Emmanuel, Solidarity

About the Book

"Rescue those who are being dragged off to execution, and do not stand back."  Why is that a controversial idea?  It may be hard to do, but it should not be hard to explain or to justify.

Emmanuel, Solidarity is about prolife nonviolent action, the "rescue" movement.  Why should we do it?  How should we do it?  Will it hurt more than it helps?  Is it just another project that will come and go?  What is it all about?  Will it lead to violence?  This book explores the basis of the rescue movement, and makes three claims.

(1) Rescue: It's common sense.  We know where and when a child's life will be in grave danger; we should be there to help, if we can.  We know where and when a pregnant woman will be in grave trouble; we should be there, if we can.  But abortion distorts our thinking severely.  When abortion enters the picture, things that were obvious become subjects of prolonged debate.  Prolonged debate is entertaining for many, but it is deadly for preborn brothers and sisters and harmful for parents in crisis.  There is urgency about this debate.  Are preborn children members of the human community?  Do they deserve equal protection?  Are their rights derived from the State or from God?  If the State refuses to protect them, who should?  How?  These questions are important and urgent, and should be debated openly — and answered.  Then we should act.

(2) Rescue: It's the clear lesson of history.  Evils like slavery and abortion are ended by warfare or by campaigns of nonviolence, not by changing the law.  For decades, most of the prolife movement has been trying to protect children by changing the law, pursuing a strategy that has no precedent in human history.  Why?  At what point will prolifers let go of a bankrupt strategy and look at something else?  For many years, the proponents of the strategy of law-alone have refused even to debate their strategy.  They have had enough clout to push other views aside and enforce a "consensus."  But we need an open debate on the issue, because the strategy of protecting children and mothers by changing the law is not just slow.  If history is a reliable guide, it will never work.  Only a campaign of nonviolence will succeed.

(3) Rescue: It's the teaching of the Catholic Church.  The route to freedom from social evil is solidarity with the victims.  Solidarity can take many forms, but the most obvious form is presence with the victims at the time of their greatest danger.  The only teaching of the Church about abortion that reaches the public ear, generally, is that abortion is a sin.  The Church does teach that, but also teaches the way to freedom: solidarity.  Perhaps we should listen.

Common sense, history and the Catholic Church all say the same thing:  Rescue those who are being taken off to execution, and do not stand back.

Part One discusses the appropriate response to the plight of the individual child and the individual mother scheduled for an abortion.  Clearly, when a homicide is being planned and a preventable death is imminent, the appropriate response is action to stop the killing.  There are many criticisms of the rescue movement, but none are serious enough to stop action that will save a child's life.

Part Two is about the search for appropriate response to the millions of abortions each year.  When we look at the unimaginable number of abortions in our world today, it is clear that we should try to find a way to respond to the whole problem, beginning with the crises faced by individuals but moving on to the global crisis as well.

We have to choose between war and a campaign of nonviolence; history does not provide us with a third option.  The law can follow after us at some time, but we must beg

About the Author

John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe began promoting pro-life nonviolent action in the 1970s, and his leadership affected activists on every continent. He was a co-founder of the Prolife Nonviolent Action Project, which laid the foundations of the “rescue” movement. He has helped make peace within families and between generations, and stopped institutional violence at hundreds of locations.