Anti-abortion message comes out stronger than fringe Democrats

Freedom New Mexico

Regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion rights, one thing became perfectly clear in Denver last week: The election of Barack Obama stands to energize anti-abortion activists more than anything since Roe v. Wade, the 1972 Supreme Court decision that forced all states to legalize abortion.

Activists throughout Denver characterized Obama as the most pro-choice member of the Senate, because he voted against a bill that would require medical treatment for babies that survive late-term abortions. Hillary Clinton voted for the bill.

Far left activists who promised convention mayhem mostly made fools of themselves. They had no coherent message and couldn’t even seem to organize chants and clever signs. When riot cops stared them down with rifles at the ready and “bring it on” body language, most of their gatherings had less energy than the average cemetery internment.

Not so, regarding pro-life activists. They were seemingly everywhere in Denver during the convention and for days leading up to it. Priests were arrested for staying put when police ordered them not to sit on the ground obstructing entry to the Denver Convention Center. Two teenagers from California were arrested for writing anti-abortion messages with chalk on the sidewalk outside the hotel where Barack Obama stayed. The formidable passion and conviction of the pro-life crowd was obvious.

An alliance of the Archdiocese of Denver’s Black Catholic Ministry Office and the Denver Ministerial Alliance, an organization of black Protestant ministers, teamed up to throw a rally at Denver’s Martin Luther King Jr., Park. An estimated 5,000 people attended, dwarfing any other convention-related protest. MLK park is a half-block from Denver’s newest Planned Parenthood Clinic, the largest abortion facility in the country at 52,000 square feet.

A featured speaker at the event was Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece. She spent much of her life in her uncle’s home before he died; her babysitter was Aunt Loretta Scott King.

Other speakers were former U.N. Ambassador Alan Keyes, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput and the Rev. Willard Johnson, pastor of Macedonia Baptist, a black church not far from the new Planned Parenthood building. They were joined by the founder of http://www.BlackGenocide.org, a Web site that insists Planned Parenthood carries out the agenda of its founder, eugenicist Margaret Sangar.

All speakers opined that Planned Parenthood is promoting disproportionate abortion rates among black Americans by building in predominantly black neighborhoods throughout the country. King insists her uncle would fight abortion if he lived today, and she declared abortion as the new civil rights issue of the era.

And then there was the matter of that giant message that showed up on North Table Mountain near Golden, Colo. Dozens of volunteers worked around the clock for a month, in three shifts, to sew together thousands of sheets that anti-abortion activists snuck onto the Mountain.

They designed a 530-foot-tall message with the sheets that said “Destroys uNborn Children,” with the words stacked and the capital letters “DNC” highlighted in yellow. The mountain message could be seen for 30 miles, and was readable nearly 10 miles away. It showed up on television and in major newspapers around the world.

Regardless of where people stand on the issue of a woman’s right to choose, the challenge to abortion rights is no longer an obsession of white members of the religious right. In the context of street theater, pro-life activists stole the show in Denver. All other activist messages combined couldn’t compete. Many of the pro-life activists were black, and their issue with abortion wasn’t religion as much as it was race. Alveda King insists the message is catching on.

If she’s correct, abortion will become a more complicated and sensitive issue for Democrats than ever before — mixed-race president or not.