Different Paths, One Goal for Life

posted at 10:20 pm on May 3, 2012 by Dustin Siggins

Earlier this week Crisis Magazine was kind enough to publish an opinion piece by me on strategic thoughts about the pro-life movement. While many comments beneath the piece, as well as in its repost in the Green Room and on the front page, were complimentary, a number were very critical. In particular, three substantive, articulate and important points were made multiple times, and I would like to continue the conversation by responding to them.

The first rebuttal was made by Hot Air commenter Crosshugger, and it was probably the response that struck hardest since clearly I misstated my intention:

Crosshugger is correct, of course; nothing is bigger than God. I do believe God can convict people through His word, and I must rephrase one of my arguments from the original piece: I do not believe we should abandon religious arguments. I was making an unstated distinction, and that reference was to people who are not Christians. The Word of God has the power to convict them, but arguing from the Bible until they have those convictions is not effective.

The next point came from commenter Joe_Doufu at Hot Air. It is the most succinct and humorous of all the comments:

We’re winning!
We’d better change tactics!

In the piece at Crisis, I stated that while the pro-life movement is certainly winning, I believe emphasizing certain tactics would change the minds of the American public more quickly than others. The longer we take to convince the public to be pro-life, the more babies, mothers and families will suffer. Therefore, I think we should complement existing strategies in order to save the greatest number of lives possible. So while Joe Doufu would normally be correct, I think millions of lives could be saved by implementing certain strategies more often.

The third argument came most aggressively from my fellow Race42012 contributor Adam Graham. In short, Adam accused me of being an armchair quarterback. While I have admittedly only participated in one march and two prayer vigils in front of abortion clinics, this assessment is inaccurate. I have been writing regularly on the topic since college, and have been proactively engaging in discussions and debates to convince pro-abortion friends, acquaintances and strangers on a near-daily basis since before then to change their minds. While it’s a different kind of involvement than prayer vigils, or lobbying state or federal legislators, I don’t think it’s any less valuable.

My own father pointed out after reading my initial post that I denigrated people who try to affect positive change in different ways. For this I apologize; it was never intended in this way. I was trying to add to our movement, not take from the wonderful work done across the world by millions my fellow pro-life men and women.

[This piece was originally published at Race42012.com.]

Dustin Siggins is an associate producer with The Laura Ingraham Show and co-author with William Beach of The Heritage Foundation on a forthcoming book about the national debt. The opinions expressed are his own.

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