Mike Fichter's blog

As the life movement emerges from the thick of the bruising health care battle, visionary leaders must seize the unique opportunity to build a new and more powerful movement.

It’s the type of building that comes after the storm. The type of growth that springs from the severest of pruning. The type of new spirit that says we’ve taken the body blow and we’re still standing.

Less visionary leaders will miss the opening in the clouds, choosing instead a monotone path that observers will see as little more than background noise.

Let the lawyers, politicians and judges tangle and untangle the disastrous knot that the federal takeover of health care will become. Let the economists sound the warning over the impending economic firestorm. Let the talk shows call the play-by-play.

We must be about the business of building new strategies that advance alternatives to abortion. We must purposefully recruit, train, and inspire a new generation of leaders. We must share with the world the Hallmark moments of motherhood, babies, laughter and joy.

This is not the time to turn our eyes downward. It’s our time to turn our eyes to the horizon and our hands to the plow.

This is our time to build.

Service on a board of directors is a serious responsibility.

The best board members understand the full burden of such responsibility and consider taking it on through a process (and attitude) of humility, grace, and professionalism.

Which is why red flags should wave when you encounter someone who seems overanxious to join your board of directors or top leadership team.

Warning signs of potential problems include:

Prospects wanting to join the board without even asking what is expected.

Prospects who aggressively pursue the role without invitation.

Prospects who become indignant if not asked immediately to serve.

Prospects that no one knows anything about.

Prospects who presume you want and need them.

One bad choice can destroy an entire organization. Let’s be careful out there.

As Democratic leaders proceed with a ruthless obsession to pass pro-abortion health care reform, the life movement must firmly and unflinchingly send the message to every Democrat in Congress that leadership matters.

Or stated more clearly, we must collectively agree that if Democratic health reform rolls through Congress and is signed into law with abortion funding and abortion subsidies included, all Democrats lose the right to endorsement or support by pro-life groups.

That’s “all” as in all.

We accomplish nothing if, at the end of the day, moderate Democrats merely put up a good fight. I often hear that battles like these are why we must support ostensibly pro-life Democrats. Yet the fact remains that we would not even be having this battle were it not for the leadership that the Blue Dogs helped to place in positions of power.

This isn’t about personal attacks on individual Democrats. It’s about the reality that the majority party elects its leaders, and those leaders control the agenda. The romantic notion that we should focus on life issues instead of partisan politics is just that – a romantic notion that falsely or naively believes that party control and party actions are somehow insulated from the effect of legislation that destroys human life.

Elected officials cannot support leadership while absolving themselves from the actions of those same leaders. Likewise, the life movement cannot ignore the fact that the pro-abortion health care bill is a purely and thoroughly Democratic bill.

Maybe this is a tough pill to swallow. Yet it’s both simplistic and sophisticated at the same time. This is the real world of politics. Democratic leaders have long banked on the hopes that the life movement will never wake up to realize the truth.

We tend to balk at drawing such hard lines, perhaps due to a sort of unchallenged presumption that bipartisanship is chivalrous. If the goal we hope to accomplish is to try and stay in everyone’s good graces, that sentiment makes sense. But if the goal is to win politically in order to hold back the destruction of millions of lives, it makes no sense at all.

The life movement needs to make a decision as we stare down the barrel of a Democratic health care reform fiasco that promises to be the greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton decisions.

If we are going to engage politically, then let’s come to the table strong. Politics is not about warm fuzzy feelings. It’s about exerting maximum influence at the right time to get desired results. Our maximum leverage in sending a message to Democrat leadership is now. Will we have the courage to use it?

The traditional approach to informed consent has been to focus on legislation requiring abortion providers to deliver prescribed information to women considering abortion. While this remains a valid and worthwhile strategy, a dramatic shift is occurring in the way Americans get health information — or become more fully informed — and it should lead us to embrace a new paradigm in helping women to choose healthy alternatives to abortion.

In a report titled The Social Life of Health Information, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports that 61% of American adults now look online for health information. This number will continue to rise as mobile access to the internet expands and wireless connections afford what the report calls “deeper engagement in social media”. Most significantly, the biggest boom is occurring in the 18-49 age group, a large chunk of which covers the age groups in which the bulk of abortions occur.

A few of the other key findings:

- 42% of adults say they know of someone who has been helped by health info on the internet
- 41% of adults say they use the internet for info on specific medical procedures
- 35% of adults use internet listings for info on doctors or medical facilities
- 52% on internet health inquiries are on behalf of someone other than the person searching

What does all of this mean for our efforts to better inform women about healthy alternatives to abortion, the wonderful story of human development in the womb, the risks of abortion, the psychological impact of abortion, and much more? Simply this: the wireless world is destroying the informed consent monopoly long-enjoyed by politicans and abortion providers.

Now it’s up to us to seize the opportunity growing before our eyes.