Respecting Life, Rejecting Life

I recently returned from my first March for Life in Washington, DC.

I loved the experience. I loved being gathered together with so many young people to defend the dignity of all human life, and to collectively pray for an end to the scourge of abortion. I especially loved seeing the signs that read, “I am the pro-life generation.”

Something in my mind pricked me, though, as I observed the multitude of young faces around me. I was deeply saddened by the realization that this same American demographic, so keenly committed to affirming children’s rights over and above the desires of adults to obviate nature and nature’s ways with respect to reproduction and childbearing, is the demographic most committed to another “social justice” cause that is the exact antithesis of what we marched for on Wednesday: same-sex marriage.

The latest Gallup poll numbers on abortion in America indicate that 53% of 18-34 year-olds say that abortion is morally wrong. 24% of young adults say that abortion should be illegal in every circumstance. 59% say that abortion should be illegal always, or legal only under extreme circumstances. Those are encouraging numbers; mine is indeed, relative to the past four decades, the “pro-life generation.”

Yet the latest Gallup numbers on same-sex marriage are as discouraging as these numbers are encouraging. As of 2013, a full third of 18-29 year-olds say that legal recognition of same-sex marriage will change society for the better. 70% of them say that same-sex marriages should be legal. (Never mind the ambiguous wording of the question, as nowhere in the United States are same-sex marriages “illegal”; there are no “bans” on same-sex marriage. The sentiment of the response remains clear nonetheless.) Since 1996, American young adults have shifted 29 percentage points towards favoring the legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

The awful irony of these numbers, considered in juxtaposition, is that my generation doesn’t seem to realize how powerfully they are undercutting the very same principles for which they march every January by supporting public policy that affirms same-sex romantic relationships as marriages. By doing so, my peers endorse a set of concepts that altogether sever from one another the institutions of marriage and family life. Precisely such a separation in America life is, of course, largely responsible for high abortion rates in our country. As Alana Newman has documented so well, and so tragically, children are the real losers in the same-sex marriage battle. And they lose big.

And mine, the self-proclaimed “pro-life generation,” is the demographic most supportive of their loss.