Pro-Life Can Be a Complicated Thing

This isn't red meat for the right, but an interesting wider view of trends by David Frum -- http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/09/06/david-frum-sarah-and-todd-palin-and-the-quiet-success-of-the-pro-life-movement.aspx

I've been bemused by the number of liberal commenters in the MSM who try to say that somehow the conservative and even "religious right" is now hypocritical because we're pro-life and pro-family, but now we've created part of the setting for an increase in single motherhood (which Bristol Palin won't be, but anyhow), which is the heart of Charles Blow's op-ed in the Saturday NYTimes -- http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/opinion/06blow.html.

Frum answers -- true. Pro-life as a higher value has necessarily meant a wider acceptance and even affirmation, up to a point, of single motherhood, and that creates some interesting tensions that are still working themselves out.

Myself, i think the tension is less than it looks, and was never there -- young unmarried mothers have always been in the picture, and sending them out the church door alone on a winter night barefoot, shunned by all, is good Silas Marner-type material, but just hasn't been true among evangelicals and even most stripes of fundamentalism. The tension is in going from shame perhaps once overplayed to now celebration . . . perhaps a bit overplayed. We can affirm and support without being thrilled that the number of one-parent households is going up, but it will continue to be a delicate balance.

How Blow and others can say with a straight face that "we" on the right should accept more abortions in order to have more two-parent families, or we're inconsistent, is another sign that we tend to talk past each other on this particular divide, but Frum makes a good attempt at putting some guide ropes up across the chasm.