Last week at Public Discourse, Dr. Christopher Tollefsen – a Catholic ethicist and philosopher – raised a question that some of us have been dealing with for a while now. And it’s a little frightening: namely, what are the principles and values that are indispensible to the pro-life cause? And, just as importantly, has all of this recent “progress” been helpful or hurtful?
In his article, Tollefsen focuses on the two things that endow the pro-life movement with inestimable value: truth and love. “Truth,” he says, “because the pro-life movement is founded on a set of scientific facts about unborn human beings.” And love because it is “founded on an ethical claim: that all human beings are deserving of the same fundamental form of respect.”
From this, the opposite becomes clear. What needs be the case, we see, is that a pro-choice mentality is “premised on a lie and – despite the unquestioned good intentions of its members and supporters – is opposed to love.” Thus, if we as pro-lifers are entitled to keep our heads high, it’s for no other reason than that we’re fighting the good fight, and fighting it in the service of truth and charity.
On these grounds, Tollefsen takes aim at the strategies employed by Live Action in the name of life. Although he admits that the organization has done a “great service of shining light on the sources of Planned Parenthood’s funding,” he quickly notes that “the way in which Live Action has made its mark is itself extremely troubling.” At bottom, he says, “it is predicated on a form of falsity, which is exercised in an unloving way.”
He even goes so far as to say that Live Action “represent[s] a real and dangerous corruption of the pro-life movement.”
No doubt, these are strong words. And many of us – myself included – are probably more than a little stirred by them. In short, they incite feelings of detraction, sedition, and betrayal. How could such a benefit to unborn human life be so poorly grounded? After all, as one high-profile friend of mine said about the topic, “you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.”