Strategic battles

Roe v. Wade | An Ohio debate highlights the three-way split in the pro-life movement about how to move forward | Susan Olasky

Associated Press photo by Jay Laprete

The pro-life movement won many victories in 2011 but also had disappointments. A high-profile Personhood amendment lost in Mississippi. Heartbeat legislation stalled in Ohio and split the pro-life movement there.

Those wins and losses demonstrated strategic differences among pro-life advocates. Some propose legislation to protect all unborn children with a heartbeat, detectable normally at six or seven weeks. Others work within existing Roe v. Wade allowances and fight legislatively for parental consent, mandatory ultrasound use, and other incremental measures. A third faction only supports measures that declare human beings to be constitutionally protected persons starting at conception.

The three groupings are particularly evident in Ohio, a presidential swing state. There the pro-life movement is fractured, with local Right to Life chapters, including the original one in Cincinnati, leaving Ohio Right To Life over its failure to support Heartbeat legislation.