NARAL leader stepping down, says she’s partly to blame for pro-abortion malaise
Update 5/12 7:15a: A young gun at Feministing – who apparently doesn’t mind that Nancy Keenan and all those aging abortion proponents set their sights on her not so long ago – is denying an intensity gap while elegantly admitting, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in the last year or so, sh** has gone totally f***ing haywire in this country…. anti-choicers are gunning harder than ever [the gun analogies just keep coming] right now to take away hard-win reproductive freedoms.”
The ability of pro-abortion abortion survivor to articulate their message is impressive. Take a look, abortion movement, this is your future.
5/11, 9:12a: From the Washington Post last night:
At the end of this year, Nancy Keenan will step down from her post as president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the country’s oldest abortion-rights advocacy group.
The 60-year-old Keenan said she is leaving out of concern for the future of the pro-choice movement – and thinks she could be holding it back.
In recent years, Keenan has worried about an “intensity gap” on abortion rights among millennials, which the group considers to be the generation of Americans born between 1980 and 1991. While most young, antiabortion voters see abortion as a crucial political issue, NARAL’s own internal research does not find similar passion among abortion-rights supporters. If the pro-choice movement is to successfully defend abortion rights, Keenan contends, it needs more young people in leadership roles, including hers.
“There’s an opportunity for a new and younger leader,” Keenan said during a Wednesday interview in her downtown Washington office. “Roe v. Wade is 40 in January. It’s time for a new leader to come in and, basically, be the person for for the next 40 years of protecting reproductive choice.”
I’ve got news for Nancy. Forty more years of legalized abortion ain’t gonna happen. More from WashPo:
In the 2010 midterm elections, a wave of antiabortion legislators swept into Washington and took control of state governments across the country. The number of states with solidly antiabortion governors and legislatures spiked from 10 to 15…..
States passed a record 92 abortion restrictions in 2011, more than any other year since Roe. The lesson that Keenan took away then, was that elections matter. So do the voters who will soon dominate them.
Millennials will make up 40% of the electorate by 2020, and Keenan questions whether she’s the right leader to reach these new groups.
“This issue has got to be a voting issue for them,” Keenan said. “If we want to continue protecting abortion rights in this country, this is so clearly the case.”
NARAL’s research, however, suggests it has a ways to go: Young voters do not make abortion rights a priority at the polls. In 2010, the group’s poll of 700 young Americans showed a stark “intensity gap” on abortion. Most antiabortion voters under 30 (51%) considered it a “very important” voting issue. Among abortion-rights millennials, that number stood at 26%.
“There is an intensity gap between our side, being pro-choice, and the other side,” Keenan said.
You got that right, sister. And while abortion proponents like to think this is because the younger generation has grown up with abortion, so “[w]hen you’re fighting to hold onto something, rather than get something, it gets less intense,” as WashPo quoted EMILY’s List president Stephanie Schriock, the fact is the pro-abortion movement is suffering attrition. It has killed off its future supporters.
Furthermore, it continues to kill off 3,300 more chips off the ole’ block every day. So the “intensity gap” is only going to widen, thanks to the birth gap.
Meanwhile, abortion survivors – all those born after January 22, 1973 – understand that the very people now trying to woo them into the their movement dedicated themselves to trying to kill them before they took a breath. And many of those very people make a big fat living off the snuffs.
[HT: Chicken Man; photo via the Washington Post]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
I just wonder what young, hip, Lila Rose knock-off they are going to hire to carry their bloody torch…
Nancy, don’t flatter yourself. ABORTION ITSELF is responsible for the pro-choice malaise. You can’t hide the secret anymore: it’s reproductive choice murder, and we’re all getting it!
Young prolife voters also get it viscerally that it is their 1/3 of their siblings, cousins, and prospective classmates, playmates, and spouses that have been slaughtered. They’ve seen the devastating effects of abortion on their mothers, aunts, neighbors, and peers.
They’ve grown up with ubiquitous ultrasounds, so they aren’t as vulnerable to the “blob of cells” nonsense.
Young “prochoice” voters, on the other hand, just have what they absorb socially.
I just love the end of this “you got that right, sister!” lol It’s TRUE! They killed the multitude of children who would have grown up to possibly (most likely) supported them because their parents supported them. *sigh* I think NARAL needs to take a cue from their co-founder Bernard Nathanson. :)
Dear Nancy,
The youngers aren’t buying what you’re selling!!
Deal with it.
I love how every tactic the pro-aborts have used in the past has finally met it’s demise. They’re running out of deceptive means right and left. Ultrasounds, the continual closing of clinics, continuing lack of doctors willing to do the killing, exposure of Planned Parenthood, defunding of same, women speaking out about the LIES of abortion, the young generation becoming increasingly pro-life, etc. etc. etc. It’s all working in OUR favor.
The pro-choice side has had it’s 40 years of fame and deception and they’ve run out of ammuntion. The veil covering “choice” has been lifted.
The old hags of the pro-choice movement have lost credibility and their new protoge’s are failing miserably.
Oh..the IRONY. The Pro- “choice” movement is suffering from lack of participants(let’s call them).
They really CAN’T put two and two together, can they!?
Not leaving on a high note, are we? Anyways, can’t wait to see the creepy 40th anniversary celebrations.
“Meanwhile, abortion survivors – all those born after January 22, 1973 – understand that the very people now trying to woo them into the their movement dedicated themselves to trying to kill them before they took a breath”
That is EXACTLY how I feel. I also look at my two young sons and know Nancy would have snuffed them out too. And it makes me very angry.
Well, what can one expect from a movement that needs a woman pushing 80y/o to model an “I had an abortion” teeshirt? Come on folks, ageism and sexism aside, Gloria Steinem doesn’t do for a tee shirt what Lila Rose would. Sorry, it is what it is. Not to mention how absurd a tee shirt like that looks on a woman Steinem’s age.
“The 60-year-old Keenan said she is leaving out of concern for the future of the pro-choice movement – and thinks she could be holding it back.”
Holding it back? Excuse me? How many millions of children die via abortion each year in this country? In this world? I’d hate to see what would happen if there was no ‘holding it back.’ Geez.
I agree that technology is going to topple abortion. The youngest of today’s voters can see their OWN ultrasounds if their mom’s got them, and since the images have gotten better over time, the voters of the present and the near future can absolutely not be convinced that a fetus is a “blob.” Also, when families share images and photos, they say “when I was pregnant with YOU” which also reinforces the truth: the embryo, the fetus, the infant is ourselves, that we were all small once. I also can’t help but note that the shrill, profanity-laced blogs that pro-choicers maintain are not helping them either, and they are ALREADY a lot younger than Keenan.
This is awesome news. In any war, a useful tactic is to demoralize your adversary. Job well done, pro-lifers!!!!!!!!
It is going to be sooooooo interesting to watch the abortion industry fall……and hear them squawk louder and louder about “RIGHTS!!!”
Those that support and promote abortion seem to be going off the deep end.
I often wonder what happened to all of those slave holders that didn’t agree with The Emancipation Proclamation.
They went home and put on their white hoods and robes, Carla.
Carla said: I often wonder what happened to all of those slave holders that didn’t agree with The Emancipation Proclamation.
They became white-hooded Democrats.
Oh yes yes. That’s right.
That bitterness and rage that folks can’t seem to work through……..gonna eat you up inside.
What doesn’t go around can’t come back around. The Pro-Choice Movement is dying on the vine, and it can’t happen soon enough for me.
Hey Nancy, we pro-lifers love our children so we have more of them. Do the math honey!
And please, people, don’t use their terms. The babies never had a choice.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -Gandhi
Just think.. The abortion/B.C. you prevent today.., could be born Casey Anthony’s next baby tomorrow :O
They could also grow up to find the cure for cancer. What’s your point? The fact that a baby’s mother might later murder them is no reason to deny them legal protection before or after birth.