’t be satisfied with piecemeal efforts. Defending the unborn is a lifestyle.
Connections are made when pro-lifers come together for a wide variety of purposes, such as for business, politics, culture or faith, at a business breakfast, mothers getting together with their children, or a pro-life writers meeting to get feedback on their work. Fostering these connections makes it easier to mobilize people during large scale efforts like elections and lobbying. The strengthening of this grapevine also provides a potential market and audience for pro-life creators and researchers. Another benefit is that when people develop the joy of coming together and meeting friends and kindred spirits, they are more likely to participate and generate momentum. It also makes our movement more attractive, by being friendly to one another and helping each other with our needs.
In summary: Society must gradually be nudged towards accepting a pro-life worldview, and this will happen when they see our presence in every sphere of activity, particularly in the fields of academia and the arts. In order to create that presence, we must develop resources and networks. Constant and subtle exposure to pro-life values makes the public more open to our beliefs, so that when we do engage in activism, it is much easier to bring them into the fold.
The future is ours. Individuals changing their views on abortion and euthanasia, etc. usually proceed in the pro-life direction, not to the anti-life position.
The key is to never give up. We must constantly and proudly promote our perspective. We see this tendency with US politicians – especially in the Republican Party. Abortion is now a hot political issue in the US. We live for the day that this occurs in Canada.