An Open Letter about Art, to Pro-lifers
By: Nicholas Wahlgren
Tags: Pro Choice, Abortion, Pro Life, Art

Dear Pro-lifers,

This year, on March 29th, Pure Flix released Unplanned, a movie about abortion with a distinct pro-life bias. The movie didn’t smash the box office, but it preformed surprisingly well, making back triple what it cost. In this way, the movie was a success. I think it was a success because it silhouetted something that the pro-life movement is severely lacking: art.

Every major successful social movement in America has two elements: argument and aesthetic. Reasoned discourse is part of the American DNA, and our movement is no different. We have our Thomas Paines, we have our William Lloyd Garrisons, we have our Alice Pauls. There is no lack of argument or argumenters.

But where are our Paul Reveres? Our Harriet Beecher Stowes? Our Louise Bourgeoises? These artists touched the heart with their etchings and their writings and their paintings and sculptings. Logical argumentation wins the mind, but art wins the soul. Give the pro-choice side a list of dead fetuses and they will blink — urge them to listen to the sound of six thousand BBs hammering a tin can and they will weep.

You might say that we do not need art. Haven’t we won battles in Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Mississippi? Don’t we have a majority of pro-life justices on the Supreme Court? Don’t we just sit back and let the system do its job? Isn’t the end drawing near?

No. No. No. Yes.

If we stop our work now, when the end is in sight, then we will fail. We are winning the battles we need to on the legal level. But the cultural war is still being waged. The turrets and ramparts of the opposition are still brimming with archers, and our trebuchets and siege engines have not even crossed the moat.

Art can bridge that gap. We need not forsake logic, but the pro-choice side is persuaded by emotion. Why do you think they consistently use the rape argument for keeping abortion legal, when rape accounts only for one percent of abortions? Why do you think they insist on funding Planned Parenthood when crises pregnancy centers and federally-funded community health centers are more numerous? These arguments trade on emotion, so we must mobilize emotion as well. We need to win the people, or the fears about the sickening coat-hanger abortions are justified.

Art can win the people. Art is experiential. I might not be a pregnant teenager, but I can sympathize with one through a poem. I might not be a single mother with too many bills, but I can understand one through a painting. I might not be a mother who had an abortion, but I can share her grief through a sculpture.

What about all the art I’ve seen on social media, you might be asking, isn’t that good?

In many ways that art is good. But in many ways it is becoming cliché and dangerous. Usually it is a depiction of a fetus — maybe they are in the womb, maybe the mother is visible — the caption reads “Mama, please don’t kill me” or that true but tired Dr. Suess quote: “A person is a person no matter how small.” These works get right at the core of our movement — that the unborn are people — but they do nothing to convince or invite people who care not for the child, but the woman who is bearing them.

We need art that convinces pro-choicers.

We need art that shows mothers and fathers changing minds because of ultrasounds.

We need art that depicts women juggling work and bills and life yet keeping their babies.

We need art that illustrates women with successful careers and children.

We need art that demonstrates that we listen.

We need art that confirms that we care.

Best,

Nick Wahlgren