How many Americans have heard about Wendy Davis? How many Americans have heard of Davis based on the fawning descriptions of liberal-leaning journalists? How many Americans have never seen, on their television, a sonogram of a late-term fetus combined with a description of how they are destroyed? It is, in some sense, a miracle that pro-life sentiment is as strong as it is in this country given the asymmetry of media power between the two sides of this issue.
This is this huge coordination problem of the center-right. In the last election cycle, over $300 million was spent on ads by center-right Super-PACs. A lot of those ads were total junk about how Obama was bowing to China and picking on old, white, business owners.
Not every donor to the center-right Super-PACs was pro-life of course, but some of them were. Imagine the good that could be done if those pro-life donors spent their money on an organization that would humanize the late-term fetus, advocate incremental abortion restrictions, and publicize the records of extremist pro-abortion politicians, and do so in the nonconservative media. Such an organization could also pool smaller donations once it achieved critical mass. What such an organization would need is credible leadership and the recognition among the pro-life fraction of conservative donors that the current right-leaning Super-PACs are wasting donor money on commercials that advance no real principles and fail to influence voters.
If this coordination problem could be solved, there would be enormous benefits to the pro-life cause.
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
