Perhaps less reassuring, however, is that the group's median age has increased over time as well -- from the mid- to late 40s to the early 50s. Although Planned Parenthood has sponsored concerts by rock acts like Ani DiFranco and Barenaked Ladies, and has run a series of magazine ads featuring singers Mary J. Blige and Joan Osborne and actress Julia Stiles, the organization devotes just 5 percent of its resources specifically to youth outreach. As is true for many charitable organizations, Minow says, "the age [of members] has been inching upward."

But not all of them. The National Right to Life Committee's development office reports that the average age of its members dropped from 50 to 47 between 1987 and 1997, and has slipped to about 45 in the ensuing years. The NRLC says its membership now stands at about 500,000. NOW says it doesn't keep age data on its members and NARAL did not respond to repeated requests for information on its membership.

While NOW has no division devoted to youth outreach, it does occasionally sponsor conferences for young feminists. "We hold them every three years or so, as the need arises," says Kim Gandy, an executive vice president with the organization.

The need arises when there's a crisis. During previous Republican administrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Roe vs. Wade was in active danger, NOW organized massive marches for abortion rights. When Bill Clinton became president and Roe vs. Wade seemed less threatened, NOW devoted more of its energies to other issues. Gandy insists NOW cannot be a single-issue group and doesn't give reproductive rights any more or less attention than the other causes it advocates. "We're just as concerned with rights for people of color and lesbian rights," Gandy said. "We don't rank oppression."

Major groups that oppose abortion rank youth recruitment as a high priority, and tend to start spreading their message to a younger audience than abortion rights groups pitch to. The NRLC sponsors programs like National Teens for Life and National College Students for Life, and youth workshops are part of the group's annual conventions. The American Life League, a group that claims to represent 360,000 families and opposes all abortions and even some forms of contraception, has an annual budget of more than $6 million and devotes roughly a third of its resources to youth outreach. Two of its seven divisions focus on young people: Rock for Life helps young pro-life activists spread their message through music, and Why Life? sends representatives to speak to school-age kids about the pro-life perspective.

Elizabeth Daub, 25, travels as a youth educator for Why Life? and writes for Reality Check, the ALL's youth newsletter. According to Daub, teens are fed a steady message of sexual permissiveness and perversion through MTV and other parts of the entertainment industry. What's more, Daub accuses Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights organizations of encouraging this message by making contraceptives available to teens, and then providing abortion services when the birth control methods fail.

"Young people are being totally taken advantage of," Daub says. "They don't understand what the abortion industry is trying to do to them."

Encourging young adults to be suspicious of the media, and wary of any industry that might be trying to make a profit off them, is a classic rebel yell, and is reminiscent of what any young leftist might expect from the protesters at rallies demonstrating against policies of the World Bank or World Trade Organization. The Gen X abortion opponent is borrowing a time-honored appeal to American youth -- the radical pose. Here, chastity is not an ideological step backward but a radical reaction against the Establishment -- and, say some in the movement, a step toward women's empowerment: "I personally saw how the abortion industry stripped women of their dignity," says Brandi Swindell, 24, director of Generation Life. Women's "spirits are much too strong to be broken or manipulated or brainwashed."

Young people who support Roe vs. Wade, admits Heidi Melz, campus outreach director for Planned Parenthood, have become harder to categorize on other abortion rights issues. "For example, our polling shows that people 18 to 30 feel strongly that contraceptives should be paid for by health insurance," Melz says, "but they are also very supportive of parental notification laws."

Melz concedes that there are legitimate differences of opinion on parental notification, but asserts that young people need to be better educated that restrictions on abortion access like parental notification, bans on partial-birth abortion and waiting periods are ultimately aimed at eliminating abortion altogether. "They have to understand that those things are a strategy by anti-choice people to overturn Roe vs. Wade," Melz says.

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