Is There Room for Prolife Environmentalists?

Claire Brown of Norristown, Pennsylvania, has a deep concern about the environment and wildlife. For many years, she has been a steady contributor to the National Wildlife Federation and a frequent supporter of the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club.

She is also prolife. So when she discovered this summer that these groups are lobbying in Congress against prolife legislation she supports, she was shocked and dismayed. “I felt personally betrayed,” she told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. “I’d like to help [these groups] out, but I can’t understand an organization that supports animal life and yet has, from what I can gather, little regard for human life. I think this is outside their charter,” she said.

A growing number of persons who are prolife shares Brown’s concerns. “Several major environmental organizations have become increasingly active in promoting proabortion policies on the federal level,” said National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. “Many Americans who support the Bush administration’s prolife policies are unknowingly contributing to environmental organizations that lobby to nullify those policies,” he added. While some environmental groups acknowledge their support of abortion—support based mainly on concerns of overpopulation—other groups say the NRLC is “inaccurate” in its claims.

The controversy is likely to come to a head this month as Congress debates the Foreign Aid Appropriations Bill. At issue will be two measures that the NRLC says make up “the most important antiabortion policy of the Reagan years”: the Mexico City Policy and the Kemp/Kasten Amendment.

The Mexico City Policy, ...

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