Moral Conflict

Keys to Engagement in Moral Conflict

Rick Plasterer on May 12, 2021

Lila Rose, a pro-life advocate and founder of Live Action, was interviewed by the Catholic Information Center on May 6. She shared key insights concerning how one engages moral conflict. For Live Action, the conflict is for the lives of unborn children. She discussed her new book, Fighting for Life: Becoming a Force for Change in a Wounded World.

Moral clarity

Rose sees her book as a handbook for advocates of traditional, absolute morality – a traditionalist version of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, first published in 1971. In particular, she wants to support marriage and the family. “How do we fight for the causes that matter most in this world,” she asked. She sees three steps as vital to effectively fighting for change. The first is moral clarity. This is essential for engaging the struggle for life. It is in contrast to the “moral confusion” that is obvious in the contemporary world. Images of well-formed aborted children give a strong clarity that what happens in abortion is the killing of innocent fellow human beings. Even first trimester suction abortions show this. “This is the most prevalent abortion in America,” she said. “It is three times more powerful than a household vacuum,” and tears the child apart. Phraseology is important, she said. Abortion advocates would call this “emptying the uterus.” Yet it undeniably involves killing unborn children by tearing them apart, and is obviously wrong. It strikes our “natural sense of justice,” which Christians understand is because “God’s moral law is written on our hearts.”

“A whole society can become obsessed with the wrong cause, and can be perpetuating a great injustice, without moral clarity.” This is the case with abortion, which is passionately defended, and which takes the life of more than two thousand children in America every day. She quoted Mother Theresa’s observation that “the greatest destroyer of peace in the world is abortion … In a nation in which where a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for you and I to kill one another.” Other ills such as war, poverty, racism, etc., assume that there are living human beings, and combatting them is thus subordinate to the right to life. Abortion is “the leading  cause of bloodshed in America today,” and the leading cause of death in the world. Unlike police brutality, where images of abuse can lead to achieving justice, images of aborted children do not result in redress, because abortion is legal.

Part of the moral confusion of abortion is the attempt to conflate abortion with other moral crusades, which may be legitimate. The legal and social elevation of women has been an important development in the modern world, and involves equality before the law, the right to vote, and equal opportunity for women in business and the professions. These are all improvements in the condition of women, yet they do not justify the killing of unborn children, which is absolutely wrong. Terms such as “reproductive justice,” “equality for women,” or “women’s health,” mask the awful reality which is being defended, and attempt to put any opponent in the wrong simply by the terminology used. Similarly, environmentalism may a positive force in many situations in the modern world, but used in defense of abortion, it sees children as a threat to the environment and a burden to adults, rather than “seeing children as assets to help manage the world and help create better and more sustainable” environments to live in. The core problem is getting “human nature wrong” and thus “seeing the human person in the wrong light.”

Rose said that “the banality of evil,” first articulated by the social commentator Hannah Arendt, explains how abortion has been perpetuated in the modern world. It involves making evil appear normal. The day in and day out functioning of abortion facilities, the use of language that legitimizes abortion, support from leading figures and celebrities in society, and general institutional support from an increasingly woke American establishment all give an illusion of legitimacy, but cannot change the objective reality that abortion is the killing of unborn children, and therefore evil. This makes moral clarity an imperative, and discernment necessary about priorities concerning the changes needed in the world.

Rose believes that “reason and common sense” can be used to discuss with anyone “what is the proper way to treat one another.” Also “faith, study, and heroes are keys for us to have moral clarity … in an often very confused culture.” She sees Christian saints as “some of the best heroes.” To advance moral clarity, we need “to continue to study our faith and form our consciences.”

Take action

The second step in effectively fighting for change is to take action. It was moral clarity, she says, “that gave me the courage, at a young age, to start Live Action.” With moral clarity and knowledge comes responsibility. The gravity and enormity of the problem “can seem overwhelming.” She believes that people today are “morally hungry, they need the moral truth explained to them.” This is made all the more urgent by the fact that so many women are in danger of having an abortion and so many unborn children are in danger of death. While the news media and social media algorithms are keyed to show the defense of life as causing divisiveness in society, there are positive things to report. The decline of the abortion rate, pro-life legislation recently enacted or proposed in many states, and the millions of persons joining the pro-life movement and involved in activism such as supporting crisis pregnancy centers, fostering or adopting children, and voting for pro-life candidates are all causes for encouragement.

“Doing something” can be as simple as doing “one thing today … to serve those in need, one thing today to share the moral clarity that you have,” Rose said. Pro-life witness and prayer outside abortion facilities has in her experience and reports she has heard been the reason many women drove past the abortion facilities rather than entered them. However unglamorous and mundane pro-life work might be, this is what she said she has been doing for fifteen years. But it has propelled her into “going undercover at abortion clinics … traveling globally and speaking before members of the United Nations,” and most recently writing her first book. “That’s how we grow, and that’s how God uses our life.”

Rose advised that finding comrades in moral struggle is important. We were meant to fight for causes that matter with the support of others. She suggested that the activist brainstorm with them, not be afraid to ask for help, and work closely with them to achieve goals. Perseverance despite loneliness and mistakes is important.

Personal wholeness

Finally, “personal wholeness” is important in moral struggle. “If anybody wants to change the world, they have to first acknowledge that they need to be changed … the degree to which we will change the world, is the degree to which we are willing to be changed ourselves.” First, we should “be heartbroken … Contemplate the plight of others, contemplate the injustice that others might face. This is a powerful thing … to get outside ourselves and our own little bubble.” She noted that this is in imitation of Jesus, who wept over the tragedies he saw. But for us, this also involves “being repentant” for the sins and errors we have committed.

Rose asked what our ultimate call is. This is “to glorify God, and to be with God forever.” We must be “ready to receive vocation.” She believes that every person is called to be a father or a mother, if not a biological father or mother, then a spiritual father or mother. She said that despite her activism, her husband and children come first. Being a spiritual father or mother could involve mentoring other people, or otherwise meeting their needs, fellowshipping and supporting them. However rewarding activism is, “there is nothing as beautiful and rewarding as getting to mother or father someone, as getting to pour into another soul.”

Finally, as part of personal wholeness, there must be a “living out our ability and the call as human beings to celebrate and worship … Rest to worship God” and be with our families each week is important. God rested himself from his work, and weekly rest is part of living in the image of God. Diligence and perseverance in our work is certainly important, but we are also meant for celebration. “The highest form of celebration is worshipping God, it’s communion with God, and marveling at the perfection that is God and the love and goodness that is God.”

Rose hopes that anyone engaged in fighting for righteous causes will be “inspired, encouraged, and equipped in your own calling and your own causes … if we are willing to fight for life, we can transform our culture, and we can make America and the countries that we are in nations that respect life and have cultures of life.”

In response to a question, Rose said that she decided to write her book because she believes that we are at a cultural and political “tipping point.” Asked how people can engage moral questions when postmodernism and the social media that advances it focuses on “my truth” rather than “the truth,” she said that what people are feeling and experiencing at the moment can be used to point people to “the truth,” but “my truth” must not be allowed to be final. To allow personal truth to be final is “damaging and it’s a lie. We’re not God and we don’t invent morality.” Some of the truths that must be maintained by pro-life advocates are that “science is clear about when life begins, at the moment of fertilization. It’s always wrong to take a human life.” Thus abortion is always wrong. In this way, we can “reach people who are … living in moral ambiguity.”

It was asked about how people involved in the pro-life movement “stay courageous and bold,” especially those who are “converts” to the cause, and who may come from social environments in which they will be shunned. “Its rarely easy to speak up when other people disagree,” she said. Peer pressure is not wrong in itself, to help ensure that people act by the proper norms, “but when the norm is wrong … then it hurts to stand up against the norm.” One can lose friends and even have threats of violence. Rose advised that activists “let your … moral clarity and your heartache drive you.” Study and research and also having a friend to confide in can be enormously important in meeting an entrenched ill-grounded norm. Also, “keep trying … don’t stop just because you didn’t do it in the past.” Remember that “your willingness to speak makes it easier for the next person.”

Another questioner asked whether recent pro-life legislation at the state level, such as heartbeat bills, which prohibit abortions where the unborn child has a beating heart, will be effective not only in decreasing abortions but also in giving the Supreme Court an opportunity to effectively overturn Roe vs. Wade. Rose said that with the current makeup of the Supreme Court, “there’s hope that they will decide a pro-life decision that can undo some of the damage or all of the damage of Roe.” What would be most desirable is a decision that an unborn child is a person protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees to all persons life, liberty, and property. The Left understands this, which is why they want to pack the Supreme Court. She believes that efforts “to ban abortion completely” at the state level are the best, although heartbeat bills do ban most abortions. Important as well is “that the Supreme Court sees the energy for abortion abolition.” The court does pay attention to the direction in which the country is moving on particular issues, she said.

In response to a question about how to find moral clarity, Rose said that the Ten Commandments and human nature give us moral clarity. She believes that the Ten Commandments “cover the gamut of … what is rightly ordered relationships with each other and with God.”

In a concluding remark, Rosemary Eldridge, who interviewed Rose, said that we should grieve for suffering and death caused by abortion, but use that grief to change the world for the good.

  1. Comment by David on May 12, 2021 at 11:48 am

    “Most Americans think lost pregnancies are rare, according to surveys, but the reality is that up to 1 in 3 pregnancies will end in miscarriage, experts say. Add in the pregnancies that fail before a fertilized egg becomes implanted in the womb, and the numbers jump as high as 50%, according to the National Institutes of Health.” —Time 19 Oct 2016

    Given this, are you certain that God is actually “pro-life?”

  2. Comment by Rick Plasterer on May 12, 2021 at 3:49 pm

    David,

    Yes, Exodus chapter 20 establishes that God regards abortion as murder. Biology tells us that the individual human life begins at the moment of conception. Any other standard is arbitrary.

    Rick

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