If Roe falls, here’s how the pro-life movement could make inroads with the left

It’s easy to rage at ostensibly “pro-life” politicians who — on the cusp of their movement’s greatest victory in 50 years — look at the recent massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas and shruggingly suggest there’s little they can do to prevent such evils from happening.

Easy, but also insufficient.

There are lives to be saved, after all. Buffalo wasn’t our last mass shooting, and Uvalde probably won’t be either — and neither will the next one, nor the one after that. We’re stuck in a terrible cycle of violence. Getting unstuck will require thinking creatively, and building unexpected coalitions to fix our gun violence problem.

Rather than chastise the hypocrisy of America’s pro-life forces, then, a different approach is needed. It’s time for serious liberals to put aside their anger — no matter how well-deserved — and do something completely out of left field: They should work on inviting and persuading their antiabortion rivals to expand that movement’s circle of concern and activism to include all the already-born children who are just trying to survive the day at school.

Admittedly, that will be a challenge.

Americans have largely given up on democratic persuasion in favor of screaming at each other. When a crisis happens, we often retreat to our political tribes and blame the “other side” for the problem. Rather than seek out solutions, we go straight to recriminations. Meanwhile, nothing changes.

That’s the big, bipartisan problem. The narrower challenge is that antiabortion activists don’t seem much interested in branching out much beyond the abortion issue.

“There are people of good will who believe that one cannot be truly pro-life while remaining silent on other life issues,” Missouri Right to Life proclaims on its website. But the organization’s stance is clear: “Many other problems may legitimately be considered as ‘life issues,’ and they are certainly serious issues, but they are not our issues.”

Maybe. But pro-life activists do veer outside their lane from time to time. Kansans for Life, for example, lists some decidedly tangential issues as “legislative successes” on its website — including the Kansas Legislature’s 2021 override of Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of an “election integrity” bill. Such groups can expand their range of activism when they’re motivated.

They should be motivated. Barring a dramatic reversal of fortune, it’s clear that the U.S. Supreme Court will soon overturn the Roe v. Wade precedent that made abortion legal across the land. In Missouri, a law outlawing abortion will go into effect right away — and Kansas, where voters on Aug. 2 will decide the fate of a state constitutional amendment to let the Legislature pass similar laws might not be far behind. The pro-life movement is moving into a post-Roe moment, and it’s not clear what’s next. There’s only so many ways you can ban abortion, after all.

Meanwhile, gun violence — particularly among our children — clearly is a “life issue.” Axios recently used federal data to determine that Kansas and Missouri are among the national leaders in the rate of gun deaths among young people up to age 19. They don’t often die in big groups, as in Uvalde. Instead, they are taken from us one or two at a time: At a graduation party in Wichita, or at the mall, or on a Kansas City street.

That’s a crisis, a moral emergency.

In recent weeks, I’ve thought back to 1991 and the “Summer of Mercy” antiabortion protests in Wichita. A friend of mine — a gentle young woman who regularly promised to pray for me — joined the demonstrators who spent weeks blocking George Tiller’s clinic. That’s not what I would’ve done, but I knew her heart: She wasn’t interested in tyrannizing women or taking away their rights. She genuinely believed that babies were dying, and that she needed to help.

Well: Children are dying. They need our help. Surely, pro-choice and pro-life activists can agree on that.

This story was originally published June 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "If Roe falls, here’s how the pro-life movement could make inroads with the left."