I wrote about this some time ago (here) saying that I thought it had been a mistake for the movement against abortion to adopt the term "pro-life." Not that it's not accurate, and not that I don't understand the rationale for it. But it invites the response which it regularly gets: "You're not truly pro-life, because you don't support [some other cause] in addition to your own." The other causes can be anything that the speaker believes to be good for people, or for that matter for animals, or the entire planetary ecosystem.
For reasons that are obscure to me, this tactic is used even by some people who are actually anti-abortion. I can only conjecture that they are so repelled by the right-wing associations of the pro-life movement that they want to distance themselves from it. A few weeks ago, for instance, I saw a link to a piece by Catholic blogger Mark Shea that appeared to suggest that insufficient concern about gun violence disqualifies one from calling oneself pro-life. I say "appeared to suggest" because I didn't read more than a few sentences, Shea's signal-to-noise ratio having long since dipped below the level I'm prepared to deal with; the link appeared on my Facebook feed because someone I know had commented on it. Then a few days ago he pointed out that you aren't truly pro-life if you don't consider illegal immigrants to be human.
I dare say that almost all pro-lifers are opposed to the use of guns in settling disputes or committing crimes, and believe immigrants, legal or otherwise, to be human. But it doesn't matter. The tactic is so tempting that those who use it often don't even seem to care whether the charge is true. I.e., the thing they say pro-lifers should support (or oppose) is often something that many or most of them do in fact support (or oppose), although perhaps not embracing the specific solution proposed by the leftist who is the usual accuser. But it does seem to be an effective way of changing the subject, at least for those who want to change it, and of putting the anti-abortion side on the defensive.
We've seen a lot of this in the past couple of weeks, following the release of videos showing Planned Parenthood employees discussing in grisly detail their harvesting of organs from aborted babies. Hardly had the videos appeared than the "But you're not really pro-life because…" talk began, including quotes from Joan Chittister, whose identification as a "Catholic nun" always becomes worthy of respect when she's criticizing conservatives.
But these considerations are perhaps moot. Some of the reactions I've heard from the pro-Planned-Parenthood side have made it clear that although the "not really pro-life" feint is useful, nothing, except perhaps the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit, would make the persons involved reconsider. That is, if every pro-lifer were uniformly "pro-life" as defined by the left, it would not make the latter one bit more open to the arguments against abortion.
I've been appalled by one woman I've encountered on Facebook. She's personally unknown to me, being the Facebook friend of one of the people who are "friends" with me due to some mutual friend, but whom I don't actually know. The friend posts frequently in support of the exposure of Planned Parenthood's barbarism, and this woman responds with an unreasoning fury that's really pretty disturbing. She wants the people who made the videos to be jailed. I wonder what she would say if someone had surreptitiously taped someone making racist remarks. There is some serious evil abroad in our land.
Light On Dark Water 
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