Marching for Life Where Abortion is Already Illegal

On Saturday May 21, thousands of people marched peacefully near downtown Lima with a clear message: say no to abortion and yes to life. My wife and I were among them, and so were my 2- and 4-year-old daughters. For all of them it was the first time. Not so for me -- I was in the Washington DC March For Life in 1993 and 1994. The number of marchers in Lima was no match for that, but it was still impressive: marchers stretched along several blocks of a six-lane street with a walkway in the median. They held signs, chanted, sang, and as usual they defied most of the stereotypes many Americans have of pro-lifers. For one thing, most of the marchers were female, and many were high school students.

What makes this experience much different from marching in the capital of the US is that the laws in Peru are very different. While the US government treats abortion as a sacred cow, Peru prohibits it except to save the mother's life. In the US politicians of both parties fear the feminists; in Peru feminists are a much smaller minority and the Constitution guarantees human rights from conception. This means no abortion and no euthanasia (the latter carries a 5-year prison sentence).
So it is a valid question to ask, why march for a right that unborn babies already have?

I would argue that it's better to stage a massive show of support for the unborn now, while the law is still on their side, then to lock the barn after the horses have been stolen. When the US Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that abortion must be legal nationwide, most Americans, especially Catholics, were taken by surprise. Opponents of the ruling certainly have made a spirited show of support in the 40 years since, sometimes even going so far as to stage '60s style sit-ins in front of clinics; but all to no avail. The government is completely deaf to them. The Democrats mock them at best and violate their civil rights at worst. The Republicans talk like they agree with pro-lifers, but once they're elected they always sell out to the Democrats. It's like "It's a Bug's Life" where Democrats and their feminist allies are the grasshoppers and the Republicans and pro-lifers are the ants, except there's no bird to save the day. Perhaps if more people had protested against abortion before 1973, like they were protesting against the Vietnam War, the government might have listened to them. But it isn't listening now. It is only imposing a hostile agenda to satisfy a hostile interest group.

And one cannot be sure that unborn babies are completely safe in Peru. Last year a pro-abortion radical named Susana Villaran was elected mayor of Peru by a narrow majority who probably weren't aware of her ideology. In this year's elections, former President Alejandro Toledo revealed he was pro-choice and suggested legalizing abortion to save the mother's health - in America that means the mother is having a bad day. And while Toledo lost the first round, the two that survived, though they both say they're pro-life, both have very questionable antecedents. Keiko Fujimori's father, former President Alberto who is now in prison for crimes against humanity, is known to have ordered, or at least authorized, the sterilization of thousands of highland women in the 1990s. According to the Population Research Institute, this had the support of the UNFPA. Keiko, for her part, is promising to respect human rights and democracy if elected, and is distancing herself from her father to the point of rescinding a promise to pardon him if elected.

Keiko's opponent, Ollanta Humala, is believed to be a strong sympathizer of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. He ran for President in 2006 on a similar platform of nationalizing just about everything, but this time he campaigning as a more moderate socialist whose new hero is ex-President Ignacio Lula de Silva of Brazil. Interestingly, the countries in South America with socialist Presidents, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia, all have similar or stricter laws on abortion compared to Peru, so it is premature to dismiss on inspection Humala's claims to be pro-life. It is not uncommon in Latin America to be both a socialist and a social conservative.

Yet the sum of all we have seen and heard in the last two years, as well as a great deal of talk in recent years about legalizing same-sex unions (this has already happened in Argentina), mean there is plenty of reason to be concerned for the rights of the unborn and for the moral climate in general. I think it is good that concerned citizens are heeding the warning signs now and not making the mistake of being complacent. I have the unique perspective of seeing legal abortion, and the subsequent rift between the sexes and between parents and children, and the entire throw-away mentality, unfold in my country. I am glad there are people who don't want the same to happen here.

Just like the best way to quit smoking is not to start, the same is true of sacrificing the rights of the unborn on the twin altars of feminism and materialism. It is much easier to prevent now, while the law is still on the side of the babies, than to put the evil genie back in the bottle once the government has let it out.