Recently, I had the honor of speaking at the Right to Life of Northeast Ohio’s (rtlofneo.com) annual banquet.
One of the main points in my talk was that the pro-life movement has primarily been in a defensive posture over the past 50 years.
True, you could argue that there are many pro-life advocates who are on offense, working tirelessly to change laws and change the culture.
But what are those advocates advocating for?
Typically, it’s for some kind of change in the law that restricts Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry from doing more abortions, defending preborn babies from dying at the hands of an abortionist, or defending women from the supply of the abortion pill.
To put it in sports terms, team pro-life is trying to keep team pro-abortion from scoring more points.
That’s defense.
And of course, defense is a critical component of winning the game.
But if you don’t have an offense that produces a lot of points for your team, your defense-heavy strategy will likely just maintain a status quo score against your opponent, at best.
And I would argue that is exactly what you see when you go into almost any U.S. city and compare how many abortion-seeking women end up going through with an abortion versus how many end up choosing life because they engaged with a pro-life person or organization.
I have been working full-time in pro-life for almost 10 years, and in that time, the data I see still tells the same story year after year: for all abortion-seeking women in any city, the abortion industry successfully persuades on average about 9 out of 10 of those women to go through with getting an abortion.
Please let that sink in because that ratio is likely the case in your city as well.
There is one city I know of that is an exception to this ratio: St. Louis, Missouri.
What did they do differently?
The pro-life community in St. Louis put together a complete game plan, adding a highly effective offensive strategy to an already vibrant defensive strategy.
You’ve got to have both to win the game!
What was the new strategy for offense?
It was put into play in 2013 by a life-affirming women’s healthcare clinic called ThriVe Express Women’s Healthcare.
The strategy had never been attempted before in any other city, and had three primary components:
1) Continuously Improve ThriVe’s Life-Empowering Medical Services for Women
2) Create a ThriVe Brand Image that Resonates Deeply with Women
3) Invest Massively in Advertising and Promotion of ThriVe’s Services
After implementing a complete game plan of both productive offense and defense, here’s a graphic representation of what the pro-life community achieved against Planned Parenthood in St. Louis.
So we now know the blueprint for both offense and defense effectively working together to beat Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry in any city.
We have the game plan for victory!
The only question is how the pro-life community in any city can come together to implement the plan.
More on that in future articles.
Brett
This article was published in Heroic Media‘s weekly newsletter