Current pro-life battle has abortion advocates in retreat

In 2019, the pro-life movement has never been closer to ending the injustice of Roe v. Wade and restoring life in America after nearly half a century of turmoil.

Pro-life optimism is at an all-time high in state legislatures, where lawmakers have introduced more than 375 pro-life bills this year alone – strong bills that protect unborn children when they can feel pain, when their heartbeat can be detected, or throughout pregnancy, as well as stopping discriminatory race, sex-selection, and Down syndrome abortions.

None of this is an accident. They’ve been emboldened to act on their constituents’ will like never before under President Trump, who has led as the most pro-life president in history and is rapidly transforming the courts to return legislative power to the American people. 

Neither are the extreme attempts to expand abortion-on-demand through birth, and even infanticide, in New York, Virginia, Illinois, and other states – but the Lord is using this monstrous evil for good.

When New York’s Governor Cuomo lit up the World Trade Center in pink, in obscene celebration of abortion on demand, in flagrant defiance of his Catholic upbringing, he set off a chain reaction. 

Pro-abortion overreach has only increased pro-life resolve and, ironically, hastened the day of reckoning for Roe by exposing the full horror of the abortion agenda

Abortion advocates are in retreat. They have expanded abortion in a small handful of liberal strongholds, where even Democrats and pro-choicers disagree with them. Missouri, Alabama, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, Utah, Louisiana, and others show that momentum favors the pro-life cause.

That doesn’t mean the battle is over or that victory is inevitable.

Every leading Democratic presidential candidate has embraced extremism – including several Catholics, an appalling scandal. Every U.S. senator running has refused to protect babies who survive abortions. They all agree that the Hyde Amendment, the longstanding policy that prevents forced taxpayer funding of abortion on demand and has saved more than two million lives, must go. Even “moderate” Joe Biden now begrudges fellow Catholics that modest concession to their conscience, and Kirsten Gillibrand likens pro-lifers to racists and anti-Semites. 

Meanwhile in Congress, Nancy Pelosi chalks up her caucus’s inability to “get rid of ” Hyde and other pro-life policies not to moral qualms, or concern for the children who would perish, or even respect for the taxpayers, but to “the current occupant of the White House and some in the United States Senate.”

The stakes of this election are clear. Part of America that has been sitting on the sidelines is awakening to the human cost of failing to engage. That is why Susan B. Anthony List is doubling its budget this cycle to replicate its success at the federal level in priority states, working with local allies to pass aggressive pro-life legislation, in addition to educating millions of voters about the need to defeat extremists and elect pro-life leaders.

Pro-life Catholics played a decisive role in the last presidential election. As politicians misrepresent the faith, this is an excellent time to bookmark The Participation of Catholics in Political Life and recall Pope St. John Paul II’s words in it, urging the laity “never to relinquish” their right as citizens to participate fully in the democratic process. No one else, not even a bishop, can fulfill the role given to each layperson – and, like the Apostles sharing the Gospel, it begins with engaging those closest to us: family, friends, and neighbors. Extrapolate to some 50 million Catholic adults, and even a small shift could mean saving countless girls and boys loved by God and intended for this world.

MARJORIE DANNENFELSER is president of the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List. SBA List’s mission is to end abortion by electing leaders and advocating for laws that save lives, with a special calling to promote pro-life women leaders. She is also a Legate of the Northern Virginia Chapter