By John-Henry Westen
CHICAGO, January 13, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This is the first of a short series of LifeSiteNews.com articles in which we ask major leaders in the pro-life movement their impressions of the current status of the movement, where we’re headed and the best response to the Obama administration. The first to comment in the series is one of the most senior and well known figures in the movement – Joe Scheidler, the founder and President of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League.
Q. Where are we today in the pro-life movement facing the Obama Administration?
R. We’re going into a crisis with this circus that’s going on. But I’m thinking deep down this might be what we need to get rid of the whole goofy Democratic attitude.
Q. How do you think we got here?
R. These things are all planned out way ahead of time. There’s no way Obama could be where he is if there weren’t a lot of power behind and a lot of planning. He was totally unknown, working in a community, and suddenly he’s president of the United States. How does that happen? There’s a machine going and he just was picked. (Scheidler compared the situation to the movie ‘The Candidate’ starring Robert Redford) I feel that there almost has been a re-run.
Q. What do you feel the result will be?
R. We’ve got a guy with almost no experience really in the world scene and now we’re sitting ducks with enemies everywhere. I’ll give him about maybe two months of a honeymoon and then the media’s going to start attacking him. He’s bound to fail in a lot of these things. He’s talking big money now to get us out of our financial crisis.
Q. How will this affect the pro-life movement?
R. From a pro-life point of view I think its going to activate. I’m finding tremendous response from our letters because we’re going to be out there. I just got back from the abortion clinic, we were out there talking to the women and praying.
We’ve got to convert people, we’ve got to make them sense what’s happening in this country. We’ve lost our total respect for what a human being is. We’ve lost our religious belief. That God is watching; God is not mocked; we’re mocking him.
This particular Administration is so bad that people have got to give it everything. We have to give it everything, we’ve got to convert, we’ve got to be out on the streets, we’ve got to show people what abortion is, we’ve got to talk about it, to write about it. It has to become the issue.
Q. How did we get here?
R. The Republicans flopped completely. I think McCain, if he had made a big deal of how bad Obama is on this thing, could have won, or at least could have sent a message. The crisis of our time is human life. We as a nation have gone on the side of convenient killing and it’s destroyed us. You can’t survive without a future and we’ve killed fifty million of our children.
Unless we really see this and take it to heart, we’re sunk as a nation – we’re on our way out.
Abortion, gay rights, divorce, pornography, all those things that destroy a country – we’re deeply into. The tail end of the whole sexual revolution has made us into a bunch of hedonists.
Q. So what do we do now?
R. The people that love truth and are trying to be good and know there’s a God and a heaven and a hell, have got to go all out. All out all the time; get the conversation going, bring it up, show the pictures. Get the message out.
I really think the movement is going to be revitalized by this Administration.
We’re getting that impression already with the tremendous support we’ve been getting. People have to be shocked by what abortion is. We’re a visual society, they got to see the pictures, they’ve got to hear the stories, and they’ve got to see the women that have had abortions, see the ruin that it’s brought on so many families.