“You’re not really pro-life. All you care about are babies in the womb. You don’t care about women, or protecting kids after they are born. You don’t march against the death penalty, or in favor or immigrants. You’re not pro-life, you’re pro-birth.” Sound familiar? It’s a mantra we hear again and again, but according to Patrick Madrid, this is a false narrative.
“There is a running narrative that’s out there, sadly it has infected the minds of many erstwhile pro-life Catholics, who now they go after the pro-life movement, viciously in some cases. … Let’s say that you’re pro-life; you have a pro-life bumper sticker, you march in one of the pro-life marches. They’ll come after you and say, ‘You’re not really pro-life,’” explained Madrid. “‘You’re not doing this and you’re not doing that and you’re not including all of these different subgroups and categories and things that are in fact life issues but because you’re not waving placards for them, too… you’re just interested in a baby in the womb.’”
The thing is, it’s just not true. Patrick quoted his friend Leila Miller, “If those who demand that pro life and the March for Life groups include the entire litany of social justice issues, do they also demand the same of, say, the anti-death penalty movement and its events? Do they shame anti-death penalty proponents by declaring them only ‘pro-prisoners’ lives’?”
“If they are not doing this to other movements, then why not? How then can I believe their demands are anything other than an attempt to water down the pro-life movement and the March specifically? You see what I mean? Why is it that every other group is allowed its specific mission but suddenly not with the fight against legal abortion?” questioned Miller.
So how can we respond? Madrid echoed Miller’s stance: “What you should say is, ‘Okay are you saying the same thing to the people who are marching for the end of the death penalty? Do they have to stack in there all the other social justice issues in order to be adequately pro-life in their effort to try to oppose he death penalty?’ Obviously not. And pick any other group,” said Madrid.
“The reason people, whether out of ignorance or out of malice, … try to discredit the pro-life movement is because people recognize the power of the pro-life movement and they want to subvert it,” explained Madrid.
Listen to the full segment:
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