Stay On Target

by Peg Luksik

In Star Wars I, the rebel alliance had one goal -Destroy a death star.

To do so, they had to hit a small target in the reactor core. Every alliance decision and action was based on achievement of that goal. Finally, the pilots battle their way toward the target, and one pilot swoops in to launch his torpedoes, mid the chaos of all out ship-to-ship combat. His computer keeps repeating, "Stay on target, stay on target," to focus him on his only real goal - Destroy the death star.

The pro-life movement has one goal - Protect each innocent human life from conception until natural death. To do so, we need to pass legislation. All our decisions and actions must be based on how well they help us achieve this goal.

Politically, we interact with parties and candidates. They, too, have a goal - Get elected /stay in office. They, too, make decisions and take actions based on their goal.

The pro-life movement sees election victories as one step toward our goal of getting legislation passed. Politicians see election victories as goal achievement.

Our definitions of success are different so our decisions and actions should be different as well.

A politician views special interest groups as tools he can use to get elected. He tries to get each group to "buy into" his party or candidacy by convincing them that they can best achieve success by joining him. He needs many groups to achieve his goal, so he wants to move everyone away from their "extremes" so one group's agenda will not offend folks from another group. He is looking for a broad and shallow set of legislative promises he has to keep. He must get the groups to simultaneously lower their legislative expectations and raise their electoral efforts. To do this, he gets each group to re-define their goal as his electoral victory.

From our point of view, politicians are tools we can use to get legislation passed.

Our job is to get each politician to "buy into" our goal by convincing him of either its correctness or its popularity.

We need many politicians to achieve our goal. We want to move each one away from what we call the "mushy middle" ground. We need a deep and narrow set of legislative promises. We must get the politicians to simultaneously lower their electoral support expectations and raise their legislative efforts. To do this, we need each politician to re-define his goal as our legislative victory.

The two sides act like a see-saw, with each trying to achieve as much of their own goal as possible. When they are balanced, they can exert a positive and productive force on government. Working as a group, we can help parties and candidates get elected and then hold them accountable for their actions as elected officials.

But sometimes the balance shifts, and one side loses sight of its target and gets lost in the goals of the other, becoming nothing more than a political pawn.

Usually, we're the losing side. We get lost in the politician's goal and begin to define our success as electoral victory of a candidate or party instead of the passage of pro-life legislation. When that happens, the babies lose, too.

For over 32 years, we've been electing pro-life politicians at every level of government. Yet, we have regressed from debating the language of a constitutional Human Life Amendment to arguing over legislation regulating the conditions under which our precious unborn brothers and sisters can be aborted. We have retreated from insisting that our candidates publicly proclaim their belief in the sanctity of human life to allowing politicians to quietly assure us of their support without even mentioning our issues in their campaign materials. We have shifted from requiring the candidates we back to support only pro-life candidates to excusing the actions of "pro-life" office holders who openly embrace abortion advocates in the name of party loyalty.

The politicians are not being evil - they are working to achieve their goal of getting elected and staying in office. Their goal has never been legislative action. The fault is ours. We need to understand that the electoral victory of any party or candidate is NOT success for us. It may be a step toward success, but only if it results in the passage of the legislation that will protect every innocent human life.

We should be asking the following questions when we approach electoral politics. Does it matter which party is in power if no significant pro-life legislation is advanced? Does it matter which candidate wins if none of them even mention publicly the sanctity of life as an issue they will fight for? If a candidate is unwilling to take a stand for Life now, will he do so once elected? Does it matter who is in office if both the pro-abortion and the pro-life politician will embrace abortion advocates during the next election cycle? If the answer question to each is, "No!" then we need to change.

Politicians who seek our support need to be accountable to our standards, not dictate what our standards should be. If we do so, we will probably endorse fewer candidates and therefore experience more electoral "losses" as we watch lukewarm politicians who had been winning with pro-life support lose without it. At first...

But remember that for the politicians, electoral loss IS defeat. To reach their goal, they need us. So they will begin to reach our new, higher standard to regain the support they need.

It's time for us to re-balance the see-saw, and restore the pro-life movement to a positive force. It's time for us to re-focus.

And this time we must stay on target.

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