Focus on the Family president Jim Daly has called his Feb. 11 broadcast — when he asked abortion-rights supporters to work with his conservative Christian ministry on the shared goal of making abortion rare — his “least favorite but most important.”
Three weeks after that call to action, Focus officials won’t say how outreach is progressing on one of the country’s most divisive issues.
“Because we’re at the first stages of our efforts, we’re not ready to talk publicly about the meetings we’ve had,” Focus spokeswoman Monica Schleicher said late Thursday.
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains’ spokeswoman Monica McCafferty said Friday there have been no overtures to her organization, part of one of the country’s largest reproductive-rights advocacy groups.
However, Focus has attracted the attention of a potential ally, the Rev. Bill Carmody, director of the Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs’ Respect Life office. “I want a seat at that table,” Carmody told The Denver Post. “Let’s get the table.”
Carmody said he thinks Focus is on the right track by working cooperatively across political divides to reduce the number of abortions as quickly as possible while still pursuing an eventual ban.
However, publicity over Daly’s reaching out to longtime foes on the abortion issue has caused ministry officials to assure conservatives that the Colorado Springs media giant hasn’t changed its strong anti-abortion stance or determination to help make abortion illegal one day.
“Focus on the Family remains committed to seeing Roe v. Wade overturned and ensuring all preborn life is protected under the law,” Focus senior vice president Tom Minnery said in his CitizenLink Report a week after Daly’s pitch. “However, we see this as a ‘Schindler’s List’ moment for the pro-life movement: How many lives can we save on the way to our goal of ending abortion?”
Focus has referred before to Oskar Schindler, an ethnic German businessman unable to end the incarceration and murder of Jews during World War II, but who is credited with saving about 1,200 Jews by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories.
Minnery asked followers to partner with Focus leaders “as we pursue every possible avenue of dialogue and debate.”
Carmody has experience with a cooperative approach. He was part of a group of more than a dozen Front Range religious leaders who formed The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice in the mid-1990s. Faith leaders on both sides of the issue — “pro-life and pro-choice,” as they agreed to call each other — met to address the root causes of abortion.
Anti-abortion members joined in condemning violence against abortion providers. And, Carmody believes, some abortion-rights advocates came to appreciate the toll abortion takes on a woman.
However, the group’s biggest accomplishment in its roughly four years, in Carmody’s view, was agreeing to, and then fully embracing, the need for civility. “If we can’t respect the life we can see, how can we respect the life we can’t see?” Carmody said.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
