From Reforming Our Movement, Reforming Our Culture: Part II:

• Abortion Statistics: widespread acceptance and wounds
• Public Opinion polls: while most Canadians support some restrictions on abortion, very few Canadians are opposed to all abortions – most are in the mushy middle
• Fence-sitters: the mushy middle, the apathetic, the silent, those who fear controversy or “prefer a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice”¹⁾
• The Pro-Abortion Movement:
  • Effective at framing the issue as a matter of choice and a woman's right, e.g. hundreds of people who RSVP to a Students for Choice demonstration at U of T, support it by default
  • Bubble zones, vandalism, disrupting events, censorship, club status, etc.
  • institutional support: governments, unions, medical bodies, corporations, etc.
  • Funding: even Morgentaler brought in an estimate $11 million one year, or Warren Buffet donated $21 million to pro-abortion groups another year; most pro-lifers are unpaid volunteers

Three approaches:

1. Pastoral (Service): providing aid to women and families in crisis;
2. Political: changing the law;
3. Prophetic (Education): educating the public.

All three approaches are necessary, but the success of the first two depends on the success of the third. If public opinion doesn't change, people won't take advantage of crisis pregnancy services and the law won't change.²⁾

Imagine there is a building on fire with people trapped inside. The most obvious need is for firefighters to put out the fire and rescue those in harm's way. But when their job ends, many other jobs are just beginning: paramedics need to provide on scene care; physicians need to diagnose and treat the wounded; nurses need to implement the required care; law enforcement officers need to investigate the origins of the fire and respond to any foul play; parents and educators need to teach children the dangers of playing with fire. All approaches are necessary and no one would criticize firefighters, for example, for not being physicians.

Is any one of these approaches more central than the others? When there's a building on fire, on which approach do all others depend?

The success of one approach very much depends on the success of another: if firefighters do not rescue people, the medical care at a hospital’s burn unit will go unused – no matter how impressive it is.

There is a need for various roles, but they cannot succeed in isolation, and some approaches depend on the success of others.

• Critical, life-saving work here, but there's an important question: how many clients seriously consider abortion?
• In 2002, Focus on the Family’s newsletter HeartLink reported that “less than 10 percent of the clients darkening the doors of pregnancy care centers [across the United States] were abortion-minded.”³⁾
• “Most abortion-minded women do not choose the help of PCCs because the PCCs will help women through the pregnancies but abortion clinics will help them out of the pregnancies. PCCs are willing to provide whatever a woman needs (e.g., housing, baby supplies, moral support). The abortion clinic offers her what she wants. […] The pro-life movement is offering an alternative that in many women's minds does not even compete with what the abortion clinic offers by way of short-term solutions. ” ⁴⁾
• “Offering help, while necessary, is not sufficient in ending abortion. […] pastoral approach needs the prophetic approach to change peoples' minds on abortion”⁵⁾
• Gregg Cunningham: ““The simple fact of the matter is that women who are not more horrified by abortion than they are terrified of the burdens of the pregnancy will kill their babies almost every time.”

• Canadian pro-lifers have lost court cases, elections, and legislative initiatives dealing with abortion on all governmental levels over the past half century, without any significant major victories
• Public opinion needs to change before public policy can be changed
• More effective political action is needed
  • incrementalism
  • reversing direction: illegal > regulated > unregulated > regulated > illegal (WNAL Direction Matters)
  • broad political coalitions, less idea bundling
  • e.g. compare Right Now and WNAL to CLC and AFLO
• Could do a whole critical analysis of the political problems, e.g. epic 1 million signatures with no names saved for database, but that'd be another seminar
  • Instead, take a look at what WNAL or Right Now are doing, and what they're doing differently than Campaign Life

Within the specific task of firefighting, there are different ways to put out a fire. Some methods (firehoses) are more effective than others (ice cream buckets). In the same way, while it is important to respond to abortion from a number of ways (pastoral, political, prophetic), within each approach, there are more effective and less effective activities. Prophetic activists, just like firefighters, must choose ethical methods that will save the most lives.

The goal is not to just “do something, do anything.” The goal is to end abortion, and time, effort and money spent on less effective activities takes away from more effective activities.

1. Target Audience: Who is our target audience and are we reaching them with our method?
   • low turnout events, like event lectures or conferences
   • preaching to the choir
   • Is the goal to reach fence sitters?
   • Or to facilitate networking amongst and motivate pro-lifers?
   • Could conferences or meetings or lectures that still do serve a purpose of equipping and energizing pro-lifers be a springboard to more visible action to reach fence sitters and the general public?
2. Providing Clear Reasons and Compelling Evidence: Are we providing clear reasons for our claims so that the unconvinced will be converted?
   • Demonstrations and protests
     • Large gatherings often don't show evidence for why a group is gathered or why they oppose abortion: e.g. Life Chain, March for Life, walks, hikes, processions. colourful balloons, signs with slogans, stickers, etc.
     • Even Life Chain, which clearly states why pro-lifers oppose abortion (“Abortion kills children”), does not give reasons for how pro-lifers have come to that conclusion
     • There's a key difference between the anti-abortion movement and other social reform movements that held/hold large marches or gatherings: the victims of abortion do not participate and are not visible in these protests
       • “By their presence and attitude of peace and respect, they conveyed to the public that they were human like everyone else. Often they were victimized during their marches and images of this further injustice, communicated via the media, turned the public against the injustice.”
       • We need to go out of our way to convey who they're standing for and what they're standing against
     • photos of born babies: not the victims, not being denied their humanity, the average person isn't disputing their cuteness – showed a cute newborn doesn't change anyone's mind on the humanity of an embryo
     • We should:
       • train participants to defend the pro-life view
       • equip participants with compelling resources (e.g., evidence-based, visual signs) and then take the message to the public
   • Media
     • An ad: The ad shows a split screen where two seeds are planted. On one side the seed is dug up, and thus destroyed; on the other side the seed grows into a flower, with pictures of babies and children and the simple words, “Choose life” at the end.
       • Pro-life leader said: this “show the truth about abortion”
       • Removing a seed from soil doesn’t even come close to conveying abortion’s destructiveness. […] If we were trying to convey to an indifferent public that butchering Tutsis in Rwanda was wrong, would we show pictures of smiling Tutsis on one side of a screen while on the other a seed was removed from soil? Or what if we lived during the time of the Holocaust? If we wanted to show the truth about the Holocaust would we show people a seed removed from soil or a Jew killed by Nazis?
3. Idea Bundling: If we are blending a number of moral issues in our campaign, is that helping or hindering our ability to win converts?
   • e.g. Life Chain's 2006 press release, despite the purpose of the event being to end abortion, says: “Today our culture is sinking beneath abortion’s bond with aggressive homosexual demands, with unabated pornography and sexual addiction, with illegitimacy now producing one-third of U.S. births, with STDs at epidemic level, and with cohabitation and divorce's assault on traditional marriage and family.”
     • You had one problem… now you have like eight
   • e.g. Campaign Life Coalition “Other Issues” drop down
   • e.g. PLAGAL and the US March for Life
4. Frequency: Does the frequency of our work reinforce the gravity of our message or contradict it?
   • A lot of pro-life activities are annual. If we were in Nazi Germany, would an annual protest against the Holocaust be an effective way of offering opposition? Or would our actions support or undermine our claims to observers, would they really believe that we believe what we say we believe based on our actions?
5. Proactive Responses: Are our activities proactive or reactive?
   • If abortion advocates hold a rally or conference, pro-lifers will protest it. If abortion advocates advance pro-abortion legislation, prolifers write letters of opposition. If the Governor General awards abortionist Henry Morgentaler with the Order of Canada, pro-lifers will mobilize, objecting to the award through letter-writing, phone calls, petitions, and protests.
     • e.g. frequent AFLO or EPC emails
   • Who's setting the agenda? Pro-lifers need a clear plan, not just a series of reactions to current events or move from abortion advocates
   • We need to be vision-driven, not crisis-driven, to set the terms of the debate, to be able to properly evaluate whether individual activities fit into the bigger picture or not
   • Plus, we need to be focused on those who are persuadable – often times reactive moves are targeted about abortion advocates, who are far less likely to be persuaded anyways, versus pro-actively targeted the mushy middle or mobilizing latent pro-lifers
   • Students for Choice Dec 2015 example of reactive versus proactive action
6. Cost-Effectiveness: Is our work cost-effective?
   • e.g. RTL newsletters, often contain reprinted news items, multi-page printouts that get mailed out
     • What is the purpose of newsletters?
     • If it is to encourage our donors about the effectiveness of the work they are supporting, do our newsletters accomplish that?
     • If it is to educate our donors to better defend the pro-life cause, do our newsletters accomplish that?
     • If it is to inform our donors about what’s happening in the world regarding abortion, do our newsletters accomplish that?
     • Are our newsletters unique? In other words, are people unable to receive elsewhere the information we are offering? If another group is communicating what we communicate, why is there overlap? Does there need to be?
     • Do we have the right purpose for our newsletters? In other words, we may be achieving our goal, but should that be our goal? Does that goal make us more effective or less effective in ending abortion?
   • e.g. UTSFL bake sale versus parenting resources outreach table
   • e.g. costly memorials, especially while tragedy is still ongoing
   • e.g. conferences that almost shut down organizations
   • spending huge amounts of money is still important, e.g. delivering 1 million postcards

Too much pro-life activity is based on a theory of action; we just do whatever we can think of doing, without much though to how it will accomplish our goals, whether or not it will be effective, or even what our goals are.

Pro-life political campaign to spend $10,000 printing posters and postcards that RTL groups and campus clubs would distribute in public places encouraging people to contact their MPs about a motion before parliament on abortion.

• Who's the target audience? The general public, who need to be converted? Or the already-converted, who need to be activated and motivated to contact their MP? Nobody in the mushy middle is going to see a poster and suddenly feel compelled to talk to their MP about a contentious issue like abortion.
  • What's the messaging, and who is it designed to appeal to?
• What's the distribution plan? How do we know how much money to spend and material to print?
  • Do any of these groups have experience with these projects?
  • Do we have any operations guidance, or are we just giving them materials and hoping they can effective manage volunteers, look up information on by-laws, train volunteers for dialogue, handle media requests, etc.?
• Nevermind the website and blacklisting and awkwardness and unprofessional approach…

We don't need a better theory of action; we need a theory of change.⁶⁾

• Theory of action: you work forwards by looking around at the things you know how to do and picking one that might accomplish your goal
  • let's march
  • let's hold signs, write clever slogans
  • let's write newsletters, hold dinners, have conferences, run ads
  • let's print thousands of posters and send them out organizations to put up somewhere
  • let's poll people to see what they think about a smattering of vague questions related to life issues
  • even worse is cargo cult copying…
• Theory of change: work backwards from the goal, in concrete steps, to figure out what you can do to achieve it
  • goal: to abolish abortion (long-term), to save as many lives as possible (short-term)
    • make abortion unthinkable, so people won't choose it
      • make people more horrified by abortion than by its alternatives
        • make the injustice of abortion visible
          • show people photos of abortion victims
            • use “Choice” chain to bring photos to the streets and campuses
            • use the truck to bring photos to drivers
            • use victim imagery in presentations
        • have conversations about the morality of abortion with people to convince them its a human rights violation
          • develop effective rhetorical strategies
            • …
        • make the humanity of pre-born children visible
      • implement ultrasound laws and waiting periods to stress humanity of victims
    • make abortion illegal, so people can't choose it
      • are there any legislative initiatives that would have political support already?
      • public public can't change until public opinion changes
        • to change public opinion, we need to reach the public with a message that will influence their view
    • make abortion inaccessible, so people can't choose it
      • shut down abortion clinics
    • make abortion unnecessary, so people won't need it
      • alleviate the economic pressures that lead people to choose abortion
        • fund more social programs?
          • convince parties to put these social programs in their platforms
            • convince candidates/MPs to advocate for these policies
            • pass policies at party conventions
              • get more pro-lifers registered and active with parties
      • prevent more unwanted pregnancies
        • better sex education?
      • improve medical technology so pregnancy is easier, or so there are non-life-ending ways to end pregnancy
        • too science fiction, no short-term leads here, but maybe long-term scientific research opportunities

is this a good example? Confusing with election outcomes? Hard to go through in detail? UTSFL CC example? As local implementation of ETK plan?

The #No2Trudeau campaign.⁷⁾ Set the political question aside for a second, and think about it in terms of strategy. This campaign wasn't just saying “vote pro-life.” Campaign Life Coalition and the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform teamed up to accomplish two very specific strategic objectives:

1. “we wanted to expose Justin Trudeau’s position on freedom of conscience because we genuinely believe that a lot of traditional Liberal voters are pro-life and they need to be alerted to the fact that the Liberals are not only not pro-life, but that they now disallow pro-life members from their caucus. Which is something most people are unaware of outside of the Ottawa bubble. Our target audience are the enormous numbers of Canadians who haven’t been exposed to abortion, who have no idea what’s going on and furthermore were not aware of the fact that if they vote Liberal they are de facto voting for the status quo.” -JVM
2. “The second goal was to show Canadian citizens the reality of abortion and what abortion does to the victims and we accomplished that to the tune of one million Canadians. So the goal was political and educational.” -JVM

Then, think about the media coverage they earned. It didn't really matter what the angle was of the story. Their goal wasn't to get journalists to change their minds on abortion, and even “negative coverage” and controversy furthered their strategic objectives of getting out the political and educational message to a broader audience that otherwise wouldn't have heard about it.

One million households received these anti-abortion flyers with this information on the back. Lot’s of earned media was produced, but most of the stories from the blitz resulted in “outrage at the images” angles like this one on Global television. Volunteers worked incredibly hard to reach their goal of delivering these brochures before the writ was dropped and third-party advertising laws dropped into place. They garnered even more earned media with Canada Post refusing to deliver the last of the bunch as the election started. Amongst all the media noise, the main purpose of the campaign was forgotten by reporters: criticising the Liberal position and informing the electorate about abortion.

Also, at a tactical level, the postcards weren't a shot a in the dark. They were a deliberate tactic that had already been used, tested, measured:

“We have internal polling that shows that people in the ridings that receive the postcards are tremendously impacted on the issue of abortion. We tested this project multiple times before we took it to this big of a scale. We delivered just shy of 500,000 postcards between 2012-2014. Pre and post campaign polling showed that 42.3% of people who received the postcards found their view of abortion had been negatively affected. Because of the success we saw on a small scale we were able to take it to the biggest scale that we were capable of with the resources we had at our disposal.” -JVM

This project was developed strategically using a theory of change, not a theory of action.

How can every pro-life project be given the same strategic consideration?

main points from CCBR strategy document

Compare and critique strengths and weaknesses:

• prolife_ads.pdf
• lrtl-061616_1_.pdf