"To me it's important to defend life where it's most vulnerable, and certainly life in the womb is vulnerable," [Catholic leader Dan Ebener] says. "But protecting human life from abortion is only one way of protecting life in the womb." To Ebener, issues such as prenatal health care, job training for unemployed mothers, and day care for working mothers are as essential to a pro-life agenda as is fighting abortion.

It is on precisely those other issues that the Republican Party -- typically seen as more 'pro-life' --loses its credibility among progressive pro-lifers. A common summary of the GOP's philosophy by its opponents is that Republicans only care about the baby in utero. After birth, mom and baby are on their own.

"Republicans who claim to be pro-life also often have anti-life policies that are completely in collusion with the social and economic structures that compel abortion," says Kevin Clarke, editor of Salt of the Earth, a Catholic social justice e-zine. Not only do Republicans have a spotty, at best, record on the broader social issues that contribute to abortion, they also have accomplished little on the promises they do make, leading some to wonder if they're not all talk, little action.

"The Republican approach to abortion makes for a nice election issue," says Ebener. "We hear a lot of rhetoric, but when it comes to actually taking action, what has happened in the last three years with a Republican Senate and White House?"
With the partial-birth abortion ban, which took nearly a decade to pass, as this administration's only pro-life accomplishment, Ebener is not impressed -- especially since it was accompanied by plenty of other 'anti-life' legislation such as social spending cuts paired with tax cuts for the wealthy."