Pro-lifers hear a CALL to action

CALL activist Chris McKenna visits Bloomington

By Scott Tibbs

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places
Ephesians 6:12

An interview with Chris Mckenna, director of communications for Collegians Activated to Liberate Life. (CALL)

Hoosier Review : What is the story behind the founding of CALL?
Chris McKenna: a college student felt the need for a cultural revolution of young people similar to the black civil rights movement. It [the pro-life movement] is up to the Roe generation, abortion survivors who were deemed not human by nine men in black robes. We have to fight for our brothers and sisters who are still in jeopardy.

HR: What is your view on where life begins?
CM: Life begins at the moment of fertilization, to say anywhere else is to be arbitrary. At fertilization is a distinct human being with distinct characteristics. Everything we become is set into motion at that point. What separates humans from animals is we have a soul, and to say we dont have a soul at fertilization is to say we dont have one at all.

HR: what is your view on protests outside of abortion clinics?
CM: They are the most important part of pro-life activism. Protests are a non-violent, peaceful protest at the sites of killing centers. Pro-lifers need to be there extending loving hands to mothers and children.

HR: The media and pro-choice advocates have portrayed pro-life protests in a highly negative manner, with descriptions of pro-life activists as terrorists. What is your response to this?
CM: These portrayals are purely intimidation tactics to scare people away from being involved and to win favor with the legislative and judicial branches. At most protests, the only violence is perpetrated by pro-choicers.

HR: What is your view on Planned Parenthood?
CM: They are public enemy #1 and should be for the entire public. PP Founder Margaret Sanger had a eugenic philosophy that blacks, Jews, Catholics and the disabled were human weeds of society and should be eliminated. She was very involved with the Nazi Party in Germany. Planned Parenthood still follows its founders philosophy on society by targeting blacks, the poor, the disabled, and so-called burdens on society.

HR: Polls have shown most people favor a womans right to an abortion. How does CALL intend to change these opinions?
CM: Actually, support for abortion on demand is about 30%. A recent study showed 54% of college students were pro-life and very few supported abortion on demand .

HR: What kind of recourses are available to women in crisis pregnancies to give them an option other than abortion?
CM: Crisis Pregnancy Centers outnumber abortion clinics more than 2 to 1. CPCs can provide support to a woman and her child when her boyfriend and family might not. Abortion is never safe for a woman as evidenced by 400 women who have died by safe and legal abortions, plus countless others who have suffered pelvic disease, a perforated uterus, infertility, and post-abortion syndrome.

HR: What do you think of clinic access laws passed by Congress?
CM: They are unconstitutional. The pro-abort forces have taken acts of non-violence, civil disobedience, and labeled them violent. Rescuers are similar to participants in the sit-ins Martin Luther King Jr. used to lead in the civil rights movement.

HR: Any remarks about the politics of the pro-life movement?
CM: The Republican Party shot itself in the foot when it turned its back on the thousands of children who are crying out for help. If the party abandons the pre-born and their mothers, we will abandon it.

HR: Anything else regarding right to life you wish to comment on?
CM: Even if a law was passed that made it illegal, abortion would still be on the hearts of many people. It is going to take a cultural revolution to change these hearts before we can return to the loving Christian principles we were founded on where each individual has an inalienable right to life. As Mother Teresa said, It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so you may live as you wish.

For the pro-life movement to succeed, we have to return to the principle that a human being smaller than the head of a needles just as valuable as those killed at nine months. Once God is removed from a society there is no reason for that society to respect human life. Its a slippery slope: First we had contraception, which disrespects the act that creates life; then abortion, which has killed 35 million babies, more than five times the number killed in the Nazi Holocaust; and now we have doctor-assisted suicide and infanticide, targeting the so-called burdens on society. Who will be next?

Its a definite sign that a society has failed when the best choice it can offer a woman in a crisis pregnancy is to kill her baby.

CALL can be reached by calling (608) 256-2255 or by e-mail at callnet@aol.com.

The opinions expressed in this interview are those of Chris McKenna. They are not necessarily the opinions of Hoosier Review or the I.U. College Republicans.