The real face of the pro-life movement

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

The man charged in the Nov. 27 Planned Parenthood shooting appeared in open court Wednesday and made at least 15 outbursts, including the assertion, “I’m guilty. I’m a warrior for the babies.” Robert Lewis Dear also said, “Protect the babies,” “They don’t want the truth out,” and “I want everything as soon as possible.”

Dear said his court-appointed lawyer is in cahoots with Planned Parenthood. He indicated he wouldn’t cooperate with a mental health examination and he wouldn’t accept psychotropic drugs. He apparently told the judge he didn’t want drugs that would leave him unable to talk, “like that Batman guy,” a reporter heard him say in reference to James Holmes, who was convicted of the 2012 mass shooting at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater during a showing of The Dark Knight Rises.

Now that there’s no doubt about Dear’s motive, I talked with John Stonestreet this week about how pro-lifers should respond to what’s likely to be a lengthy trial process and media coverage of it.

“One crazy guy who’s not part of the movement, who wants to identify with the movement, doesn’t change anything,” Stonestreet said. He praised the way the pro-life community has approached the case so far, and said pro-lifers should continue “to publicly and clearly condemn any act of violence in the pro-life cause.”

The past year has shown, Stonestreet said, that the pro-life movement can make progress limiting the number of abortions with state-level legislation.

“And so we continue, with the same level of increasing sophistication, strategic initiatives, and improved ability to articulate the pro-life case theologically as well as philosophically and scientifically,” he said.

At the same time, we should point out the real face of the pro-life movement—Garrett Swasey, the University of Colorado police officer who was one of the first responders to the Planned Parenthood shooting and was killed.

“A pastor, father, police officer, on a local university campus answered that call even though he didn’t really have to, ran into trouble because that’s what pro-lifers do. They’re about saving innocent lives,” Stonestreet said. “Robert Dear doesn’t fit that criteria even a little bit.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on The World and Everything in It.