Abortion advocates--where did the women go?

The Wall Street Journal carried an interesting piece on the abortion issue. Something fascinating is going on when it comes to support for abortion among the young, especially among young women.

The article refers to a pro-life web site called LifeSiteNews.com. Surprisingly, the pro-life movement in America is growing in leaps and bounds, attracting young, zealous women to defend the unborn in droves

Even the president of the well-known, pro-choice organization NARAL has admitted as much. Nancy Keenan recently told Newsweek that she considers herself a member of the "postmenopausal militia"--a phrase that captures the situation of pro-abortion leaders who are aging across the board, including the leadership of Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women. Newsweek's Sarah Kliff notes that "these leaders will retire in a decade or so."

Keenan also was troubled by the enthusiastic and huge March for Life held in Washington, D.C. According to Newsweek, she is troubled that such passion has faded among the youth on her side of the movement.
"I just thought, my gosh, they are so young," Keenan said about stumbling on this year's March for Life in Washington. "There are so many of them, and they are so young."

The report on the pro-life web site cites a NARAL survey finding that, in LSN's words, "while 51 percent of pro-life voters under 30 considered abortion a 'very important' voting issue, only 26 percent of abortion supporters in the same demographic felt similarly."

What's going on to create this seismic shift in opinion on abortion? LSN, not surprisingly, attributes it to the moral power of the antiabortion cause. Newsweek and NARAL actually make some concessions to this point of view. Kate Michelman, who once headed NARAL, tells the magazine, for instance, that ultrasound technology "has clearly helped to define how people think about a fetus as a full, breathing human being."

The Wall Street Journal says there is another explanation. They refer to "The Roe Effect," which says pro-choice women have aborted their offspring, creating no future women who could echo their mothers' opinions.

Whatever the case, it's refreshing to hear of at least one societal marker that has become more traditional. If this can change, so can other troubling opinions that hold sway right now. This is no time to give up on our country.