Out in Greene County, Iowa

One man’s reflection on his pro-life stand, commemorating 35 years of Roe v. Wade

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER
January 22, 2008
COOPER, IOWA

On this 35th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, I find myself wondering again about just how we will eventually be called, or judged, on what has happened in this nation.

It is reported that there have been about 50 million abortions in the U.S. since the court decision in 1973. That’s about four times the number of people exterminated during the Holocaust in the run-up and duration of World War II.

Here in Iowa, we’re not sure of the 35-year toll. There was no mandatory reporting of abortion statistics in earlier years. There is now, though, and Iowa Department of Public Health statistics for recent years show there were 6,230 abortions in the state in 2002. There were 5,916 abortions in 2003. There were 6,022 abortions in 2004. Those are the most recent figure available.

Let’s talk more about Iowa. This is a state where we are begging for young people. We all know that a huge workforce shortage is looming, now that we Baby Boomers – the biggest generation Iowa ever produced – are moving into retirement. So, let's speculate that we’ve averaged 5,000 abortions per year in this state for 35 years. That is 175,000 people who have been eliminated.

The number is even heavier in many other states, although perhaps not if you compare the number of abortions to a state’s total population.

One of the things I wonder about is the Iowans and other Americans who right now are under 35 years old, and my own son is among them.

When will they start realizing and talking about what has happened to their two or three generations? Will they start expressing the outrage that I think is rightfully theirs? Do you think they might be angry about now being expected to take care of this huge generation of us who are their parents and grandparents?

Now, let me re-direct the questions to my generation.

How are we going to answer these questions, when they eventually come from our children and grandchildren: “What were people your age thinking?” “Did you try to do anything about all the abortions?” “Did you at least speak out about it?”

And their questions will likely get even tougher and more personal than that.

Of course it is uncomfortable thinking about all this. It damned well should be.

I guess my answers will begin with an explanation that I was 26 years old when Roe vs. Wade was decided. I was a strong believer in the women’s movement. I’d come of age during the sexual revolution of the late 1960s, when birth control pills and other methods of contraception suddenly became readily available to young women. Sex became too casual, although I thought that was just fine then. Women were freed from some of their worries about having sex, or so they thought, and we men were freed from some of our responsibility, or so we thought. Legalized abortion seemed just one more step in the same direction – at least it did then.

One pregnancy that I was responsible for began to change my mind. When I began to see and feel Andrew Offenburger developing in his mother’s womb, my hazy thought about life not really beginning until birth dissipated. It suddenly seemed undeniably clear to me that life begins at conception. That made it easy later to rationalize a vasectomy – which would leave little chance for conception by me.

Through most the 1980s, I was so busy dealing with fatherhood, divorce, dating and re-marriage that I don’t think I gave serious thought to the abortion question. I was still saying I was “pro-choice” because I thought I was in favor of the woman making the choice whether she would give birth or abort. The Des Moines Register, the newspaper I was writing for, staked out a solidly pro-choice editorial position. And a whole lot of my friends in the Des Moines area were advocates for Planned Parenthood, moreso perhaps for pregnancy planning and contraception than for the abortions Planned Parenthood also was making available. Perhaps. And Planned Parenthood’s annual big book sale in Des Moines, a fundraiser, was almost a society event, you know?

But then about five things happened in the late 1980s and early ’90s that forever changed my thinking:

-- As abortion numbers began being reported in the late 1980s in other states, it was shocking what we were hearing. I had no idea there would be so many abortions. There was no mandatory reporting in Iowa yet, but I certainly began wondering how many there must be right around me.

-- As public protests against abortion began happening in Iowa – and as my own Catholic Church began taking a stronger and more public stand against abortion – my own pro-life position began forming. My cousin Mike O’Brien, of Boone, a good Catholic and a good Democrat, talked to me at length on two or three occasions about why he was pro-life, and that helped my pro-life thinking take shape, although I still often heard myself saying I “am basically pro-choice.”

-- In 1990 and early 1991, I made two trips to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to cover the first Gulf War. Seeing the wasting of so many lives there began to convince me how precious life really is, or should be.

-- Carla Burt, who was about as hip, cool and progressive as a woman could be, came into my life. She was pro-life, even as a Democrat, and she didn’t hesitate to tell you why. I married her.

-- Then in 1994, Mother Teresa gave a blistering speech against abortion at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., with President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore and Gore’s wife Tipper all on the stage with this tiny saint from India. Congressional leaders filled the audience. I remember her even turning, at one point in her speech, and nodding toward the President and Vice-President, both of them pro-choice, to personalize her point.

Here was the key part of what Mother Teresa said that morning:

Our children depend on us for everything: their health, their nutrition, their security, their coming to know and love God. For all of this, they look to us with trust, hope and expectation. But often father and mother are so busy that they have no time for their children, or perhaps they are not even married, or have given up on their marriage. So the children go to the streets, and get involved in drugs, or other things.

We are talking of love of the child, which is where love and peace must begin.

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child – a direct killing of the innocent child – murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?

How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

And then here was Mother Teresa’s concluding thought, later in the speech:

If we remember that God loves us, and that we can love others as He loves us, then America can become a sign of peace for the world. From here, a sign of care for the weakest of the weak – the unborn child – must go out to the world. If you become a burning light of justice and peace in the world, then really you will be true to what the founders of this country stood for. God bless you!

Ever since that moment, I have never hesitated to tell someone I am pro-life. For a long time, I referred to myself as a “Teresan Democrat.” When people asked what that meant, I explained, “Whatever Mother Teresa is for, I’m for, and whatever Mother Teresa is against, I’m against.”

About that same time, a young woman whom I was close to – unmarried and pregnant – called to talk about her dilemma. She said that some, of course, were asking if she might abort. I don’t know when I’ve taken a stronger, quicker stand than in that moment. “Being pregnant with that baby is the best thing that has ever happened to you,” I told her. “You have that baby, and it’s going to change your life in about a hundred ways – all for the good.” She listened, she had the baby and things have worked out for her just like I hoped.

Then in the fall of 1998, I was a visiting professor of journalism at Loras College, a Catholic school in Dubuque.

That gave me the opportunity for two things – going to mass several times a week, which had an amazing and positive impact on my faith, and getting to know U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, of New Jersey.

I had met Bradley a couple of times in earlier years, hanging out at Loras. You’ll recall that he was an All-American and All-Pro basketball player before he was elected. Both of us were big fans of the annual National Catholic Basketball Tournament that Loras was hosting back then for small Catholic colleges from across the U.S.

Bradley, a good Democrat, was deciding in 1998 that he was going to run for president in 2000. I got to visit with him a couple of times at Loras, and as I read more about him, I began to think he might deep down be a pro-life Democrat. And if he was, then he was sure intelligent enough and eloquent enough to be able to state and defend his position in a compelling way.

I contacted Bradley and asked if would consider a highly unusual offer. I told him I wanted him to read letters from four of us about why he should take a pro-life position in his campaign. The four were Msgr. Francis Friedl, a retired president of Loras whom Bradley really respected; my cousin Mike O’Brien, who by then was a Democrat serving in the Iowa House of Representatives; Douglas T. Bates III, my best friend from our college years and an attorney and Methodist in Tennessee, and me. He’d already met all of us.

Bradley said he would appreciate the letters from us, and that he would indeed consider our thinking. We produced eight or 10 pages of our best explanations and defenses of the pro-life position, including why we thought he might find political traction in the position, and sent them to the senator. About two weeks later, he wrote back to us, thanking us for making reasoned arguments, but that he would stand firm in his pro-choice position.

We had tried.

Soon after that, I changed my party registration to Republican – although I at first was referring to myself as a “FUD” (Fed Up Democrat). In 1999, I did extensive volunteer work for the presidential campaign of Lamar Alexander, the two-time former Republican governor of Tennessee whom I really admire. Alexander, like me a Vanderbilt graduate, is pro-life. His presidential bid didn’t go far, but he is now a highly-respected member of the U.S. Senate from Tennessee.

Since then, I’ve been ever firmer in my own pro-life position, from womb-to-tomb, as we say.

I’m apparently a little unusual among my fellow Republicans because I am also strongly against the death penalty.

Because I’m pro-life, I’m also pro-soldier but basically anti-war. I always remember what the smartest soldier I ever knew told me. He’s retired Air Force General Chuck Horner, a native Iowan who was in command of the air war in the Persian Gulf in 1991. “When war breaks out, what it really represents is failure,” Horner told me, “a failure of diplomacy.”

I’m not a one-issue voter, but I am clear in my own mind what the most important issue is – protection for the unborn. I’ve advocated for it with political candidates. I’ve challenged candidates who are pro-choice. Ditto with friends and family, when they ask.

Yes, I am for expanded family planning and contraception programs.

And, yes, I am in favor of serious criminal penalties for any pregnant woman and impregnating man who are involved in an abortion, as well as for medical personnel who would assist.

All of the above are the answers I’ll be giving my kids and grandkids when, in coming years, they come to ask what I was thinking, what I did about it and whether I spoke out.

But hopefully we’ll eventually be celebrating the anniversary of the decision to end abortion in America, rather than each January having to commemorate the awful anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Many of you do not agree, I know. I’m praying for you. And I’ll appreciate you praying for me, too.


You can reach the columnist by e-mail at chuck@Offenburger.com.