It’s hard to do a critique of an elite-media feature about someone who is a real online friend.
But, in this case, there’s an issue that — at least to me — cannot be avoided in the glowing Washington Post religion-desk feature that ran the other day with this headline: “Karen Prior has worked for Roe's overturn for decades. This isn't what she'd hoped to feel.”
Most fans of the “Notorious KSP,” I would imagine, loved this piece.
At the same time, I’m sure her worst critics loved it as well — for reasons linked to the journalism issue that I would like to spotlight in this post. It helps to understand that Prior has critics (and friends) who disagree with some things that she says and does and then she has critics that basically don’t want her to exist.
Meanwhile, anyone — worthy critics and supporters — who has followed KSP’s work through the years with any kind of an open mind knows the strength of her logic and (dare I say it) art when defending centuries of Christian doctrines about life issues, as well as marriage and sexuality. But to grasp that side of her life, and how it fits into the total package of her apologetics, people need to actually read or hear her address those topics.
This Post piece focuses, for the most part, on her actions and beliefs that have fueled controversy about her among some evangelicals (like me, she was #NeverTrump #Never Hillary in 2016). A more balanced profile of her would have included quoted material that would have — with good cause — offended, well, most Post readers and editors. Hold that thought, because I will come back to it.
The piece starts with Prior’s feelings of elation at the news that the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Prior was shocked and thrilled. But within minutes the deep divisions and differences in priorities among antiabortion advocates came into view. After being put aside for decades as they worked together to overturn Roe, they had become impossible to ignore. While Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains to say the leaked opinion may not be the final one, experts on abortion in America say even the potential of Roe’s demise is a turning point for the movement. If Roe falls, what does it mean to be for life now?
For Prior, it means much more than overturning Roe. It means more support for child care and pregnant women as well as supporting sex abuse victims, vaccinating as many people as possible against the coronavirus, and helping start and run an inner-city high school in Buffalo. But not all antiabortion activists agree and lately have begun splintering over next steps, such as whether to classify abortion as homicide and restrict contraception, as well as whether issues outside of reproduction even qualify as part of the “pro-life” cause.
Once again, this is an old, old story that is presented as something essentially new and, thus, linked to COVID-19, the Trump era and all kinds of “now” things. In reality, debates among evangelicals, and especially Catholics, about what it means to be “consistently pro-life” go back to the 1980s or earlier.
