Eliminating Abortion by Changing Hearts

I think most rational people would agree that the old Operation Rescue method of fighting abortion, which was basically picketing clinics and screaming at would-be patients, was relatively ineffective. It just made the protesters come off as nutters.

Abortion foes are using new methods to combat the disgusting practice, as detailed in this Washington Post piece:

On June 6, Cheryl Smith took her last $600 and drove her teenage daughter from Baltimore to Severna Park to get an abortion. When they got there, a receptionist told them the clinic had changed hands. The abortion provider had moved a few miles away, she said, but the new clinic would offer a pregnancy test and sonogram for free.

The Smiths stayed. After they saw a picture of the fetus at 21 weeks with arms and legs and a face, their thoughts of termination were gone.

"As soon as I seen that, I was ready. It wasn't no joke. It was real," Makiba Smith, 16, said. "It was like, he's not born to the world yet, but he is inside of me growing."

With its ultrasound machine and its location, the Severna Park Pregnancy Clinic demonstrates two of the most important tactics in an intensifying campaign to woo women away from abortion clinics. Antiabortion organizations in recent years have added medical services to hundreds of Christian-oriented pregnancy counseling centers nationwide. Many of these antiabortion clinics have opened in or near places where women go to end pregnancies.

As you can imagine, this new trend has the abortion lobby seriously worried. They stand to lose millions:

There are at least 2,200 antiabortion pregnancy centers across the country, a nearly 30 percent jump since 1999, according to data from one of the largest pregnancy center networks, Heartbeat International of Columbus, Ohio. The network counts 561 centers that offer medical services, about a quarter of the national total. By comparison, abortion rights advocates estimate there are 1,800 abortion clinics nationwide.

Abortion rights advocates say the proliferation of antiabortion pregnancy clinics is a dangerous trend, confusing vulnerable women by mixing a seemingly neutral clinical environment with a religious agenda.

"They can set up a waiting room and an exam room, but that doesn't mean they employ actual medical practices," said Vicki Saporta, president of the National Abortion Federation, a D.C.-based network of abortion providers.

Dangerous? It's dangerous to abortion clinic profits, for sure, but you can certainly argue that not having an abortion is much safer than having one in the vast majority of cases - certainly as far as the mother and child are concerned.

Can you imagine a person believing that preventing an abortion is "dangerous", while having one is the preferred outcome and represents the "employment of actual medical practices"? Of course you can, because that's the state of play in today's big money abortion industry.

Although the abortion providers are spooked by this new approach to counseling and abortion prevention, shouldn't they be just as happy when someone "chooses" life instead of abortion? After all, they're "pro-choice".

No amount of legislation or overturned court decisions will stop abortion. If you want to stop abortion, you have to change people's hearts, not their case law.