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Francisco Javier Pérez Latre,, Professor of Communication School

The pro-life movement and public opinion

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 11:04:00 +0000 Published in Navarra Newspaper

In recent weeks, discussion on life has returned to the center of public opinion in full force. This is good news, because the issue is crucial to the community. It is necessary to keep this decisive conversation alive and avoid a "news blackout". It is also necessary to rescue reason, bringing arguments to a discussion often plagued by propaganda and disqualifications. Unfortunately, the conversation about life has been of a low intellectual level (on both sides). In these lines, I would like to dwell on some arguments in favor of life that deserve the attention of public opinion.

By now, 41 years after Roe v. Wade, we already know the effects of the declining birth rate, which has caused a veritable demographic bomb and has deepened the crisis of the welfare state, which does not seem to be able to cope with population pyramids and macroeconomic data like the current ones. Surprisingly, the political class looks the other way. We are already suffering the effects of the crisis of motherhood, with the epidemic of loneliness that inevitably accompanies it. Russia and China, the pioneers of abortion implementation, have already begun to review their policies.

Moreover, the struggle for life can be a struggle for nature, an "ecological" cause. We live in an artificial world, which wants to impede the natural course of things with all subject of gadgets and drugs. The growth of technology, which brings so many benefits, has not been accompanied by the growth of humanity. Ecological sensitivity has helped us to respect nature more and that has been a great advance. Except when it comes to the culture of life.

On the other hand, women who are able to have children live in a climate adverse to motherhood and receive strong pressures from their environment. This is why it is necessary to defend those who want to become mothers and remove obstacles in their way. Things have changed: abortion used to be taboo. Now, the taboo is parenthood. Abortion is not only a women's problem. It is also a problem of men who run away and do not want to be responsible for their actions.

These and other arguments of the pro-life movement deserve a slower analysis. Its best ally is science, which, thanks to advances in prenatal diagnosis sample , is giving babies a clearer profile every day. Despite the merit of the arguments, defending life means confronting economic and political powers and most of the media. The defense of life is presented as something obscure, conservative and outdated; freedom of expression on life is threatened. But the cause of life is the cause of the future of humanity. Abortion may not so much be a sign of progress as a legacy of the 20th century, the century of the atomic bomb, experimentation Genetics and world wars.

If it overcomes its divisions and improves the intellectual quality of its speech, the pro-life movement can be a valuable coalition for the community: people of all religions or no religion who want to preserve human and civil rights; dedicated to the protection of the defenseless, disabled and marginalized; people working against human trafficking or the exclusion of the elderly with euthanasia; against the death penalty, torture, terrorism and other forms of violence. The right to life, to all life, is the first of human rights.

Welcome to discussion of these last weeks. But it must be a real discussion , without insults or threats. As Pope Francis has written, they want to deny unborn children their human dignity and do whatever they want with them, taking their lives and promoting legislation so that no one can prevent it. We need the pro-life movement to fight for these excluded creatures in a serene climate, without disqualification or censorship.