The sad news was reported July 10 that the Michigan Citizens for Life petition drive had fallen short of the 317,000 signatures needed to put a totally pro-life proposed state constitutional amendment on the November ballot. What was so disheartening about this news, and what has been disappointing over the past many months has been the repeated denunciation of the effort by Michigan Right to Life, the Michigan Catholic Conference and others. It boggles my mind as I try to understand how any pro-life organization, most especially Catholic Bishops, would do anything to oppose an effort to protect each preborn child from his beginning as a person! PERSONHOOD was the single goal of this simple proposal. Yet pro-life and Catholic opposition made the struggle so hard, and clearly caused the lack of signatures. Of that there is no doubt.
So now what? Do we buy into the politically correct line that “timing is all wrong?” NO! But I wonder ,,, could it be that there really are pro-life leaders who do not want to see every single abortion outlawed, whether that abortion occurs in an in vitro fertilization clinic, because of a birth control pill or by using a surgical intervention? If the goal of the pro-life movement is PERSONHOOD ? total protection for all innocent children prior to birth ? then something terribly evil happened in Michigan. Let us pray it never happens again.