Pro-life women came together Tuesday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the availability of abortion on demand and to honor pro-life women who served and defended expectant mothers in the past year.
The webinar via Zoom was co-sponsored by Republican strategist and pollster Kellyanne Conway, a former top aide to President Donald Trump, and the National Pro-Life Women’s Caucus.
“I see women all over the country who have been incredible and valiant leaders in this last year that we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which organized and operates the caucus.
Dannenfelser kicked off the seminar with that acknowledgment of all women who responded to the needs of expectant mothers after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe and returned the issue of regulating abortion to the states.
This Saturday is the anniversary of that high court ruling, which someone leaked the month before, sparking protests outside some justices’ residences and at pro-life pregnancy centers.
Thirty-six pro-life state legislators were among those attending Tuesday’s online “Dobbs One-Year Celebration.” Media outlets also were invited to attend and participate in a Q&A.
The National Pro-Life Women’s Caucus says it seeks “to identify, organize, and advance women lawmakers who are dedicated to ending abortion in America by passing laws that save lives.”
The bulk of the webinar consisted of Conway’s presentation of post-Roe statistics, plus testimonies from pregnancy center directors and women who either are mothers or expectant mothers.
‘A Clear Majority’
“A clear majority, in fact about over 7 in 10 of Americans, roughly 72%, agree that abortion should be never allowed or allowed [only] in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, or not past the first trimester or about 13 and a half weeks, three months,” Conway said.
Conway, a GOP strategist who took over as Trump’s campaign manager three months before the 2016 election, was a senior counselor to the president in the White House from 2017 to 2020.
“Being pro-life is very much a women’s issue,” but it is also a “complex issue,” Conway said, speaking from experience.
When people say they are pro-choice, they are often unclear on what they mean by that. When you ask them, Conway said, you realize that they are against abortion on demand, which essentially is abortion with no restrictions or exceptions.
She said many Americans become frustrated when they hear that Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. receives over a half-billion dollars a year in taxpayer funds and donates solely to the Democratic Party.
Conway concluded that a majority of Americans support a national law outlawing abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with the exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.
“There are over 55,000 abortions roughly every year that happen after 15 weeks gestation or later; that’s roughly 150 a day,” Conway said.
So a federal law limiting abortion to under 15 weeks of gestation would save over 55,000 lives, she suggested.
“If you are running to be president of the United States, it should be easy to have a 15 minimum week standard,” Conway said, because the facts show a majority of Americans support such a limit on abortion.
Conway’s Challenges
Being pro-life “is not a matter of winning so much as saving,” Conway said.
With this perspective in mind, pro-lifers need to address pro-life laws and all mothers with compassion.
“On the pro-life side, we have to differentiate … between being pro-life in utero and pro-life forever,” Conway said.
Pro-lifers, she said, need to “elevate the work of crisis pregnancy centers, of adoption and foster care, and certainly to be pro-life for the child’s entire life, and to support and indeed work hard to pass policies that make that so.”
Conway added that for pro-life legislators and other elected officials, being pro-life means having the courage to enact the pro-life laws they promised.
“I certainly hope that those pro-lifers who ran and won successfully and are now hiding under their desks … will come forward and stand up, and speak up, and put up, and show up, because it is incredibly important,” she said.
Moms and Pregnancy Centers
After Conway’s presentation, two directors of pregnancy resource centers—one from Fredericksburg, Virginia, and another from Houston, Texas—shared how they’re trying to build a culture of life that helps both mother and child beyond the womb.
Following the overturning of Roe, the Fredericksburg pregnancy center—called Mary’s Shelter—saw an increased demand for stable housing from mothers and expectant mothers. Thanks to donors, the center was able to meet this demand, founder-director Kathleen Wilson said.
Mary’s Shelter bought three new homes and rented a fourth in addition to the two homes and four apartment units it already had for new pregnant women.
One of these homes now houses a woman identified only as Rachel, along with her six children. When she found out she was pregnant with twins, Rachel recalled, she didn’t want to abort them.
She had no housing nor other options, Rachel said, until Mary’s Shelter opened its doors and provided her not only with a home but resources and babysitters while she started two businesses and became a licensed real estate agent.
Houston Pregnancy Help Center, run by Sylvia Johnson, was the target of hatred and racism in the past year.
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, Johnson said, three Caucasian women blocked the entrance to a Pregnancy Help Center location in a high-crime area where many blacks and other minorities live.
Johnson described how she told the women to get off the property, calling them out for blatant racism.
“You are the face of the new Klu Klux Klan,” Johnson said she told the women. “Yes, that is exactly who [you] are. You do not want these children to live. These are minority women who are coming in for services.”
‘Option to Choose Life’
Johnson pointed out how pro-abortionists will establish Planned Parenthood clinics in minority neighborhoods but build fertility clinics in white neighborhoods.
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, will establish abortion clinics in minority neighborhoods while locating fertility clinics in more affluent white neighborhoods, Johnson said.
As a result, Johnson said, she told the three women that it was racist “that you do not want these women to have the option to choose life for their unborn children.”
Later, another Houston Pregnancy Help Center clinic was vandalized by Jane’s Revenge, an extremist pro-abortion group. Since then, Johnson said, she has had to budget for greater security.
Two more mothers served by the Houston clinics shared their stories. Each described how she didn’t realize the effects that taking an abortion pill would have on them physically, mentally, or emotionally.
The women also described feeling abandoned by pro-choice activists. But when they came to a crisis pregnancy center, they explained, the staff welcomed them and walked with them through their pregnancies and beyond.
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