Reforming Our Movement, Reforming Our Culture:
How Canadian Pro-Lifers Can Make Abortion Unthinkable in the 21st Century

Read the full booklet as a PDF file.

Part I: Introduction

The day after Christmas in 2004, devastation struck the world.

The massive tsunami that overwhelmed southeast Asia killed over 186,000 people (with the fate of 42,000 more classified as “missing”). As would be expected, there was an outpouring of assistance: relief agencies rushed overseas to provide medical aid, food, shelter, and moral support.

A similarly striking number of human beings, over 100,000, are killed each year by abortion in Canada. And almost the same number of human beings—126,000—is killed each day by abortion throughout the world. It is as though, figuratively speaking, a tsunami hits the world each day or two. Society’s reaction, however, is as though nothing is happening at all.

How do we change that? How do we transform society so that people acknowledge abortion to be a moral wrong, not a right?

The heart of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR) is to change people’s attitudes about abortion so that this human rights violation becomes unthinkable. We aim to change how people feel and think about abortion so that they will act differently towards it. That means converting the unconvinced, activating the converted, and training the active to work more effectively.

This document explains why CCBR exists and provides an analysis of the pro-life movement, identifying what needs to be accomplished in order to change minds on abortion. It examines the climate of widespread acceptance of abortion, the responses of the existing pro-life movement to this climate, and the history of successful social reform movements.

This analysis comes from a credible voice because CCBR has spent years interacting with the public at large. Its representatives have dialogued with people at street corners, high schools, post-secondary institutions, and churches across North America. They have interacted with leading abortion advocates. They have worked in various facets of the pro-life movement over a period of decades. They have studied the arguments both for and against abortion, as well as studied social change. They have experience with both the theoretical and the practical.

Before venturing into this analysis, it is important to know who the intended audience is: people who believe abortion is wrong. It is for the pro-lifer who clearly understands the evil nature of abortion, having previously viewed one or both of the films “Choice Blues” or “This Is Abortion.” Failure to first view one of these films will make this document much less useful. Additionally, this analysis is for the pro-lifer who fits one or more of the following criteria:

• wishes to understand why CCBR does what it does
  

• desires to learn about various approaches to fighting abortion
  

• seeks to implement strategic, effective activities to stop the killing
  

• yearns to regain hope that the abortion “battle” thought to be lost is in fact winnable
  

Furthermore, readers should be aware of the following that will provide context for this paper:

This document will look not only at problems facing the pro-life movement from outside forces (e.g., the pro-abortion movement) but also from inside forces (e.g., weaknesses within some pro-life activities). CCBR’s comments are not made to be gratuitously critical of its fellow pro-life workers. The views herein are not made to deprive people of hope, to drive them into despair. They are made so that the pro-life movement will become as effective as possible in reaching its goal of ending abortion. After all, our willingness to look for big solutions depends on whether we acknowledge the existence of big problems.

Speaker and author Matthew Kelly has made the following insight that is relevant to this document:

Most people don’t want to think about their weaknesses. We don’t want to talk about them, and we certainly don’t want anyone else to point them out. This is a classic sign of mediocrity. Great men and women want to know their weaknesses.

And great movements that desire to transform societies want to know their weaknesses. If we care about saving lives, we need to critically examine the success of our movement. Precisely because we care about unborn children and the ability of the movement to help those children, we need constructive criticism.

Let us not fear criticism more than we fear ineffectiveness. Let us not fear criticism more than we fear being made uncomfortable. Let us fear babies being killed, enabled by mediocrity.

CCBR has a plan for how it will help save babies. Its ideas are backed up with good reasons. Its insights inevitably involve reflecting on the work of the broad pro-life movement; discussing pro-life activities beyond simply those CCBR does is important because, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

The pro-life movement has within it the power to change the course of history for the better. Let us learn how, with this honest analysis.

Continue reading the full booklet as a PDF file.