Shake The Nation

  A few months ago, I told you about a $40-million effort by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and other pro-abortion groups to, as they put it, "restore pro-choice leadership in Congress." The centerpiece of this effort is a series of ads that emphasize the importance of "choice," while ignoring what's being chosen. At the time, I told you that NARAL's campaign shouldn't go unanswered. Rather, it should serve as a call to arms for Christians to work even harder on behalf of the unborn. Well, thankfully, that's exactly what is happening. Two days ago, a coalition of two dozen pro-life and Christian organizations, including BreakPoint and The Wilberforce Forum, announced a campaign called "Shake the Nation Back To Life." "Shake The Nation" has a two-pronged strategy. The first prong is a series of ads aimed at exposing the dishonest rhetoric of the NARAL ads. Unlike pro- abortion advocates, we're calling on the American people to consider just what it is they are "choosing." The first ad, called "Second Thoughts," features a pregnant woman lying on an obstetrician's table. The woman sees vignettes of her unborn daughter's life: her birth, her graduation, and her wedding. Then, everything abruptly disappears. We return to the woman, and we realize that she's had an abortion. The ad closes with the message that "abortion takes away all the tomorrows." The second prong of "Shake The Nation" seeks to impact the politics of abortion. For the past fifteen years, any judiciary nominee who expressed the slightest reservation about the right to an abortion could expect to be demonized. Their nominations were considered "dead on arrival," and their qualifications were discounted. Worst of all, some of our leaders, even those who call themselves "pro-life," were complicit in this distortion of the confirmation process. Some of them allowed the process by which Supreme Court justices are confirmed to become an inquisition. To keep that from happening again, "Shake the Nation" is calling on pro-life citizens to put pressure on their senators. This pressure will come in the form of messages that ask senators to "confirm pro-life justices to the U. S. Supreme Court, and do everything in your power to protect children from all the brutal methods of abortion." Included with each message will be a baby rattle. Hopefully we can fill Senate offices with a sound unmistakably associated with live, loved babies. And we want the sound of rattles everywhere to be associated with the pro-life campaign. As leaders of "Shake The Nation" put it, this two- pronged campaign is "a signal that Americans are not going to sit idly by or wait to react to the aggressive efforts of the abortion lobby." For the campaign to achieve its goals, it's going to need BreakPoint listeners to do their part. Visit BreakPoint Online at http://www.breakpoint.org to find out how you can join your voice to the voices of millions of other pro-life citizens. I know it's hard to keep on going after twenty-eight years of struggle. But we must never despair or give up. The NARAL campaign reminds us that we must stay at our posts. This is a war -- a war that must be won; for what is at stake is innocent lives and the very soul of our nation.

09/7/01