It is, of course, Thanksgiving weekend, and so it’s the time for gratitude. (As it always should be!) Doubling down on gratitude, I hope, in a substantive way. What do we have to be grateful for as pro-lifers?
I flew to Pittsburgh on Sunday to participate in an event at the Franciscan University of Steubenville on the 100th anniversary of Bill Buckley’s birth, and I’m grateful for that. Grateful, of course, for the gift of his life.
But my first stop was the Catholic church closest to the airport. I was hiding in the back with my suitcase and usual traveling mess. And what I saw were amazingly beautiful young families. God bless them, popping out with screaming babies, racing after toddlers. They know it’s going to be hard, and they are not exactly going to get moments of mystical quiet for union with God anytime soon. But they will point to Jesus. They will make clear this is what Christians do on Sundays. This is the pro-life movement. This is virtue and sacrifice and the future. (I’m not crazy about the popular phrase “natalism.”) I thanked one of the moms who had, frankly, positively feral boys. She described one of them as the typical middle child. They were all awesome. We need to support them and their parents with every resource there is — including basic neighborliness. That’s Buckley. That’s Tocqueville. That’s Judeo-Christian. That’s our future.
I’ll also add that, at the airport, there was this wonderful scene of prayer. We need to be a united front in support of faith and stewardship and family. So, what should we be grateful for as pro-lifers?
- Support for every kind of parent — including mothers who chose adoption.
- Something I’m a little torn about: the closing of so many Planned Parenthoods around the country. Of course, I am delighted that they are closing, but they are closing in part because of the increased ease and popularity of chemical abortion. They are closing because it’s easier than ever to get an abortion. You can just get a prescription. Even if you’re in a state where abortion is illegal, you still have “doctors” in states like New York and California who will send you pills anyway. Which, if we are honest, raises the question: Did Roe v. Wade end too soon? I don’t think so. However, many of us clearly were not fully prepared. Some were: you who run maternity homes and pregnancy centers and pro-life medical clinics. But the response of the rest of the country, in media and politics and law, has been messy and confusing and even ridiculous. And yet I have seen way too many boxes of medical waste outside of Planned Parenthood in Manhattan, and it’s closed now. Even though we cannot pretend that it’s the end, we can be grateful for that. It’s progress.
- The Catholic Church’s consistency on abortion. I am forever apologizing to people in mixed company for the fact that the church’s communications on marriage and family in recent decades have been a hot mess — even with great gifts like the teachings of John Paul II. But on the issue of abortion, it hasn’t wavered. Pope Francis was criticized by National Review more than once for many of his positions, but he was always clear on human life. He said that abortion was like hiring a hit man (!) to kill your baby. That’s about as clear as you can get. There’s the morality of it, but there’s the science of it as well. We now have an American pope — who comes, by all accounts, from wonderful parents. Another thing to be grateful for! The portrait. The witness. The reality. And, yes, there was a recent skirmish involving his hometown diocese honoring Dick Durbin — former pro-lifer, like most Democrats of his generation — with lifetime achievement award, but it got shut down. While the witness of Catholics in politics in the United States still leaves a lot to be desired, the rock is still the rock. There’s still a patrimony, as Buckley might have put it. Or, more technically, in the case of the Church, the magisterium that is not subject to polling but to the Holy Spirit.
Anyway, it’s Thanksgiving, and people don’t want to keep reading. So, I’ll leave you with this: As conservatives, we have a tradition of clarity on the value of life. As Father Richard John Neuhaus said, don’t give up — do not weary, do not rest. In his final years, Buckley wrote often about how to communicate well on the defense of innocent unborn human life.
Every time I mention the word “abortion,” I get lots of colorful hate mail. But I sometimes wonder if some of you bother to write because you are grateful that there is a debate — that someone wants to hold the line. I’m grateful for the fact that as much of a mess as the conservative movement is, we haven’t given up on life — even if the Republican Party platform has. So long as there are conservatives in the tradition of William F. Buckley Jr., the unborn will have a voice.
Happy Thanksgiving.