Congratulations to pro-lifers in Keene, New Hampshire, who showed up at a campaign event for a pro-abortion candidate for governor and pressed him to answer questions about why he thinks it’s all right to kill unborn babies and to use public money to do it.
The protest was civil and respectful, according to the description in the Keene Sentinel, but pointed. The candidate, Steve Marchand, a Democrat and a former mayor of Portsmouth, isn’t just in favor of abortion, he’s making it a centerpiece of his campaign. He wants a state statute codifying legal abortion and state Medicaid funds to pay for abortions, and he is trying to use his support for abortion as a wedge issue in the Democratic primary.
All are good reasons why he should be asked at campaign stops the question pro-life protester Reverend David Berman, an evangelical Protestant pastor, asked him:
“Forget the politics. I know you can’t because you’re running for office. But as a person – as a human being – how can you think it’s O.K. to murder a child in the womb?”
How indeed.
Protests aren’t easy. Confrontation isn’t comfortable. And it can be hard to do it right – maintaining decorum and respect while still getting your point across. (As we have seen, many leftists don’t even bother with decency, let alone decorum.)
But they are worthwhile.
The late columnist Robert Novak once described accompanying George H.W. Bush on the campaign trail in New Hampshire in the summer of 1979.
“Everywhere Bush went in those two days, he was followed by prolife demonstrators, quiet middle-aged women who let their placards do the talking,” Novak wrote in his 2007 autobiography The Prince of Darkness.
Bush, who at the time supported legal abortion, was troubled not by the issue, but by the resistance:
“He said, almost to himself, ‘How am I going to get rid of these people? Are these people going to follow me around all year?’ I said, ‘I bet they do, George.’ And when he responded, ‘How do I get rid of them?’ I told him, ‘Change your position.’ He did.”
