Spy in the House of "Life"
               By Eleanor J. Bader

I am literally shaking as I head to the registration table at the
National Right to Life Committee (NRTLC) conference in Nashville in
late June. I'm sure that they'll know I'm an imposter, that my Brooklyn
accent and Jewish face will betray me. But no one says a word. Instead,
a smiling woman hands me a packet and urges me to browse in the literature
area before the opening plenary begins.

I enter a huge room filled with tables. Pictures of fetal development
are lined up alongside plastic models of "babies in utero." T-shirts,
buttons, posters and bumper stickers cover other tables: "As the family
goes, so goes the nation," "Save the baby whales, kill the baby humans.
America, what have we come to?" and "Behold, children are a heritage from
the Lord, the Fruit of the Womb is His reward." Black Americans for Life
display their literature; the Diocese of Nashville hands out "chastity
packets" that include "chastity pledge cards."

After a few minutes in the exhibit hall, someone comes in and announces
that the opening session is about to kick off. Looking around, I am
surprised that at least half of the 500 delegates attending the conference
are over 50. The speakers seem prepared for this, know that this audience
agrees that aging is not for the weak or timid. Applause erupts--should
I join in?--when a speaker confirms their reality: accessing affordable,
respectful medical care is an uphill battle in America, and it is getting
worse.

While still calling itself a single-issue organization, the NRTLC--one
of this country's better known anti-abortion groups--has broadened its
scope significantly since its founding 22 years ago. "Through education,
outreach, citizen action, and legislation, National Right to Life works
to return and maintain legal protection for all defenseless human beings,"
says its program guide. "It seeks to protect the unborn child from abortion,
the handicapped newborn from infanticide, and the disabled and elderly
from euthanasia."

Conference attendees were exhorted, by scare tactics and doomsday
rhetoric, to fight America's descent into "the Culture of Death." Workshops
on the "slippery slope" triumverate--abortion, euthanasia, and inadequate
medical care--were supplemented over the three-day conference by 54 other
workshops on related topics, including recruiting pro-life candidates and
China's one-child policy. A simultaneous teen conference included a
college-track series and offered sessions on starting campus/high school
groups, combating the "liberal campus" mentality and "Post-Abortion
Syndrome."

Dr. Vincent Rue, co-director of the Center for Pregnancy Loss in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, whipped up the audience in a workshop on the
latter subject: "Abortion is an organ transplant. The baby is evacuated
from the uterus and implanted, post-evacuation, on the brain. That's
Post-Abortion Syndrome: baby on the brain; a woman's traumatic relationship
to her lost child."

"Post-Abortion Syndrome" is right-to-life America's litigation linchpin;
it is also, said Andrej Winkler, the centerpiece of Poland's anti-abortion
movement. A psychologist from Rybnik, Winkler has been instrumental in
setting up "group therapy programs for survivors of abortion." Poland,
the first country to revoke liberal abortion laws, last year allowed only
800 abortions--all for survivors of rape, incest and in cases of fetal
deformity--down from 300,000 several years ago. Doubts about the concept
of terminating unwanted pregnancies have begun to seep into the public's
consciousness, creating a ready market for post-abortion "survivors"
groups. In Poland "almost everyone comes from a family where the women
have had abortions," said Winkler. "When you contribute to someone's death
you have to resolve some very painful issues. You must deal with how deeply
you have been damaged."

Forty therapy groups are currently active in Poland. Winkler, in
collaboration with International Right to Life President Jack Willke, is
currently attempting to set up similar groups in the former Soviet Union.

In another workshop, Buddy Lingle, a professor of pharmacology at the
University of South Carolina, told the assembled delegates in the opening
plenary that "We are now like Germany in the '20s and '30s, with the
barriers to killing coming down. The Nazis started with the idea that
there was such a thing as a life not worth being lived."

"Physicians used to believe that death was the enemy," said Carolyn
Gerster, an Arizona cardiologist and former NRTLC president. "Now death
is a colleague who walks down the hospital corridor." Lambasting both
managed care and assisted suicide, Gerster horrified her audience with
stories of frail, elderly patients being denied food and water because
their care was deemed too costly. "We have an aging population in America.
The life expectancy for men is 72; for women it is 78. Alzheimer's affects
one person in 60 by age 65, one in four by age 85," she said. "When I was
studying medicine, I never heard that we would kill what we could not
cure. The Hippocratic Oath, which I took on my knees, promised that I
would abstain from all that is injurious to human life. I never dreamed,
at that time, that a doctor would become an executioner."

Attorney Burke Balch, NRTLC's Medical Ethics Director, hit home with
a presentation on what he calls "involuntary euthanasia, the rationing of
health care." Like other speakers at the confab, Balch honed in on the
audience's feeling of vulnerability. "Remember, when you put a dollar sign
on human life, the price goes down," he said. "Seventy percent of the
money spent on Medicaid goes to people who are elderly or disabled. If we
impose rationing on Medicare and Medicaid, it will be a threat to the
members of your family. With managed care, make no mistake about it, there
is more management than there is care. Decisions are made on a cost/benefit
basis. This puts a dollar value on human life."

Balch's solution--sketchy at best--is to offer every American a "voucher
with a minimal [and unspecified] amount of money for healthcare." Under
his plan, "each person could use his or her own money to purchase extra,
unrationed care." What about people without money to add? Balch offers a
time-worn strategy: "private sector subsidies."

Predictably, the NRTLC delegates, and the teens who attended Teens for
Life, were mostly white Christians. However, a small group of Black
Americans for Life ran a workshop, and the NRTLC seems to be attempting
to shed its Catholic skin. Many workshops and plenaries were led by
Protestants and Jews, and both Protestant services and Catholic masses
were offered. The conference packet featured a full-page tribute to Dr.
Chaim Gordon, a South African-born Jewish geneticist at the Mayo Clinic
who died in February.

Less predictably, some delegates wore Feminists for Life T-shirts while
others sported Phil Gramm for President buttons. (However, an American
Families for Gramm reception attracted only a handful of people; no other
presidential contender was visible.) Likewise, some right-to-lifers believe
contraception to be evil; others boost family planning as an antidote to
abortion. Nonetheless, the fragile coalition that is the NRTLC holds
together, seemingly content to focus on commonalities rather than differences.

Some heavy rhetoric goads them on.

"We are all threatened by a lack of respect for human life," said Bruce
Weaver, Tennessee Right to Life president. "Roe v. Wade was a death knell
for babies, but its effect has spread out to all of us. When we take away
the right to life of one group of people, it always spreads."

"What is at stake is Western civilization's commitment to human life,"
said Dr. Richard Land of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern
Baptist Convention. "We are the last line of defense against the forboding
specter of the Culture of Death. It is already invading the ICU [intensive
care unit] and the nursing home. It is the transcendent moral issue of
our time."

Throughout the three days, I am by turns horrified (this is a world of
chastity pledges, rigidly heterosexist definitions of male and female,
and 1950s stereotypes about family and fidelity), enraged (how dare they
liken pro-choice and pro-assisted suicide advocates to Nazis!), impressed
(most of the speakers seem reasonable and dedicated; these are not the
clinic bombers, these are the folks who lobby, monitor legislation and
pray for what they want), scared (the grain of truth in their rhetoric is
unsettling: many in society do treat the poor, the disabled and the elderly
with indifference and contempt) and surprised by occasional glimpses of
common ground (they at least give lip service to economic rights and
justice, and their critique of managed care is right on the money). All
told, it is an unsettling, albeit fascinating glimpse into a world of
clear demarcations between right and wrong and good and evil.

I leave the NRTLC conference more ambivalent than I ever imagined
possible.  I am still pro-choice and still support doctor-assisted suicide.
But I realize that the NRTLC's footsoldiers are not caricatures; they do
not wear polyester and they are not crazed fetus worshippers.  Indeed, I
find that I am as scared leaving as I was entering the Sheraton three days
earlier. This time, however, my fear is based not on detection, but on
the realization that both sides are in this battle for the long haul.

______________________________________________________________________

Chastity's Champion

"Chastity educator" Molly Kelly's rap to high school boys goes something
like this: "Somewhere out there is your future wife. And guess what? She's
dating someone else. What do you want to say to him--'That's my future
wife, try her out?' I don't think so."

Homespun, direct, charismatic, brash and funny, Molly Kelly is among
the most beloved leaders of the anti-choice movement. A mother of
eight--and a grandmother, too--this 50-something Philadelphian writes
hip-hop verse and goes into urban, rural and suburban middle and high
schools with her message: "Sex is the common denominator of pregnancy,
abortion, sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS," she told the NRTLC
delegates.  "But chastity is contagious. It's the solution. If people
catch it they can be free of worry about these things."

By her own estimate, Kelly speaks to 100,000 young adults a year, 70
percent of them in the public schools. "I believe that young people today
are capable of practicing chastity and sexual control, what I call Saved
Sex," she says. "Kids come into an assembly hall prepared to hate my talk.
In coed schools, the boys usually sit up front, with their arms across
their chests, sort of like OK, lady, go ahead.' You can see by their faces,
the surprise: Oh, she's old. She probably doesn't do it any more.' Then
they hear me out and see that I am challenging them to the moral high
ground. They're not used to that. I affirm the virgins by what I say. And
for the kids who have already been sexually active, I invite them back.
Some know that sex is not all it's cracked up to be, that you need fidelity
and love. I remind them that sexuality, lived as God wants us to live it,
is a gift."

Kelly urges the kids she addresses to take one of a number of pledges.
"From this day forward I will be sexually pure, practicing the virtue of
chastity. And I will remain a virgin until the day I enter the sacrament
of marriage," reads one. Another makes a "commitment to God, myself, my
family, and those I date to... always live a chaste life, as a single
person or within a covenant marriage relationship." According to Kelly,
a marriage is chaste if it is monogamous.

Kelly's message rarely deviates from the promotion of chastity;
nonetheless, she is quick to denounce abortion. "It's not a loving, caring
answer," she thunders. "Abortion is a cry for help that is harmful to the
mother. Abortion is murder." Such straight talk is compelling and gets
her invited to schools across the globe. She names body parts, acknowledges
arousal and desire and clearly advocates chastity over celibacy.  ("Celibacy
is a religious vow. First, you must fall head over heels in love with
Jesus Christ. Celibacy is your gift to God. It's not for everybody.") Her
work has garnered her The Papal Cross and three honorary doctorates. What's
more, her outspokenness has led to her appointment to the grant review
board of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Philadelphia
public school sex education advisory board.

Kelly thrives on controversy, and loves the thrill of both debate and
battle. "Jesus offended some people," she says. "Hey, that's not what I'm
going for, but if you live as a Christian you're going to offend someone.
Really, if you're gonna be a Christian, you'd better look good on wood."

--E.J.B.
______________________________________________________________________
Eleanor J. Bader is a freelance writer and teacher from New York City.
She has been involved in the reproductive rights movement since 1980.  A
pro-choice nightmare: She was from Brooklyn, she was Jewish, she was alone
with the Right-to-Life Committee in Nashville.
.