Meeting In The Radical Middle

When Juli Loesch told me that Sojourners was doing a feature on abortion, I was mighty surprised. She said it would be good to get the viewpoint of a typical pro-lifer who had made a conversion on the issue of nuclear disarmament. When I asked Juli what she meant by typical, she said, "You know, not a young, left-wing radical feminist type like me but a middle-aged, right-wing conservative Catholic right-to-lifer like you." Before I could react to that statement, my dear friend said, "You've come such a long way on this issue, don't you think it would be nice to share how you got there?"

Juli was right about one thing--I'd come a long way. And I was beginning to feel like the only gray-haired pro-lifer left who wasn't super-enthusiastic about Ronald Reagan for president. His willingness to support a Human Life Amendment sure put him ahead of the "personally opposed" Mr. Carter and Mr. Anderson on the abortion issue, and I liked his pro-family, pro-God emphasis; but his determination to "catch up" in the nuclear arms race presented a grave moral dilemma for me. I heard the Star-Spangled Banner when he spoke and felt nostalgic about the red, white, and blue as I remembered my father's 30-year career in the Air Force and my husband's tour of duty in Vietnam as a young army officer. I was still proud of both of them, and yet as Reagan spoke of increasing our military capabilities, I felt sick, and I felt scared.

An absolute value has been placed on every human life by the death of Jesus Christ. Isn't the person horrified by abortion but less upset at the sight of thousands of dead children in Hiroshima saying that only unborn human life is sacred? Can we separate the issue of abortion from the other life issues such as the arms race, the death penalty, our treatment of the poor and the oppressed, and still maintain our credibility as Christians? If we live the gospel message 'til it hurts, we will be led to many oppositions and discomforts. If we are not, we have compromised his message to us. I have been blessed to find a few friends in the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition, a non-sectarian group which believes that there is no human life not worth living. At its national convention a few years ago, as I wandered with a dozen teenagers in tow, I heard kids saying things like: "We don't have the right to choose some types of killing while rejecting others." "We believe in women's right to choose, but we believe it is a pre-conceptive right. Unfortunately, after a woman is pregnant she cannot choose whether or not she wishes to become a mother. She already is, and since the child is already present in her womb all that is left to her to decide is whether she will deliver her baby dead or alive." "What's the matter with so many adult right-to-lifers--aren't they concerned about kids dying in the womb from nuclear radiation too?" "We're pretty inconsistent in our respect for human life if we are concerned about kids dying from abortion but not kids who are dying from hunger."

When I heard these kids talking, I knew I had found a home. Because of my advancing age (I was 32 at the time) they made me an advisory board member. Since then I've found a few other old-fashioned Christians like myself, many who've come from as far on the abortion issue as I did on the nuclear issue. We met in the radical middle, and we get together in groups like Pro-Lifers for Survival. It's a pro-life, anti-nuke group that Juli founded in desperation for us old (past junior high) folks. I was allowed in even though I'm not a pacifist. They said I was a nuclear pacifist, and that's okay with me because so is Pope John Paul. Besides, I'm making this supreme nonviolent effort not to spank my kids anymore, especially the ones that don't speak English yet. We even have a few orthodox Catholics in the group who have organized a separate Fatima Task Force because we believe that the rosary and a little old-fashioned Christian penance wasn't bad advice from the Mother of God herself. In fact, we think it's the ultimate in heavenly peace plans.

Mary O'Brien Drumm had served for many years on the boards of local and national pro-life organizations and was vice president of the Council on Adoptable Children when this article appeared. She was also a member of the national advisory board of the National Youth Pro-Life Coalition.