By Julie A. Miller
Catholic Herald

Couple offers suggestions for promoting respect for life

SUPERIOR -- Oct. 7 is Respect Life Sunday, a day set aside for special prayers and activities to encourage respect for life. But the pro-life work goes on throughout the year, in ordinary tasks done by people from all walks of life.

Dan Pilon said, "Its the day-to-day grind 'em out work that has to be done."

His wife, Jan, added, "It's taking time out to write letters to the editor when you see something that really needs a response."

The pro-life movement needs the whole spectrum of people from those who are "sidewalk counselors" outside of abortion clinics to those whose contribution is more private, through prayer, Dan said.

The Pilons, members of St. Pius X Parish in Solon Springs, are very active in the pro-life movement locally and on the state level. Dan, a retired president of The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn., is on the state board of Wisconsin Right to Life and both Dan and Jan are on the advisory board of the Human Rights and Medicine program at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Jan is also a volunteer and former director for Birthright in Duluth and works with Wisconsin Teens for Life.

During an interview with the Catholic Herald, the Pilons frequently referred to "Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics." This 1998 statement by the U.S. bishops clearly states the church's pro-life stance and tells Catholics what they should do to promote respect for life.

According to the statement it's not enough to have personal piety. American Catholics are called to be public and loud and be vocal about this, Jan said. She later added, "The point is you have an obligation not to be silent and tolerate everything that you hear. You need to do rebuttals and speak up and not try and be a person who doesn't make waves, who doesn't want to ruffle anybody's feathers."

Parishes and their members also have an important role in promoting respect for life. "I think they need to be doing a lot of things. The people in the pews -- all of us -- need to be encouraged in our beliefs periodically from the pulpit," Dan said.

If people don't think there are enough pro-life messages in their parishes, Jan added, they need to help their pastors in any way they can. Pastors are very busy, so she suggested people read and summarize some of the of pro-life materials and then go to the pastor and say, "Here is some information you might choose to use."

People can also make pro-life statements in how they spend their money -- by supporting effective organizations and by not patronizing companies that support abortion providers.

Jan said, "Economic sanctions are one of the strongest things that we can do."

The Pilons cited two examples. First, a boycott of Target stores in the past resulted in their parent company's foundation withdrawing its financial support from Planned Parenthood.

Fear of boycotts also kept companies from making RU-486. Dan said, "It was made perfectly clear. No American major drug company would touch it. Planned Parenthood basically created their own drug company which has (the drug) made in China."

Education is also important in promoting respect for life. That can mean spreading the word about the link between abortion and breast cancer, or explaining the implications of fetal stem-cell research, Jan said. She added, "We have to be willing to talk about it more openly with young people who are trying to form a conscience. They're in the very moldable stage and if you don't ever talk about it your silence is definitely construed as support for all the ads and messages they are getting on TV."

Pro-life activity can also mean taking care of people in other ways too -- supporting food pantries and clothing drives for the poor, or helping out in parish ministries. Jan said one of the criticisms of pro-life people is that they only care about abortion, "and that's not true. I don't know of anybody who is active in the pro-life movement who is not in other areas of life-supporting activities."

These charitable works, however, shouldn't take the place of working to prevent abortion and euthanasia. Jan said, "In this (bishops' statement) it's also very specific that you can't just get into all the outlying issues without saying that these are primarily the most important life issues."

The bishops' statement also addresses the issue of war, saying, "This same teaching against direct killing of the innocent condemns all direct attacks on innocent civilians in time of war." Does this mean the pro-life movement should have a role in trying to shape the U.S. government's response to the recent terrorist attacks?

Dan said, "You certainly don't want to see anybody who is innocent suffer and inevitably they will. They are suffering right now. A bunch of people are trying to get out of Afghanistan because they are afraid of what's going to happen to them and they are going hungry. I think that minimally we have to be saying to our public officials that if we are going to create this kind of havoc (in Afghanistan), then we are going to have to use our resources to help."

He later added, "We're a strange people, it seems to me. Rightly people in this country are anguished that 10,000 people, or whatever the final number turns out to be, died in New York and Washington, but probably in that month we've done in that many people in abortion clinics in this country."

< Local Archives

© Superior Catholic Herald, 2001