Pro-life pivot

Abortion Past: The untold story of how movement shifted focus, changed its image, and saved lives | Marvin Olasky

© Bettmann/Corbis

Twenty years ago the pro-life movement was in bad shape. Frustration had grown as eight years of the Reagan administration had not led to Roe v. Wade's reversal or reduced the annual toll in dead children. With legislative and judicial approaches bogged down, some pro-lifers blocked entrances to abortion businesses as part of Operation Rescue. Others thrust bloody photos of dead unborn babies in front of passersby.

Those efforts were earnest but, in the eyes of sympathetic observers like Tony Snow—he later served as Bush press secretary until cancer claimed him in 2008—they were also counterproductive. In 1989 Snow argued that pro-lifers were relying on "clichés that appeal to people who already agree with them. 'Abortion is murder,' they say. . . . Then they startle innocent shoppers or passers-by with graphic pictures of dead, red, dripping fetuses. This is no way to win political support."