James Tonkowich
January 24, 2008
In the course of my tenure as managing editor of BreakPoint with Chuck Colson, I worked on about a thousand daily commentaries. Most are long forgotten, but one still stands out as a favorite.
The April 8, 2003 commentary, “A New Generation Gap: Abortion and Our Children,” focused on the town of Red Wing, Minnesota. Red Wing, whose town website boasts “Endless Choices,” is, according to the New York Times, a politically liberal town and the reigning opinion on abortion is decidedly pro-choice.
IRD President James Tonkowich and IRD board member Michael Novak attend a White House breakfast prior to the 2008 March for Life. |
But not among the youth. Asked to write a speech on a controversial topic for a course on persuasive speech, several of the students chose to argue that the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion was a mistake that needs to be overturned. One student commented that the issue is “more about the baby’s rights than the woman’s rights” and other students similarly presented moral arguments against abortion.
This shocked their pro-choice parents who are not alone in wondering, “Where do these kids come from?” But here they are and wherever they came from they are a generation that is largely pro-life.
That was demonstrated again on Tuesday, January 22 at the thirty-fifth annual March for Life here in Washington, DC.
The biggest Christian youth event in America is not a rock festival or a stadium sized revival meeting. It is the March for Life.
Beginning with a White House breakfast I attended it was clear that the pro-life cause is increasingly youth driven. At least a third of the White House guests were high school and college students. Rather than matching many of us in our standard Washington business attire—dark suits for men and women—most of them were dressed to march. Clad for the cold wearing jeans, turtlenecks, sweaters, and walking shoes they browsed through the Green, Red, and Blue Rooms munching on muffins, muesli, and orange juice from a buffet table in the State Dining Room.
“As I look out at you,” President Bush told us once we had assembled in the East Room, “I’ll see some folks who have been traveling all night to get here—you’re slightly bleary-eyed. I’ll see others who are getting ready for a day out in the cold. But mostly I see faces that shine with a love for life.”
The president’s remarks were brief, but delivered and received with great enthusiasm.
The Washington Metro stations were filled with groups of students, many in matching sweatshirts or scarves, carrying signs and finding their way to the March.
The IRD fielded four marchers: Lorelei Coyle, Jeff Walton, Rebekah Sharpe, and John Lomperis who marched with the United Methodist group Lifewatch.
It is amazing that the realities of abortion, which are so muddled with the older generation, are increasingly seen with a striking clarity by young men and women.
Perhaps they are aware of stark reality found on the “Survivors” website: “If you were born after 1972, we challenge you to consider yourself a Survivor of the Abortion Holocaust. 1/3 of your generation has been killed by abortion inAmerica!” One out of three peers lost to abortion is a shocking number.
It also raises what has been called “The Roe Effect.” Since children are likely to have the same political attitudes as their parents, it stands to reason that many of in this younger generation up in pro-life homes. The children of many pro-choice homes died in the womb. That is, a pro-choice older generation killed its successors leaving the future to those who are pro-life.
According to the Los Angeles Times, polling research for at least a decade indicates that “18- to 29-year-olds are consistently more likely than the general adult population to favor strict limits on abortion.” And if the polling is limited to teens, said the Times, a Gallup poll in 2003 showed “72% called abortion morally wrong, and 32% believed it should be illegal in all circumstances.” That compares to only 17% of adults who believe in a total abortion ban.
And so we passed the thirty-fifth year of Roe v. Wade. The decision, which Justice Byron White in his dissent called an exercise of “raw judicial power,” has colored American politics—in the public square and in the churches—ever since.
As a generation of young people gathers each year to march up the Mall to the Congress and the Supreme Court in the chill of January in Washington, it is only a matter of time (Please, God!) before they make the changes needed to end the walk—and the killing that inspires it—once and for all.
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