Mackey believes that this success rate shows that “the social issues and the culture of the country still matters.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, described Obama’s election as a success for the civil rights movement before pointing out that the battle to protect the unborn from abortion is also a human and civil rights battle.
Although, she sees the election results as a political setback, Dannenfelser argued that, “The pro-life movement is just as strong as it ever was and this is not a repudiation in any way of the issues that we are lobbying on in the pro-life movement.”
CNA asked Dannenfelser what she believed was behind the failure of the South Dakota initiative to limit significantly abortion, given the strength of the pro-life movement.
“You do have to reach people where they are, and it could have been a miscalculation of where the consensus is in the state. But also, it could be that the consensus was overwhelmed by being far out spent, which we are every single time in these propositions,” she told CNA.
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Shifting back to the general election, Dannenfelser said the biggest question that president-elect Obama will have to answer is whether he will go forward with his promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act or whether he will try to find common ground with pro-life advocates.
The SBA List president summed up any losses suffered by conservatives as due to economic conditions and not because of conservative principles. “We lost on a different battleground. We lost on an economic playing field, not on the merits of the pro-life issue,” she emphasized.