Don't buy the lie.

The article I link to below was published in 1992. Why, then, 16 years later, do we have so many pro-lifers still taking the approach that focuses on trying to convince people that a fetus is a baby? Dr. Reardon makes the excellent point that everyone knows a fetus is a baby. They may choose to talk around the point or to avoid thinking about it, but they know it. Even if they support abortion, they know it. And they don't, if pressed, deny it. Biological fact demands as much.

Many pro-life people still seem to think, though, that conviction of this one biological fact is all it will take to convert a pro-abortion person into an anti-abortion one. Not true, Dr. Reardon says. People don't deny the personhood of the fetus because they don't believe it's biologically human. They deny it for an explosion of reasons, ranging from political convenience, to desire not to hurt others who have lost pregnancies, to deep personal suffering over involvement with abortion. In every case, though, there's one common factor: prioritizing the needs of the woman over those of her unborn child. Reardon emphasizes what others have acted on, that there should never have to be an opposition between those needs:

Once average citizens realize that women are being hurt by abortion, they will finally begin to question why we are allowing abortions at all. Until now, much of the public has been convinced by pro-abortionists that "abortion helps women." But once this myth is called into question, once the public begins to wonder if abortion is actually hurting women, then the tragedy of killing unborn babies for nothing becomes more apparent. If abortion doesn't help women, it doesn't make sense. . . .

We seek to awaken in the common mind the fundamental truth that whenever one hurts a child, one hurts its mother as well. And conversely, whenever one helps a mother, one helps her child. Therefore, the solution to problem pregnancies is not abortion; it is compassion.

Practical Pro-Life Action: Read the whole article. (Annoyingly, I can't seem to get a direct link, so click here, then on "Politics," then on "How To Put Compassion in Pro-Life Politics,) then scroll down to the bottom of that page and click "A New Strategy for Ending Abortion. Oy, sorry about that.) Then share the content with someone you know who seems to need to hear it: either a pro-abortion person who (wrongly) believes pro-lifers don't care about women, or a pro-lifer who (wrongly) believes pro-aborts don't care about anything.