Promoting life

Our exhibit at the March for Life Chicago

I spent last Saturday promoting Safe Haven Laws.   Besides talking myself hoarse, I learned that there are more outfits providing pro-life advocacy and services than I had imagined.

This past fall, I posted a report of a pro-life rally and march that took place in an adjoining suburb.  Last weekend, I attended an event that was similar but on a much larger scale: the March for Life Chicago.  Its organizers bill it as the largest pro-life event in the Midwest.  It's part convention, part rally, part march and part cocktail reception and banquet.

The March for Life Rally at Daley Plaza on Saturday, January 11, 2020

At last autumn's suburban event, I was just part of the hoi polloi, one marcher among many.  But this time I was put to work.  I've written here before that I'm affiliated with an organization called Rest in His Arms, which provides funerals and burials for infants and children who are abandoned and die, and then are unclaimed by their families for burial.  Rest in His Arms was one of the sponsoring organizations for the weekend, and we had a spot in the exhibition hall.

At Rest in His Arms, our most fervent wish is that there would no longer be any abandoned children to bury.  Lawmakers in Illinois and every other state have given us a set of legal tools, the Safe Haven Laws, to help grant our wish.  The legal provisions vary a bit from one state to another; in Illinois, they permit a parent to relinquish their unwanted infant, no questions asked, anytime between birth and 30 days after birth, to an employee at a hospital emergency room, fire station, police station or college campus security office.  In Illinois, 130 infants have been turned over under the provisions of the Safe Haven Laws.  The oldest of these turned 18 last year.

So our goal at this event was to promote Safe Haven Laws to the attendees.  Our president, who is energetic and able, ordered collateral, signage and designed a tabletop booth for the exhibition hall.  With the help of her husband, who is a professor of engineering and apparently has as many uses for PVC piping as other handy people have for duct tape, they set up the exhibit that is pictured at the top of the post.

I worked the exhibit on Saturday.  We were one of several dozen exhibitors in a busy exhibition hall at a downtown Chicago hotel.  I spoke with many people about Safe Haven Laws.  Our president's husband had cobbled together a ring toss game (made out of PVC, naturally), so we invited passers-by to play ring toss to win a Lifesaver (because Safe Haven Laws save lives, get it?).  I confess I've spent most of my life supposing that pro-life advocates are humorless sourpusses, but in fact nearly everyone who stopped by was a good sport about playing ring toss.  And whenever a group of attendees stopped to play, they became our captive audience to whom we gave our Safe Haven Laws pitch.  I probably talked to at least a hundred people over the course of the day, maybe more.

Everyone who stopped by was extremely interested in Safe Haven Laws - once they learned of their existence.  And that was one of our major findings: even among an audience of committed and motivated pro-lifers, few of them knew about Safe Haven Laws, and virtually none of them could articulate the law's key provisions (only the parents may relinquish; the infant must be 30 days or younger; it has to be to an emergency room or another designated relinquishment point; etc.)

This finding was especially important, because by and large, the Saturday audience was considerably younger than I expected.  While we want everyone to know about Safe Haven Laws, the audiences we care about most are teens and young adults because we believe they are the most likely to give birth to a child whom they don't want to rear.  In Illinois, public high schools are supposed to teach about Safe Haven Laws, but the private schools don't have this requirement (or so I'm told).  My own kids, who attended public high schools, usually flunk when I periodically quiz them about the Illinois law. And that was our experience on Saturday with young people, both the "publics" and the "Catholics".

We had been told that there would be a big rush of young people when the exhibition hall opened, but inasmuch as it was 8:30 am on a Saturday, and no teen or young adult worth her/his salt rolls out of bed before 11 on a Saturday, it was pretty slow at first.  So I had time to wander around.  I'm not exactly an introverted person, so I have no qualms about walking up to perfect strangers at another exhibit, introducing myself, and asking many questions about what they do.  I brought home a ton of literature and swag.  And I came away surprised and impressed by the multiplicity of different types of organizations that have come together under the Pro-Life umbrella.

Last night, I emptied the swag bag onto the living room floor and sorted the collateral and trinkets into piles to try to make sense of it all.  Herewith is my attempt to describe the categories.  Life issues exist at the intersection of politics and morality, and virtually all of these organizations exist somewhere on the continuum with politics at one end and morality at the other.  Here are the categories I came up with, attempting to move from one side of the spectrum to the other:

• Political organizations.  It turned out that one of the first hands I shook on Saturday morning belonged to a vice presidential candidate.  As in, a candidate for the office of Vice President of the United States.  I'm a little ashamed (but only a little) to admit I've forgotten his full name; his last name is Patel.  He and his running mate, Brian Carroll, who apparently didn't attend the event, are the candidates of the WholeLife Party.  I've mentioned in the past that I come close to being a single-issue voter, but I confess I'm not quite ready to write them in on my ballot.  Not that Mr. Patel seemed to be a bad person; he was friendly, outgoing, had a firm handshake, and was more than willing to engage.   Unsurprisingly, a prime topic of his engagement was the possibility of my donating money to their campaign. 
  
  The WholeLife Party wasn't the only, shall we say, secondary, or even tertiary, party to have an exhibit space.  I also picked up some literature from the American Solidarity Party.  Their principles seem to span the conventional ideological divide, including, in addition to the sanctity of life from conception to natural death, commitment to universal affordable health care, justice for workers in pay and stewardship of the environment.
  
  Among more mainstream political organizations, I also visited the booth of Democrats For Life of America (DFLA), which is, I think, the premier pro-life organization within the Democratic Party.  A flyer I got from them states their core principles: "We believe in the fundamental worth, dignity and equality of all people.  We believe that the protection of human life is the foundation of human rights, authentic freedom and good government.  These beliefs animate our opposition to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, embryonic stem cell research, poverty, genocide and all other injustices that directly and indirectly threaten human life."  It interests me that climate change didn't make their list.
  
  Among the members of DFLA's Board of Directors is Rep. Dan Lipinski (IL), about whom I and others have blogged here in the past.  His campaign workers roamed around the exhibition hall, collecting names, phone numbers and email addresses.  The Congressman himself was a featured speaker at the pro-life rally at Daley Plaza that afternoon.  Apparently, he has marched in the march every year since its inception, which I take as a sign that he is sincere in his pro-life convictions. 
  
  And then I got to hang out with Rep. Lipinski for at least 30 minutes at the VIP cocktail reception before dinner.  I rated VIP status, not because of anything I've ever said or done, but simply because Rest in His Arms bought an exhibit package that included VIP tickets.  The Congressman worked the VIP reception area fairly hard, and I was sitting with some people whom I had just met and who turned out to be political donors, so purely by accidental association, I was graced by his presence, too.  His wife is charming.  He's facing a tough re-election, but this isn't his first rodeo, so we'll see what happens this fall.
• Policy advocacy groups: These are the pro-life policymaking and lobbyist groups.  Illinois Right To Life had the biggest booth in the exhibit hall.  Among the stack of brochures I grabbed from their tabletop were "Abortion hurts men"; "Adoption: Could it be the right choice for you?"; "The first 9 months: fetal development" and "The truth about Planned Parenthood".  Another organization present, LifeMatters, had a set of five brochures, each targeted to a different political orientation: "Why should Greens / Libertarians / Liberals / Socialists / Conservatives embrace the Consistent Life Ethic?"
• Legal advocacy groups: The Thomas More Society had a big presence (and, crucially for me, were giving away large swag bags, which can now be repurposed as a reusable shopping bag).  I suppose most readers are aware already of their advocacy work.
• Secular advocacy groups: There were a few organizations that eschewed religious affiliation and attempted to make non-religious arguments in favor of life.  A couple of them were run by groups of young-adult Catholics, none of whom, as far as I can judge, are particularly conservative in their political outlooks, and all of whom were pretty upfront about wanting to promote the breadth of Catholic social teaching.  We had some great conversation about qualms regarding the killing of Soleimani. 
  
  One of these secular-oriented groups, Rehumanize International, is committed to removing from public discourse words and phrases that tend to dehumanize political opponents (as when immigrants are referred to as "parasites").  Among their advice: "Pay attention to the way other people you know talk, and if they're using dehumanizing language, don't be afraid to ask them to stop."  "Use rehumanizing, human-centered language (for example, say 'the man with dementia' rather than 'the demented man', or refer to dehumanized individuals as human beings to affirm their human dignity." Seems like good advice.
• Athletic-activity activists: This is an entire category of which I wasn't previously aware.  There were at least two groups present who are variations on Runners for Life, and at least two who are variations on Cyclists for Life.  The latter isn't for the casual around-the-neighborhood guy like me; they do several-hundred-mile-long events (one of them is Green Bay to St. Louis or something similar).  I get exhausted just thinking about it.  The idea for both types is, put on some pro-life-wear, run a 10K or bike a race or do a triathlon or something similar, and fund-raise for the organization by getting friends, neighbors and coworkers to sponsor you.  What the organizations do with the money isn't entirely clear, but hopefully it somehow supports the cause . 
  
  One of the Runner guys was this hyper-evangelizing Evangelical type who ran halfway across the floor to shake my hand and yank me into his exhibit area, practically pulled my smart phone out of my pocket to get me to put my contact information on his website (unfortunately for him, I neglected to hit the Submit button at the end), thrust a logo'd sweatshirt into my hands, and then expected me to pay him 20 bucks for it.  I told him I wasn't prepared to do that.  He took my demurral as a plea of poverty and insisted I just keep it.  I didn't want to be unpleasant by refusing his gift, so I tossed it in the swag bag.  It's kind of sad to say, but I have so many t shirts and sweatshirts already, there literally isn't room in my dresser drawer for any more.  I'll end up giving it to Goodwill or someplace similar, and one of our homeless clients can promote his runners' organization by wearing it around town.
• Media organizations:  Several radio stations were present, including Relevant Radio, which carries Catholic programming and seemed to be live-broadcasting the Daley Plaza rally, a couple of Evangelical stations, and one or two secular AM stations that play right-wing talk radio all day long.
• Marketing organizations: one exhibitor, chooselifemarketing.com, provides marketing services, such as websites, social media marketing, and email campaigns, to help organizations like, well, all the other exhibitors, promote a pro-life message.
• Artistic organizations: This included an exhibit that was promoting an upcoming concert by two musical artists of whom I had not previously heard, and - one of my favorite finds of the weekend -a group called Mime for Life, which is, as the name suggests, a company of mimes who will go out and perform at parishes and private schools to raise awareness of life issues.
• Pro-life healthcare, healing and counseling services:  Among the most interesting people I met was Dr. Karen Deighan, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Loyola University Medical Center.  She was one of the featured speakers at the Daley Plaza rally, and is affiliated with ProLife Ob/Gyns.   At their exhibit, I picked up flyers detailing patient risks for breast cancer, mental health issues and future pre-term births by women who have had abortions.  For example: the breast cancer brochure gives a medical explanation for why terminating a pregnancy before it reaches 32 weeks can increase the risk of breast cancer (nearly all breast cancer occurs in Type 1 and 2 lobules, but carrying a pregnancy to full term causes many of the Type 2 lobules to mature into Type 4 lobules, which are much more cancer-resistant). 
  
  In addition to the obi/gyns, one or two women's centers had exhibitor space.  These are the outfits that counsel women to have their babies rather than get them aborted, and provide assistance to moms and babies after birth.  One of them was a mobile clinic that provides pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, counseling and referrals.  I also picked up some literature from Project Rachel, an extremely worthwhile ministry which attempts to provide spiritual healing to women who have had abortions.
• Adoption and foster care agencies:  One of my most exciting "finds" of the weekend was Bethany.  It is a national organization with Christian, non-denominational roots that is a private adoption agency which also provides counseling and other family services.  But what really got me fired up about Bethany is that it is downstream from the parents who relinquish their children under the Safe Haven Law provisions.  This is how it works: a mom who wants to relinquish her infant will go to the local fire station and give up the child.  The fire house doesn't keep the child; it calls the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).  DCFS in turn needs to arrange short-term care for the child, not least because - and this is something I wasn't aware of until I spoke with Bethany - a parent who relinquishes a child has 30 days to change her/his mind and get the child back.  Bethany is one of the organizations which provides this short-term care to the relinquished child.  The woman I spoke with has personally picked up a number of children who have been given up under the Safe Haven Law.  Bethany has put together a network of families who are standing by to provide this short-term care; this program is approved by and monitored by DCFS.  She told me that in several instances, moms who gave up their children have come to Bethany to get counseling; understandably, they feel divided or torn about giving up their child.  In at least one or two instances, Bethany has arranged permanent placement of the child in such a way that the birth mother is able to stay involved in the child's life.  This strikes me as important and holy work.
• Religious organizations:  The Chicago Archdiocese had a booth. One of the archdiocesan parishes also had a booth, to promote a ministry which involved providing a school and housing for orphans in strife-torn Nigeria.  And the exhibit right next to ours was Lutherans for Life.  I learned that it's an organization that spans the various divisions within Lutheranism, although the folks whom I met all were Missouri Synod.

Congressman Dan Lipinski (D-IL) speaking at the March for Life Chicago banquet

I came away impressed, and even filled with wonder, at the many ways that people had come up with ideas for organizations and ministries devoted to defending and promoting life.  Most of them, like Rest in His Arms, are bootstrap organizations run by people with day jobs, but who carve out time for these activities.  Many of them, probably most, were represented by young adults.  In fact, one of my takeaways of the day is that there is quite a bit of youthful energy in the pro-life movement.  In my view, this complements the youthful enthusiasm visible for various progressive causes.  Part of the enthusiasm and exuberance I saw on Saturday may be spurred by adverse political winds: last year, Illinois passed a bill that increased abortion funding and removed some exceptions that formerly were in place.  It strikes me as possible that the pro-choice movement went too far, and a counter-reaction is stirring.