The purpose of this project is to use every civilized method available to convince the Weitz Construction Company not to enter into a collaborative relationship with Planned Parenthood by being the main builder of the mega Planned Parenthood abortion center in Stapleton, Colorado.

Mr. Duffy’s letter to corporate executives around the country is quite well written and actually provides each of the executives with challenging questions that should be a source of soul searching prior to their moving ahead with the building project. Among Duffy’s most challenging questions are these two which I accompany with my own comments:

You have no advertising banners at your abortion site, but will you and your subs advertise at future sites?

I wonder if Weitz is actually ashamed of being Planned Parenthood’s builder!

Have you done market analysis to determine if high-end customers for condos, retirement communities, business facilities, golf courses, will be as eager to buy and lease properties that come with targeted abortion protests?

If Weitz has the sort of business acumen that I think they do, why in the world would they risk being tainted with the ugly stain that is bound to accompany their completion of this abortion facility!

There are surely those within the pro-life community who would not use the tactic Duffy is using when dealing with a huge corporation like The Weitz Company (http://www.weitz.com/default.asp). But if you take a moment to visit the company’s web site you will see a statement that, at least to my mind, gives validity to the entire existence of the Collaborator’s Project. The corporate tag line says “Build in good company.”

Well, if Planned Parenthood, the operator of the nation’s largest abortion chain, is good company, then perhaps each of us should be writing to Weitz, introducing them to the gruesome, heinous truth about the good company they are considering keeping in Stapleton!

We are told that 60% of those mothers who are aborting their children are mothers who have already had at least one child.  This is both disturbing and at the same time indicative of how the culture has come to view the very existence of a pregnancy.  It would seem that words like “unwanted,” “unintended” and “unplanned” – both of which are negatives – have contributed to a further dehumanization of the child who dies when an abortion occurs.

As one Rhode Island Planned Parenthood official, Miriam Inocencio, says, “Women face years and years of reproductive life after they’ve completed their families, and they’re at risk of an unintended pregnancy that can create an economic strain.”

Contemplating the full impact of this statement took me a while for at first glance it sounds as though Inocencio is feeling compassion for those mothers who face the stress of economic woes that confront each of us when we are young and raising a family. But that is not what she is expressing.  What Inocencio is telling the reporter is that aborting a child who is perceived to be a costly addition to the family is the best choice for everyone in the family.

She is not viewing the mother as someone who would set aside her self-interest and economic concerns for the good of a child but rather she is telling us that this mother would prefer to kill someone in order to maintain a comfort level.  May I hasten to add that I do not think that the mother in Ignacio’s scenario considers her pregnancy in terms of a child who exists and is already part of her family versus the outcome of an abortion.  In other words this mother is not considering the difference between being the mother of a living child and the mother of a dead child.  Far from it!  In this day and age of self-absorption it is a foregone conclusion for most women that when all else fails, abortion is just another option in the smorgasbord of decision that she must make in order to maintain the status quo. 

The following excerpt from the same news report makes my point.

“About 13% of American women are black, yet new figures from the Centers for Disease Control show they account for 35% of the abortions.

“Black anti-abortion activists depict this phenomenon in dire terms — “genocide” and “holocaust,” for example. But often the women getting the abortions say they act in the interests of children they already have.

“‘It wasn’t a hard decision for me to make, because I knew where I wanted to go in my life — I’ve never regretted it,’ said Kimberly Mathias, 28, an African-American single mother from Missouri.

“She had an abortion at 19, when she was already raising a 2-year-old son.

“‘It wasn’t hard to realize I didn’t want another child at that time,’ Mathias said. ‘I was trying to take care of the one I had, and going to college and working at the same time.’”

In other words, aborting a child is the equivalent of acting in the interests of children. Such a comment tells me that these mothers do not consider the humanity of the child in utero to be the same as that of their living children.  The child in utero becomes a thing that has to be treated in much the same way as this same mother might treat a boil or an ingrown hair. 

The dehumanizing of the child in the womb is a fait accompli for the majority of American citizens in our age.  The negative language has relegated such children to the category of curable diseases.

While I commend the writer of this Associated Press article for digging in to the perspectives many black pro-life leaders have on the effect abortion has on their community, it concerns me that words like “expectant mother” and “child in utero” failed to make the cut, if indeed they were in the original story.  It affirms the ongoing struggle we pro-lifers face in focusing attention on the second person in every single pregnancy, the child.  He or she is not a word in a report; he or she has a soul and is in every sense of the word a human being who is also a person equal to you or to me.

I personally feel sorrow for any mother who loses a child.  But my sorrow for the child who is intentionally murdered by an act as violent as abortion far exceeds any concern I might have for that baby’s mother.  After all, each of us as human beings are resourceful, have the ability to overcome hardships and should have the moral compass to discern what is right and what is wrong, even when our finances are in jeopardy or our further education is at stake. 

Killing a child, for whatever reason, is not a moral choice.  The very fact that so many mothers in our midst do not see this should be wake up call for every pro-life American.
It is high time that we pro-lifers examine the rhetoric of our opponents and, may I say, our peers in this movement.  The child dies; the mother survives.  Let us expend equal amounts of energy focusing on both of them, their humanity and their personhood.  After 35 years it is time to take back the language; lives depend on it.

I suggest this as someone who is in the process of doing that very thing as the president of the nation’s largest pro-life educational organization, American Life League.  We are indeed recreating ourselves so that our message appeals to younger Americans and at the same time resonates with those who not only keep us going with their support but have the ominous task or raising their own family in this morbidly egotistical society in which we all live.
At American Life League we are unveiling a new web site that will revolutionize the way we spread the news, provide commentary and help others apply lessons that will undergird the way they live their pro-life life.  We are reaching out to high school and college students with effective Training and Activism weekends and days of education in the local area where so much work needs to be done.  We are providing streaming video for all to see in an effort to maximize our opportunities to speak about personhood, the reality of what abortion does to a child and the many reasons why contraception is nothing more than the prelude to the killing of the innocent if not another tool in the arsenal.  We are moving forward aggressively with BLOGGING, LIVE NEWS REPORTING and so much more.  The opportunities are endless and limited only by lack of enthusiasm.

We have learned as we continue to reinvent ourselves and move closer to the goal that people thirst for truth.  Oh, they may get agitated when they hear things they would prefer to ignore, but we have seen in the growth experienced in our own programs that once the truth is deposited in the mind and heart of the listener, great things happen, babies are saved and lives are recovered from past sexual sins.  This enlivens, blesses and motivates every single one of us at American Life League.
So on this 35th anniversary as we mourn the loss of millions of innocents, let us all examine where we have been, what we have done and what it’s going to take to turn this horror around.  The only thing that is not worth trying is the action we ignore or avoid because we fear change.  Clearly since the tactics of the past have not brought us any closer to the goal of restoring personhood for the preborn, innovation and creativity are required.  We have the right message; let’s take it out there for the Lord and for His babies!
It is the season for celebrating life!  The timing could not be better, the vision could not be clearer, the grace to do it is at hand.

Judie Brown, President, American Life League Inc.