Saturday, April 30, 2005

An effective outreach strategy

This article reposted at the Priests for Life site is a fascinating look at how research has led to more effective campaigns to promote a prolife message:

The summary report of the study bears the intriguing title "Abortion: The Least Of Three Evils-Understanding the Psychological Dynamics of How Women Feel About Abortion." The report suggests that women do not see any "good" resulting from an unplanned pregnancy. Instead they must weigh what they perceive as three "evils," namely, motherhood, adoption, and abortion.

Unplanned motherhood, according to the study, represents a threat so great to modern women that it is perceived as equivalent to a "death of self." While the woman may rationally understand this is not her own literal death, her emotional, subconscious reaction to carrying the child to term is that her life will be "over." ...the sudden intrusion of motherhood ...shatters their sense of who they are and will become, and thereby paralyzes their ability to think more rationally or realistically.....

Even those women who are likely to choose life rather than abortion do so not because they better understand fetology or have a greater love for children, but because they have a broader and less fragile sense of self, and they can better incorporate motherhood into their self-identity.....

In fact, while abortion itself is seen as something evil, the woman who has to make that choice is perceived as being courageous, because she has made a difficult, costly, but necessary decision in order to get on with her life....

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