Remember that adage about not putting all of your eggs in one basket?
That has happened to the anti-abortion movement.
All of our votes are in the Republican Party’s basket. So too are the lives of millions of unborn babies, all depending upon the unpredictable success of a single political party, and at times a single political candidate.
Why this matters: The Republican Party and its nominees can lose for many reasons, mostly having nothing to do with the popularity of pro-life legislation. So when the GOP inevitably hits that bump in the road, those proverbial pro-life eggs go needlessly flying, smashing upon a rocky road of some other issue’s making.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the choice Alabama voters have between pro-life Roy Moore and radically pro-choice Doug Jones.
Because the pro-abortion rights lobby has such a lock on the left, the Alabama Democratic Party couldn’t even nominate a moderately pro-life candidate (nearly 60 percent of our voters believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center).
Instead, the Democrats put up someone who believes it should remain legal for a doctor to take an unborn child past the time it can feel pain (20 weeks), inject poison into her beating heart, rip her little arms and legs apart, and then toss her broken body into the garbage.
I’m sorry. I know many Democrats in Alabama and while I disagree with them on education and taxes and the size and role of government and dozens of other issues, I know for certain at least some of them don’t believe such an abhorrent act should remain legal.
In fact, it’s already a crime in all but name, and most of us agree on that.
But it doesn’t matter in this zero-sum electoral arrangement.
If the Republican nominee falters, as Moore has done, or fails, as he still may do, the anti-abortion movement goes down with him and that gruesome practice continues with our electoral consent even though a majority of Alabamians reject it, including a large number of Democrats.
This shouldn’t be the case, because agreement about defending unborn life should go well beyond partisanship, at least here in Alabama.
If the GOP’s candidate loses – and this will happen from time to time – the pro-life movement must still be capable of winning, even if only winning partially, even if only winning means not losing so badly.
If we want to end abortion in this country, we must do more than shore-up our base within the Republican Party. We must make advances. We must change minds. We must win elections. We must pass legislation. We must confirm anti-abortion judges.
And we cannot do that by relying on a single point of failure.
That’s why – for the sake of millions of unborn children – the anti-abortion movement must take back a sizable chunk of the Democrat Party.
(J. Pepper Bryars is the editor of Yellowhammer News and the author of “American Warfighter.”)
