‘We celebrate advances in science, medicine, and politics, granting awards to those who find new ways to promote the betterment of society, to end disease, to improve our way of life. It is only fitting that, in the company of these great celebrations, there is an award to honor advances in protecting that first right that gives all others meaning, the right to life.”

That’s how radio-talk-show host Laura Ingraham announced the inaugural Life Prizes on Friday night at a gala at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. The Life Prizes were founded by Ray Ruddy, president of the Gerard Health Foundation.

Richard Doerflinger was among the six award recipients. He is an under-the-radar pro-life hero. His day job is associate director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he has worked for almost 29 years. He monitors, analyzes, and responds to federal and medical developments on life issues. He writes and he educates–colleagues, bishops, Congress, the media. And he recently talked to National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez about the state of life and his work in defense of it.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What are your feelings as we’ve entered the age of Obama?

Richard Doerflinger: I don’t think pro-life Americans should despair and give up. Our situation is similar to what it was in 1993: the White House and both chambers of Congress basically against us on the abortion issue. Our opponents thought they would soon reverse the Hyde amendment against federal abortion funding, begin funding destructive human embryo research, and pass the Freedom of Choice Act. None of these things happened, and President Clinton’s repeated vetoes of a ban on partial-birth abortion only kept the horrors of abortion before the public’s eyes and increased pro-life sentiment. If we persevere, we will again show that the pro-life message is here to stay.

Lopez: Did George W. Bush do right by life these past eight years?

Doerflinger: I know some are disappointed he did not do more. But he gave us a Supreme Court that upheld a ban on an abortion method for the first time in 35 years. He single-handedly retained many pro-life policies by his veto threat against bad bills. He advanced the cause of faith-based initiatives and conscience rights in health care. He changed the stem-cell-research debate by holding the line against destructive embryo research while promoting morally acceptable alternatives that are now showing tremendous progress. And he showed how we can reach out compassionately to the victims of AIDS in developing nations while retaining an emphasis on abstinence and fidelity and respecting the consciences of religious service providers. To me these are all very positive aspects of his legacy.

Lopez: How devastating could the Freedom of Choice Act be?

Doerflinger: We have said this is the most extreme piece of abortion legislation ever introduced in Congress. It would elevate abortion to the status of a “fundamental” right, and call on all public-health programs not to “discriminate” against abortion–in other words, any government effort to support childbirth would also be mandated to support abortion to the same extent. It would overturn hundreds of modest pro-life laws passed over the last 35 years–conscience clauses, public-funding restrictions, informed-consent and parental-involvement statutes, and so on.

Lopez: What is the state of stem-cell research right now?

Doerflinger: Our opponents like to say that politics has overly restricted science. The fact is adult and cord-blood stem cells have become the gold standard for actually benefiting patients, with embryonic stem cells lagging far behind. If embryonic stem cells do have any advantages for some purposes, even those advantages can be pursued as well or better using the new technique for “reprogramming” adult cells into “induced pluripotent stem cells”–an advance hailed by the journal Science as the top scientific breakthrough. However, just as the science is demonstrating that human embryo destruction is irrelevant to medical progress, that controversial avenue may receive a new infusion of money and attention for ideological reasons.

Lopez: Does it drive you crazy when people insist George W. Bush was against stem-cell research, period?

Doerflinger: Yes, because it’s false on so many levels. President Bush strongly favored research on stem cells obtained without harming or killing the donor. He was even in favor of pursuing basic research on embryonic stem cells, and provided tens of millions of dollars a year for research using existing embryonic-stem-cell lines. What he was against was the use of federal funds to encourage researchers to destroy new embryos for their stem cells. His policy enabled the morally sound alternatives to be pursued and funded, and these are now showing they can actually do many things better.

Lopez: Do pro-lifers do enough for the children they seek to save after they are born?

Doerflinger: In a sense we have never done enough. That is one meaning of Jesus’ saying that “the poor you will always have with you.” But the pro-life movement has established literally thousands of pregnancy-support centers and contributed perhaps millions of hours to this kind of support, usually unpaid hours. The Catholic Church’s hospitals and charitable institutions are unparalleled in their support for women and children in need. And we have supported many public policies to improve this support, including most recently the Pregnant Women Support Act being reintroduced in this Congress. To those who say the movement is hypocritical because it is still not doing enough after birth, I accept the challenge to do more but would also ask: Which is the deeper hypocrisy? What about a society that constructs a complete system of care and support for the child after birth then supports killing the child before he or she can benefit from any of it?

Lopez: Your employer is the Catholic Church, but one doesn’t have to be a believer to follow what you do, right?

Doerflinger: No, we make our arguments based on the scientific facts, common-sense arguments, and a grasp of basic principles of ethics that we would call “the natural law.” The embryology textbooks tell us that each human being begins his or her development at the earliest embryonic stage. Logic and general principles of human rights tell us that if we are to have inherent and inalienable human rights, those rights must belong equally to each member of the human species. If they do not, then the “rights” we think we have are really transitory privileges–they depend on mental or physical abilities that we acquire sometime later in life and may also lose again, losing our basic rights along with them.

Lopez: You’re not arguing on faith grounds, are you?

Doerflinger: For Catholics we can argue on faith grounds, and that adds an extra dimension because of God’s special love for those who are weakest and most defenseless. But to lawmakers and the general public we are very happy to make arguments that can be understood by any person of good will. To state a paradox, our faith tells us that respect for all human life from conception to natural death is not only a matter of faith.

Lopez: What does you typical day look like?

Doerflinger: Probably pretty boring observed from the outside. In recent years I have spent a large share of my time reading and responding to the day’s news and other developments by e-mail. I may take part in an internal staff meeting to discuss the Conference’s efforts and future activities, or a meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss a bill or an issue with congressional staff. Every executive in my office also does a fair share of writing, as we share duties for a syndicated column for the Catholic press, for researching and drafting letters to Congress and fact sheets on our issues, and so on. Simply reading to keep track of the latest policy facts and emerging bioethics issues takes up some of the time as well.

Lopez: What’s something near no one knows that you wish they did?

Doerflinger: I wish people realized how many times the Catholic Church has been proved right in its predictions about various directions being bad for us as a society. We said the widespread distribution of contraception would increase temptations to abortion and divorce, mislead people into thinking they could have sex without consequences, and threaten to trivialize sexuality. Is it possible to deny this has happened? We said depersonalizing reproduction through technologies such as in vitro fertilization would lead us to experiment on human embryos and tempt us to try human cloning. We said embryonic-stem-cell research was not only immoral but was being used to make promises of “miracle cures” that people couldn’t keep. In a way it’s frustrating to be right so often in these dire predictions, especially when hardly anyone ever comes back later and says “Gee, sorry, you Catholics were right.”

Lopez: You lost a son in this war we’re in. So often pro-life types who support our troops and our effort in Iraq and Afghanistan are criticized or dismissed on grounds of hypocrisy. “How can you want to save a fetus at home but not Iraqi civilians, or our own military men and women?” How do you think about and address this?

Doerflinger: Our son Thomas was a gentle and thoughtful person who felt called to join the military in order to defend the innocent from violence and tyranny. I have never met anyone in the military who had any other goal than this. Whatever the errors of our leaders in responding to the threat of terrorism, I hope no one will gainsay that. As for Catholic teaching, some acts of war can be morally justified. Some are completely and intrinsically evil, and any deliberate attack aimed at killing civilians is the first and most obvious example of that. But we are waging war on our own innocent offspring every day in this country through abortion.

Lopez: What does winning this award mean to you?

Doerflinger: It was an enormous surprise to me, because my work on pro-life issues has generally been of the “behind the scenes” variety–writing, research, analyzing trends, trying to make good arguments to staff and members of Congress, helping the bishops to articulate their message in statements and other documents. It is a great honor, especially when some of the other honorees have suffered enormous hardships or endangered their livelihoods by standing up for life. When all is said and done, I am paid to do what I love doing.

Lopez: What does the existence of this award mean to you?

Doerflinger: I think the award grows out of a realization that any movement needs to energize and motivate the next generation to survive in the long term, and that next generation needs role models so they can see a future path for themselves in pro-life work. It’s humbling to think that some consider me that kind of role model. But in general I think an award program like this means the movement is maturing and settling in for the long haul, planting the seeds of the future.

Lopez: So many people, when they heard you were getting this award say to me, “he really lives life. Pro-life is his life.” What do you take that to mean?

Doerflinger: I hope it doesn’t mean that I spend all my time on professional pro-life work and neglect my family! That’s always a danger in this kind of vocation, and pro-life work is a calling, a vocation. At its best I hope it means that I am sincerely dedicated to this message and to what I am doing, that I have an integrity or consistency that is visible to others. I strive for that and I hope I succeed more often than I fail. We need more people in all walks of life with that kind of integrity, nowhere more so than in political life.