The Patriot Post® · In Brief: The Pro-Life Movement Has a Storytelling Problem
Abortion is a winning issue for Democrats right now. At least that’s the conventional wisdom. It’s less true than media outlets say, but it hasn’t been an easy issue for pro-lifers. Mother and author Carrie Gress thinks about it through the power of story.
For decades, pro-lifers have tried to communicate rich and important truths about babies, motherhood, and the family, yet the polls and the culture continually show these efforts are falling upon deaf ears. We make impassioned and intellectually rigorous arguments, and then they dissolve in the red robes and bonnets of “The Handmaid’s Tale” activists. That one image instantly conveys more than words can say.
What, then, do the red-robed, bonneted handmaids communicate? They say wordlessly, albeit untruthfully, that this is what the pro-life movement wants for women: forced pregnancy and fertility cults. Pro-lifers want to take away the very life most women live and supplant it with something unimaginably bad. They want your freedom.
As I explain at length in my book, The End of Woman, the left has successfully placed in the minds of most women a false binary: We either stick with the savvy, attractive, ambitious, and career-oriented women held up by the culture, or we are handmaids, doormats, silently enslaved as our bodies pump out more babies. It is one or the other. A healthy, engaging, compassionate, and compelling woman is nowhere to be found.
Gress continues:
Pro-lifers know the power of stories but often are not telling the right ones. The stories we tell usually center around success stories of women who have been in very tight and gritty situations that somehow come out much better for not having had an abortion. These are great stories for fundraising. What potential pro-life donor doesn’t love to hear how his dollars could be spent to help women and babies?
But if we consider this kind of story from the viewpoint of the women we hope to target, it suddenly isn’t such a great story to tell. Women don’t want to think of themselves in an awful situation. It feels scary, unfamiliar, and enervating, instead of empowering, exciting, or inspiring. It stirs up fear instead of hope for women not in that direct situation.
This isn’t just theoretical. “Women are drawn toward what is aspirational and interesting, the personal and personalized, that which is fun and beautiful,” Gress says, so she offers ideas:
instead of bland images of women cuddling a child, what about images of a woman in the world with her child/children? Instead of creating yet another academic journal, why not a glossy and compelling magazine?
Instead of another well-reasoned master class on faith or family values, why not a visually beautiful home show that features healthy women and children, with a script that conveys our message?
Instead of another film related to a rough life redeemed, what about a storyline with compelling women living an attractive life that includes humor and wit, kindness, and beauty? But that can also communicate that having children is a matter of self-interest, not self-destruction.
Instead of another book arguing for pro-life principles, why not a novel with rich maternal characters in the plot?
She concludes:
Conservatives have largely depended on the truth about women and children to be the message, while continually cycling through the debate in a kind of crisis mode. But imagine what could happen if we coupled truth with beautiful imagery and powerful messaging with a long-term view.