Seattle Archdiocese

“In 1973 when I heard the announcement, I cheered the announcement of Roe v. Wade,” Kennedy said. “I was very much a supporter, and now look where I am today.”

In 1970, Dominican Sister Sharon Park, executive director of the Washington State Catholic Conference, was a nurse working surgical floor at St. Joseph Hospital in Aberdeen. In her spare time, she travelled around the state giving talks in opposition to Referendum 20, to date the nation’s only voter-approved measure legalizing abortion.

The two long-time leaders in the state’s pro-life movement talked about the changes that have taken place since the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe decision.

Sister Sharon said that although most state voters still favor legalization, a majority opposes abortion for sex selection and think that parents should be notified if their minor daughter seeks an abortion.

‘Viable children’
Technology is contributing to changing attitudes as well. Today, a child can be viable outside the womb at 28 weeks. With advances like that “you’re not talking about tissue, you’re talking about babies,” Sister Sharon said, who along with Human Life’s Kennedy adds that the partial birth abortion debate forced people to recognize that “viable children” are being aborted.

Kennedy characterizes the national discussion on partial birth abortion as “a turning point. People were stunned when they heard what a partial birth abortion was,” Kennedy said. “The radical abortion lobby really shot themselves in the foot when they said they wouldn’t ever compromise.”

But even the most committed and optimistic prolife advocates recognize that change won’t come overnight. “It’s going to be a process of one step at a time,” as the prolife movement educates by speaking to the culture in a loving manner, Kennedy said.

“(Human Life’s) position is that most people are pro-life and just don’t know it. My gut tells me that eventually abortion itself is going to begin to crumble,” said Kennedy, likening it to the fall of the Soviet Union. “No one saw it coming, but when it did it was very rapid.”

Kennedy said the prolife movement also has become more sophisticated.

Prolife supporters are increasingly involved in helping women choose life by providing greater access to day care, health services and assistance with basics such as transportation so they can work or continue their educations. Adoption as an alternative to abortion is a primary message for pro-life advocates.

Confrontational tactics once contributed to the perception that prolife supporters lacked compassion for women, but the shift in tactics is changing perceptions, Sister Sharon said.

“No longer can they accuse the pro-life movement of only caring about the baby and not caring about the mother,” she said.