Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is. – Tim O’Brien
The Kind and the Misguided, a fable
Once upon a time, in the fair land of Massachusetts, there lived Kind Kangaroos who spent each day helping women in need. Often, the women’s children received help, too. Most of the time, the women and children had no family or friends who could help them, so they were very happy to receive compassion and support, supplies, care and counseling from the Kind Kangaroos at the state’s pregnancy resource centers. The women didn’t have to pay a penny for this help! For more than 40 years, the Kind Kangaroos at these community spaces served thousands and thousands of Massachusetts women when they needed it most. The women were grateful. They felt loved and valued by the Kind Roos. Their little children were alive and grew into the next generation of Massachusetts residents, contributing to their fair land as they were able.
In the land of Massachusetts there also lived Misguided Mongooses, who did not think women should be able to get the help they desired at pregnancy resource centers. The Misguided Mongooses were wealthy and very powerful. They often ruled the land unjustly, favoring the interests of other Misguided Mongooses and callously discarding the concerns of others, like women in need and the Kind Kangaroos who sought nothing but to help them. The powerful Misguided Mongooses thought women in need were weak and their children worthless, so they confused women in need and steered them toward quick fixes instead of taking time to love them. So lost were the unreasonable Mongooses that they even told frightened women to pay someone to kill their own children!
In spite of their vast differences, the two animal groups lived in relative peace. Year after year in the fair land, women in need could seek truth and clarity from Kind Kangaroos inside Massachusetts’ pregnancy resource centers, until one day in 2022. On a sunny afternoon, before cameras and crowds, the Misguided Mongooses, led by an uber powerful Mongoose Senator, declared war on pregnancy resource centers and vowed to shut them all down. Days and weeks and months passed. Two years rolled by. The Misguided Mongooses ruthlessly waged battle after battle from their moneyed seats of power against the Kind Kangaroos of modest means and the vulnerable women they served.
And still, most pregnancy resource center doors across the fair land – and the hearts of those Kind Roos therein – remained open, thanks to other Kind Roos across Massachusetts who did whatever they could do to preserve these community treasures. But no one knew how long the war would last or if the Kind Kangaroos could emerge victorious in a battle against such formidable mongoose foes . . .
It’s wheels up for me this week. I’ve been invited to Washington, D.C. to tell members of Congress the story about our state’s ongoing attacks against pregnancy resource centers. As I packed, I thought about what I’d say to briefing attendees on Capitol Hill, considered which slides to show and weighed the most outrageous of all smears to include. (There have been so many, it’s tough to choose just a sampling.)
Then I stopped, stared down at my suitcase and shook my head. With all of the critical, urgent and weighty business our U.S. representatives and senators must tend to, it suddenly seemed ridiculous that senseless attacks on humble and beloved nonprofits should be of concern. What’s going on here really does start to sound like the stuff of a dystopian fable when you think about it.
As they say, though, truth is often stranger than fiction.
So, because the work of our pregnancy resource centers is itself critical, urgent and weighty, and because the grassroots response of our kind people across Massachusetts, hopping into action a bit like energetic kangaroos, has become the stuff of legends, I look forward to presenting the details of our very own nonfiction dramedy on Capitol Hill this week. I’ll be eager to update you as well.
Grassroots activism fuels Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL) today, just as it has since our founding in 1973. While the threats to innocent human life continue, our strategies and projects evolve to address each one. Today, I’m excited to share our newest strategic initiative.
Ask veteran pro-life advocates today how to build a culture of life, and they will all advise a similar approach: each one of us must work to change the hearts and minds of individuals around us. It's a daunting task, to be sure. But we developed a long-term strategy we believe holds tremendous potential. Here's how we'll launch the short-term component, the first phase, if you will.
On this Giving Tuesday, December 3, MCFL is raising money for an exciting, promising, first-of-its-kind endeavor: Pro Life Hearts & Minds Kits for each of the Commonwealth's 160 legislative districts.
Over the next several months, we will recruit and begin to train 160 district ambassadors. These volunteers, who know their respective communities best, will, in turn, inform and mobilize other pro-life advocates through ongoing targeted and hyper-local efforts. With your support, MCFL will provide and deploy the resources, the Pro-Life Hearts & Minds Kits.
Among other items, each Hearts & Minds Kit will include a step-by-step community outreach plan, communications templates, suggested digital messaging, fact sheets, educational content and an event planning guide.
Our vision is that, ultimately, once ambassadors within each legislative district begin to inform others and build teams of pro-life advocates -- grassroots activism at its most powerful -- a blanket of pro-life voices will cover our state and demand that legislators listen.
Our Giving Tuesday goal is to raise $100 for each district, for a total of $16,000. These inaugural funds brought in during Phase I will allow our ambassadors to kickstart their mobilization efforts, changing hearts and minds soon thereafter. Life cannot wait. Please support this effort today by making your most generous gift and help us reach our $16,000 goal. Your gift is tax deductible.
Thank you for partnering with MCFL in this historic undertaking! We will share updates and photos as our ambassador program unfolds. But we need funds to be successful. Your support will allow that success!
Watch for my updates this week from the D.C. Congressional briefing, organized by my colleagues at National Right to Life. MCFL is so proud to be an affiliate of the country’s oldest and largest pro-life advocacy organization.
With gratitude for your partnership in our life-saving work,
Myrna
P.S. - Don’t wait until Tuesday to make a tax-deductible Giving Tuesday donation. Give online now, and help us crush our $16,000 goal.