In a recent blog post entitled “Incrementalism is a Losing Strategy”, pro-life activist Bernadette Patel takes a pessimistic view of the current political climate. She particularly criticizes the strategy of passing imperfect laws like 15-week bans.

Her assessment of the unfavorable political situation in our country is arguably correct, and I totally share her disapproval of the national Republican Party’s abandonment of pro-life goals. But I disagree with her reading of history and what it tells us about the way to build successful movements to reform unjust laws.

In arguing for a rejection of incrementalism, Ms. Patel states that “many rights movements were born in the late 60s and early 70s (think women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights).” This is simply historically incorrect, as can be seen when we look at the example of the civil rights movement. This is very important for us to understand, because the lessons of history are crucial to the success of our movement.

The modern iteration of the civil rights movement traces its history back to the early 20th century. Earlier versions, of course, existed from the time of the American Revolution through Reconstruction. For example, the NAACP dates from 1909 and other organizations like the Urban League and other groups were founded during the same general time frame.

They advanced their goals by incremental steps over the course of decades, such as federal anti-lynching bills (repeatedly passed by the House as early as 1922 but blocked by Southern Democrats in the Senate), anti-segregation litigation (beginning in the 1930’s and culminating in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954), the passage of state civil rights laws (like New York’s in 1945) and federal civil rights laws (in 1957, 1960, 1964, 1965, 1968). Those are a lot of incremental steps.

Civil rights activists were dogged and persistent over decades, despite many defeats and stalemates. Nobody ever doubted their commitment to the ultimate goal of full equality. The same can be said of every single morally-motivated political movement in the history of the United States — like abolition, prohibition, and women’s suffrage, as well as the other examples cited by Ms. Patel.

A fair reading of history demonstrates that every successful reform movement in American history relied on the incremental approach. With only a few exceptions, every major leader of those movements has endorsed that strategy – from Frederick Douglas to Susan B. Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Ida B. Wells to Thurgood Marshall to Martin Luther King. All of them collaborated with pragmatic politicians like Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson, who took important small steps forward that led to further successes.

Contrary to Ms. Patel’s reading of history, an absolutist no-compromises strategy has never succeeded in American history (with the sole arguable exception of the Civil War). People like William Lloyd Garrison, the advocate for “immediate and complete emancipation” of slaves, had very limited actual success. Others like Malcolm X eventually learned that their “by any means necessary” approach was ineffective and changed their tactics. Thank God we have never had politicians like Oliver Cromwell or Maximilian Robespierre who strove to bring about an immediate change of regime – with disastrous effects.

While I am very sympathetic to noble resistance in the style of Leo Tolstoy and Dorothy Day, I am not convinced that their approach can accomplish much unless accompanied by hard-headed pragmatic politics.

The pro-life movement is pursuing the same incremental approach as every one of those efforts. It is true that some states may backslide this year through ballot initiatives this fall, and that the number of abortions has not fallen. But abortion is virtually abolished in almost half the states, as a result of incremental legislation adopted over the last few decades.

The incremental approach is obviously not perfect, and it is frustrating in its imperfection. But it works as bringing about progress towards the ultimate goal of equal justice for unborn human beings, a goal that is shared by all in our movement.