In September 1988, Right to Life of Michigan President Barbara Listing, acting as chairwoman for the "Committee to End Tax-Funded Abortions," announced at a news conference in Lansing that her group would emphasize the issue of taxes, not the morality of abortion per se.  

Listing's contention was that the voters needed to realize that their tax dollars were funding a procedure that many consider to be murder and that the relevant ballot proposal, known as "Proposal A," was merely a referendum on whether or not the government should be allowed to continue using tax dollars in this manner. Listing then announced that television advertisements centered on this theme would run in a variety of Michigan media markets during September.

The 1988 ads featured a group of young, apparently affluent diners talking about the ballot proposal in which they all expressed a variety of opinions about abortions, but agreed that it was not fair to force taxpayers to continue to finance them.

Support for the ban on Medicaid-funded abortions increased dramatically a week after the pro-life ads began to run.  In fact, according to one poll reported in the Detroit Free Press at the time, Michigan voters favored Proposal A by a 2-1 margin.

Not only did the tax theme resonate with the 1988 Michigan electorate, but it forced the pro-abortion opposition to go off message, which further gave pro-lifers the edge.  

Indeed, prior to the debut of the successful pro-life ads, the pro-abortion opposition had publically vowed to focus on those who would be most affected by a ban on tax-funded abortion, including low-income women and victims of rape and incest.  

But after being confronted with the successful pro-life ads, the pro-abortion opposition changed its strategy and, instead of running the ads that it had promised, it actually ran ads that focused on the idea of taxes.  

Specifically, the pro-abortion opposition tried to make the case that eliminating Medicaid-funded abortions would require a tax increase to pay for more children on welfare rolls.  

But the 1988 pro-abortion ads ended-up backfiring by reinforcing in voters' minds that the issue was all about taxpayer financing of abortions, and not about rape victims who could not afford an abortion, if they wanted one.  As a result, voters overwhelmingly approved the ban on Medicaid-funded abortions, 57 percent to 43 percent.

Although twenty years ago, the 1988 referendum campaign to ban Medicaid-funded abortions provides a winning formula for Michigan pro-lifers in 2008 in our fight to stop the expansion of embryonic stem cell research.  

The 2008 campaign's focus should be on the aspect of public financing.  This will distract the opposition and hopefully render a similar pro-life victory at the ballot box come this November.      

About the author: Andrew Shirvell, Esq., is a pro-life citizen activist who writes a weekly column that is published every Thursday for RightMichigan.com in which he focuses upon Michigan pro-life issues. He is the co-author of "Michigan Law and the Scales of Justice, Life in the Balance," a white paper published by Americans United for Life (2007).  Shirvell attended Ave Maria School of Law - Ann Arbor, where he served as president of the school's Bioethics Society, from 2004-2005.  He also served as president of Students for Life at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, from 2000-2002.