Mainline Denominations Among Endorsers of Sunday's Pro-Abortion March

by Jody Brown and Bill Fancher
April 23, 2004

(AgapePress) - Sunday's pro-abortion "March for Women's Lives" may not generate the huge crowds its organizers and the mainstream media are predicting. Several pro-life groups are saying that's because support for abortion is on the decline. Perhaps someone should share that information with several mainline denominations who are aligned with the abortion-rights movement.

What do the American Civil Liberties Union, the Episcopal Church USA, Planned Parenthood of America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the National Organization for Women, and the United Methodist Board of Church and Society all have in common? Answer: Each is either an organizer or an endorser of Sunday's pro-abortion rights "March for Women's Lives" in Washington, DC.

Diane Knippers of the Institute on Religion and Democracy calls it a "scandal" that officials of mainline churches like ECUSA, PC(USA), and the United Methodist Church have allowed their denominations' names to be attached to a march that supports "government-funded abortion on demand, with no restrictions, including partial-birth abortion."

Knippers contends it is the denominational leaders -- not the people in the pews -- who are guilty of aligning those denominations with what she describes as a "dubious cause."

She says "a majority of church members, even many who call themselves pro-choice, would be disgusted" if they knew that their denominations have joined with the "aggressively secular organizations" who are organizing Sunday's march for abortion rights.

"The representatives of these declining denominations, when they endorse this pro-abortion rights march, are not earning the respect of the world or of fellow Christians," the IRD president says. "Instead, they are showing themselves to be largely irrelevant."

Knippers says the role of the church when it comes to abortion is to offer godly counsel and ministry to those women who are in a crisis pregnancy. But in this case, she says, "religious elites" have opted to assume the arguments put forth by a secular culture.

"[They are] focusing on modern concepts of autonomous individualism, rights without responsibilities, and sexual freedom rather than on timeless virtues of compassion and accountability," she says.

Tony Perkins

An Open Invitation
The organizers of the march claim there will be hundreds of thousands of marchers taking part what they say will be a high-water mark for the pro-abortion movement. But apparently they are concerned that their predictions may be in jeopardy, and are attempting to shore up their ranks. As Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council puts it, "every sordid liberal group in America has been extended an invitation because support for abortion is dropping."

Perkins says socialists, homosexual activists, anti-war protesters and "any other group that opposes President Bush" will be there on Sunday. "And the media will portray them as pro-abortion, instead of what they really are -- anti-Bush," he adds.

Dr. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America echoes Perkins, saying just days before the march, organizers are making excuses for a lower than project turnout. She notes that abortion advocate Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, claimed recently that the younger generation of women do not believe they are going to lose their right to choose.

"Michelman just doesn't understand today's young women," Crouse says. "Opposition isn't apathy, Kate. The majority of women today support life and the right to live."

That's a fact, says Perkins. "Indeed, this generation is decidedly more pro-life," he states. "[S]upport for abortion is dropping."

And Katie Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, one of the many pro-life groups planning a counter-demonstration for Sunday, points out that in addition to anti-war and anti-Bush protesters, the IMF-World Bank protesters already in the nation's capital have also been extended an invitation. That says volumes about the pro-abortion effort, Mahoney says.

"They say that it's a 'March for Women's Lives' and yet ... they're opening it up to other protests that have absolutely nothing to do with women's lives," she says. "I think it's just a ploy to try to get a larger crowd."

Like Perkins and Crouse, Mahoney maintains that the abortion movement and the abortion industry are losing support. "That's why they're having this march," she explains, "because ... among the youth and among the post-Roe v. Wade generation [are] men and women who realize abortion has not done anything good for our generation -- it's actually causing a lot of problems, emotionally and physically, in women."

Organizers had stated that 1,400 groups would take part in the march. The most participants the march has had in the past has been between 2,000 and 5,000. The route for Sunday's march was not made public until today (Friday) in an effort to keep pro-lifers away.