Progressive Pro-Life Activist Says Movement Needs to Prepare for Post-Roe Fight in Blue States

Terrisa Bukovinac knows what it is to feel like a black sheep.

As a secular person with progressive politics, it took her a long time to feel comfortable advocating on behalf of the pro-life movement. While activists on both sides might see these two identities as competing, Bukovinac founded the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU) last year to show other progressives there is space — and even a growing need— for them in the pro-life movement.

Bukovinac, like many pro-lifers, is “extremely optimistic” that the Supreme Court will overturn, or at least “significantly do damage” to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, as the Court hears Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that will allow the justices to reconsider the precedent set by the landmark Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey decisions.

“That is a huge victory for our movement; it’s not even close to end game, but it’s certainly the beginning of the tides turning,” she said, adding that should the Court take serious action on Roe, it will shift the conversation on abortion forever.

“The fight then goes to these very blue communities, these very leftist, very feminist communities that are right now strongholds for the abortion industrial complex,” she said. “So the fight is going to get a lot harder in those areas.”

“That’s why it’s so critical that we are all raising up the next generation, that we are giving voice to the people that come after us that are going to be moving into roles of leadership in the movement in the next three to five years,” she said.

Bukovinac hopes groups like PAAU can demonstrate the importance of highlighting pro-life progressives in those communities so that those who do not fit into the typical mold of a pro-life supporter can still feel empowered to “stand up to this regime to recognize that it is actually a symptom of capitalism and racism, and not something to defend.”

“Then I think that will begin to truly chip away in these abortion strongholds, where the pro-life message needs to sink in and be heard the loudest,” she added.

Bukovinac, who was raised a pro-choice Christian, said it wasn’t until she lost her faith in her 20s that she slowly started to become an advocate for the unborn.

She describes having always had a “sensitivity to animal rights,” which many pro-lifers used to challenger her perception on abortion: “How can you care about the dolphins if you don’t care about unborn children being killed in the womb?” people would ask her.

She says her perspective shifted over time as she would argue with people online and criticize viewpoints that allowed for the destruction of animals, and people would say, “Oh, well I bet you support Planned Parenthood, don’t you?”

“I decided that I didn’t really feel comfortable supporting Planned Parenthood, and I didn’t feel that I really was pro-choice, but I didn’t know any other pro-life people who weren’t religious and it was very much a stigmatized position . . . affiliated with right-wing religiosity — two things that I definitely wasn’t.”

She was emboldened after seeing posts by Secular Pro-Life, which showed her that there were other people out there like her.

“That really helped to empower me and that’s one of the reasons that I think that it’s so important for progressive and left-leaning people to see other pro-lifers like them. The representation impact is so critical because here I was potentially harboring years of activism for this movement but I just didn’t feel comfortable identifying as pro-life.”

In 2016, she founded Pro-Life San Francisco, which she says has given her a taste of what it is like to advocate for the pro-life movement in a very progressive, leftist environment. She had a “mixed” experience there, noting there was an expected amount of pushback — “You’re just a Republican, you’re actually a Christian, those kinds of accusations” — but a surprising amount of support.

“I think people would be surprised to know that it’s a pretty unsettled issue, even amongst progressives and leftists,” she said.

A 2021 Gallup survey revealed 26 percent of Democrats identify as pro-life, while 70 percent identify as pro-choice. The number of Democrats who label themselves pro-life has fallen steady over the past 25 years; in 1998 Gallup found 42 percent of Democrats were pro-life. In 2018, Secular Pro-Life found there are at least 12.8 million non-religious pro-lifers in the U.S.

Bukovinac believes Democratic politicians will once again be enabled to support the pro-life movement someday soon. While Democrats once largely felt that abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare,” the party has moved further away from that notion in recent years. The party removed the word “rare” from its official platform in 2012, shifting its position to favor “safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.”

The progression of support for the Hyde Amendment, a stipulation that prohibits taxpayer money from funding abortions, similarly shows Democrats’ radicalization on abortion: While it once was a bipartisan provision, the party moved to call for its repeal in its 2016 platform.

While the idea of promoting “safe, legal, and rare” abortions was coined by a Democrat — President Bill Clinton — former Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii used the phrase during a presidential primary debate in 2019 to much backlash from the Left.

Gabbard supported abortion rights early in pregnancy and the prospect of codifying Roe v. Wade, but said she’d prohibit abortion during the last three months of pregnancy “unless the life or severe health consequences of a woman are at risk.”

Even this position proved too pro-life for the modern-day Democratic Party, with the Ohio affiliate of NARAL Pro-Choice America writing in a tweet, “This is a position — making abortion ‘rare’ — not supported by pro-choice advocates,” and a Vice headline calling Gabbard “stuck in the ’90s.”

Despite Democrats’ drifting position on abortion, Bukovinac says she finds people are often more willing to listen to her pro-life perspective — despite it being “pretty much identical” to the rest of the movement — and will even say they have never heard that point of view before.

“Because it is coming from someone who they can identify with on a personal level that they identify with politically and in terms of worldview, they’re able to think about it in a different way and actually consider it,” she said. “I feel every day more and more like victory is absolutely within our reach.”