A Life Dedicated To Pro-life

Tuesday, January 25, 2000     Page: 3

A life dedicated to pro-life Wright Township resident finds strength despite
low numbersIn essence, it’s a two-woman army doing battle on the homefront as
part of a larger national and international war that has been raging for more
than a century. Its general is acutely aware of her lack of backup, but she
shrugs it off. Eleanor Nash’s brigade is called Mountaintop for Life, and it
contains that one word that often makes people draw back in fear, reluctance
or sometimes indignation: life. Place a “pro” and a hyphen before it, and
people really get squeamish. Nash, a Wright Township resident since 1992, and
Carol Black, also a relative newcomer to the area and the only other person
who regularly attends Mountaintop for Life meetings, would like more
reinforcements as they battle abortion and a society they say encourages it,
but they don’t kid themselves. As a matter of fact, Nash notes, the two hardly
expect to see any resolution during their lifetimes. But that doesn’t matter
very much at all. Neither does it matter, Nash says, how people feel about
her, receive her or treat her on the street. All that really is crucial to
this sort of lone crusader is that she try her best to do something for a
cause she firmly believes in, a cause that has defined her life for nearly 40
years. On Sunday, that something coincided with the 27th anniversary of the
landmark U.S. Supreme Court case – Roe vs. Wade – that legalized abortion in
America. With only a handful of others, including Black, Nash stood in front
of the Knights of Columbus Memorial to the Aborted Unborn on South Main and
Alberdeen roads as a chilly afternoon turned to evening, spoke for a few
moments and then prayed. Holding candles, the tiny army sent up supplication
for aborted babies as well as those who have had abortions, those who provide
abortions and those whose decisions result in state and national laws
regarding abortions. The assembly listened to Nash speak about the Holocaust
and how that systematic Nazi destruction of more than 6 million European Jews
before and during World War II is really not a whole lot different than the
destruction of innocent life through abortion. “People wonder what they
would have done if they were living in Germany at the time of the Holocaust.
We wonder, `How would we have acted?’ ” Nash said before the vigil. “Now a
million and a half babies are being aborted every year, and we are silent.
Here is our holocaust, and we sit by silent.” In the Mountaintop area, Nash
believes, too many people are quiet regardless of their beliefs, and that
quiet was the impetus behind Mountaintop for Life to begin with. When she
moved to the area, Nash remembered, “I really, really got very upset that
there was not a pro-life presence in this town at all. I decided just to be a
presence to keep pro-life issues in the public.” Since, she has found
herself ostracized and ignored, so much so that she told her own
daughter-in-law, who holds anti-abortion beliefs, to think long and hard
before offering to join her group. “When she came to me,” Nash remembered,
“I told her, `You think about this carefully for six months because you will
be a pariah.” Ultimately, her daughter-in-law placed an anti-abortion bumper
sticker on her car. “Now there are two in town,” Nash said, chuckling. The
joke is fairly indicative of Nash’s such-is-life approach to her cause. She is
well-aware of the work that is getting done as well as the work that needs to
get done to make some inroads. “There are right-to-life people who are
working on this year after year after year even though on the surface there is
very little progress,” Nash said, noting that it took former Gov. Robert P.
Casey several years to get parental-notification laws in place in
Pennsylvania. Nash also noted the dedication of younger people across the
country, volunteer lawyers and such, who are doing their part to fight for the
cause. Locally, she hopes such younger people will pick up where she, in her
70s, will eventually leave off. “Those of us in the abortion movement hope
there will be one or two people under 50 who will catch fire and continue what
we have been doing,” Nash said. Then there is the task of working on the
minds of the very young. Nash noted that sex-education materials in schools
are produced by the Sex Education and Information Council of the United
States, which has worked closely with Planned Parenthood since 1970. That
alone is a challenge for the anti-abortion camp, but couple it with prevailing
culture and you have a double whammy, she said. “You get a 6-year-old or a
10-year-old and try to explain to them what an abortion is, but by the time
they’re 12, they’re like, `Wow. What else can you do?’ ” Nash said. “That is
the climate they grow up in. There is an expectation of sexual activity, for
one thing.” One of the biggest tasks those in the anti-abortion movement
have is letting people who count know they care, Nash said. That’s why 25,000
to 35,000 people march on Washington, D.C., every Jan. 22 or the Monday
following. Those who can’t make the march can show their support back home,
which is a reason Mountaintop for Life coordinated the vigil. This year marks
its first. Nash remembers Jan. 22, 1973, the day the Supreme Court ruled in
Roe vs. Wade, very clearly. Just before she was about to give a speech, she
got a phone call telling her of the ruling. “I was just in shock,” she
remembered. “Oh, my God, now it’s the law of the land!” Nash, who says she
is a Catholic who happens to be Catholic, sees the abortion issue not so much
as a religious one as one of basic humanity. Her husband, who died young, was
Jewish, and she has six Catholic/Jewish children. “I have a very, very
ecumenical view of religion. … It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re Muslim
or Hindu or whatever. We’re all children of God, and so are these babies.”
And so she continues her crusade, whether she has two people in her corner,
200 or 2000. As for the prospect of growth in numbers for Mountaintop for
Life, Nash chuckled. “Oh, please. This is the way it is,” she says. “I
have no illusions. I just keep doing my little thing.”