By Elizabeth Scalia | patheos.com

Someone asked me, recently, what I thought the status is of the pro-life movement, and I said, “sort of stagnant.” Different polling shows different data (and as Sr. Mary Ann Walsh noted at the USCCB Media Blog, “it’s all in how you ask the questions”) but whether anything is really changing is anyone’s guess and tactics — on both sides — are awfully stale and predictable. When it is politically expedient for them to do so, the pro-abortion side hauls out its “war on women” narratives, replete with Pelosian “women bleeding to death on floors” rhetoric meant to make you put all thinking aside in order to feel, feel, and feel, which is cheap manipulation, of course.

But the pro-life side sometimes seems stuck and out of ideas as well. I recently unfriended someone on Facebook and when she asked me why, I told her, “every night my timeline gets cluttered up with your endless memes about abortion, and while I appreciate your passion, I’m already in the choir and don’t need to hear/see you full-blasting it. What purpose is all of that serving but your own sense of needing to “do something?” You only follow people you agree with, so what’s the point? You’re posting pro-life memes among pro-life people. Whose heart or mind are you changing?”

And yes, all of that meme-ing is its own sort of emotional manipulation.

Perhaps with some justice, she got mad at me, but over an email exchange this lady admitted that no, she wasn’t being terribly effective and yes, she felt helpless to do more and was out of ideas.

Well, there are actually lots of ways to work to end abortion. One way is to support women like Jeanette Meyer, who openly talks about her multiple abortions and how she was healed from suicidal torment and inspired to help other women, and like Katrina Fernandez, who was petrified to discuss her painful experiences but can testify to the power of prayer.

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