Dr. Keyes is founder and chairman of the Declaration Foundation, a communications center for founding principles. Tune into his new television show “Alan Keyes is Making Sense” on MSNBC, Monday through Thursday, 10 p.m., ET.
Elected with the strong support of pro-abortion groups, Spitzer was clearly engaged in abuse of his prosecutorial power for political reasons. (Note to liberals: how about drawing some “Lessons of Enron” here?) Now it seems that his payback to the pro-abortion groups that elected him has been interrupted by the principled objections of his targets, the courageous objections of his colleague, Attorney General Charlie Condon of South Carolina, and by increasing media attention that the case was receiving.
Spitzer accepted as plausible the usual list of pro-abortion myths about the nature and practices of CPCs, and then used his office’s subpoena power in an attempt to overwhelm the centers with intimidating — and prohibitively expensive — requests for information and documentation. In effect, he took the undocumented word of the pro-abortion groups who elected him that he should treat CPC’s as lawbreakers until proven otherwise.
The idea that crisis pregnancy centers engage in criminal abuse of their clients is almost criminal itself. It takes a genuine pro-abortion zealot not to see that these centers are doing extremely important and constructive work. They are an alternative to the abortion mills, offering counseling, support and help to young women in crisis pregnancies so that these young mothers can make a decision that respects the life of their child as well as their own future life prospects – a decision both mother and child can live with.
Abortion rates typically decline where such centers are operating. But, of course, this is the real offense in the eyes of the abortion high priesthood – effectively helping young women make a decision other than abortion is the only mortal sin to them.
The strategy of Spitzer’s assault is clear. The burdensome costs that result from complying with a sustained campaign of hostile “investigation” could be expected to force some CPCs to close. Like most principled non-profits, they typically have no funds to spare for defending themselves against sophisticated government harassment.
Indeed, apparently one small center has already decided that the pressure is too great, and has signed an agreement to modify its actions to satisfy its pro-abortion critics. But such appeasement can never work. Indeed, the demands consist primarily in the insistence that the centers more and more energetically “reassure” prospective clients that they have no intention or desire to convince mothers not to abort their children.
In the Orwellian world of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, counseling young women not to kill their children constitutes “humiliation and degradation.” The very presence of crisis centers on the same street as abortion mills is “psychological intimidation.” And the presentation of factual materials regarding the true nature of the baby in the womb, and the effects of abortion on mother as well as child, is “brainwashing.”
Crisis pregnancy centers offer love and truth to the lonely and confused. Out of love, they offer the truth that abortion is a choice that disrespects the dignity of the human person, and leads not to happiness, but to misery. It is this truth of love and respect that Spitzer and his paymasters want silenced, and they want it replaced not simply with silence, but with positive acknowledgment that the pro-life position is evil. There can be no final compromise with such men, particularly when they wield the power of the state.
We must, like Lincoln in his Cooper Union Speech, understand that our opponents demand not coexistence, but acquiescence. Indeed, his words then need little modification to fit the actions of Spitzer, NARAL, NOW, et al, like a glove:
“[W]hat will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call [abortion] wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them.”
In defending our right to call abortion the evil it is, we protect a principle as essential to our national soul as did Lincoln. Indeed, it is the same principle – that the equal dignity of all God’s human creatures is the foundation of all our rights. Lincoln’s closing remarks at Cooper Union will, I am confident, continue to express well the noble devotion of the selfless workers of the crisis pregnancy center movement:
“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of … dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
