Meet the Real Pro-Life Movement

‘R eproductive freedom is for *every* body. Period.” That was a recent tweet from NARAL Pro-Choice America (formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League). They were protesting “restrictive” abortion laws in Colombia. “And trans men in particular are offered *no* support under the current legal system,” a previous tweet from the organization complained. A woman who identifies as a man and is pregnant probably needs something better than an abortion. Actual care for the two people involved (when the father, a man, has abandoned them or they haven’t told him) would be actual health care. And abortion is no freedom for the unborn child who dies. The upcoming Mississippi case that will be heard at the Supreme Court is an opportunity for us as a nation to take a saner look at abortion in America and at the alternatives to it. There is freedom in life. Abortion enslaves — a woman, to a lifetime of knowing she ended the life of her child; a country, to this immiseration, preferring abortion to walking with women and families for life.

People know what Planned Parenthood is. Although there is a lot of misinformation about what exactly they do there beyond abortion. Few people know much about the resources to help moms (women) be moms. And that’s a huge opportunity for life.

One Saturday morning, pre-COVID, I was standing in the Communion line at Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan. It was one of the monthly Witnesses for Life — there is a Mass, and then a procession down the block to pray the rosary outside Manhattan’s Planned Parenthood. There was a protest outside, and they were screaming at us as we prayed: “Hey hey, ho ho, you don’t care if women die.” (There was a protest there again the first Saturday of this month.) The ignorant chant was striking, as I was standing behind two Sisters of Life, who surrendered their lives to God and to serve women and children. The Sisters take them into their home as family. The Sisters walk with them for the rest of their lives — the pregnant moms who come to them for help. I wish more people knew about the Sisters of Life. I wish more people knew about the actual pro-life movement. It’s not just about defunding Planned Parenthood and undoing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortion legal in all trimesters of pregnancy. It’s about love. Women deserve better than abortion. And their unborn babies certainly do.

In the new issue of National Review, we focus on why it’s so important that the regime of Roe come to an end. I wrote in the issue about the radical hospitality of the pro-life movement; it’s only a window in. Students for Life guide campuses in providing pregnancy support. SFL president Kristan Hawkins recently spoke at Wellesley. The talk was titled “The Future Is Anti-Abortion: Preparing for a Post-Roe America.” Initially, it wasn’t well received, to put it mildly. But when she finally did get to speak, students were surprised to learn that the Seven Sisters school has forced moms out of campus housing. When they learned about SFL’s Standing with You initiative to make sure pregnant and parenting college students are not sidelined, it was hard for them to continue to believe, as many often do, that pro-lifers don’t care about women.

The November newsletter for Women’s Care Center (in twelve states) features the testimony of a black woman named Taylor and her baby boy. “It took me a few buses to get here,” she said. “But at my first appointment, I smiled for the first time in six months. My counselor cared about me in a way nobody had before.” Her regular doctor told her that her pregnancy was a problem — as doctors have been known to tell women of color in lower income brackets. (I’ve heard it described, in New York City, as a “search and destroy mission” — it’s why part of the support for women often includes someone to accompany them on checkups.) “The pregnancy wasn’t the problem, it was the fact that I was alone. At Women’s Care Center, you wanted to know what was actually going on. You listened to me.” At WCC, they “make a promise . . . to walk with a woman as long as she needs us,” president Ann Manion emphasizes. Their training manual for anyone working with women at their centers stresses what many women’s care centers offer: nonjudgmental support.

This is the pro-life movement. It’s more than signs outside abortion clinics. We have miles to go, but pro-lifers have been in this work and won’t quit, whatever happens to Roe.

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.