Pro-life signs at the Supreme Court in 2014. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, building a culture of life

There’s no getting around the fact that the Supreme Court struck a blow to the pro-life movement in its June 27 decision on a Texas abortion law. There were tears of joy among abortion-rights activists for a case that really was about keeping women safe even when they are seeking an abortion. But ideology doesn’t always like common sense or even common ground. Moving from Democratic-party rhetoric about “safe, legal, and rare” to celebrating abortion as freedom is something we ought to work to declare our independence from. The notion of abortion as freedom is a poison to our understanding of ourselves, the family, and, yes, even freedom itself.


And there are people making just that declaration of independence. I have seen at least three reasons to be heartened, three beacons of encouragement, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt.

On the very same day the Court handed down its decision, Abby Johnson, a former director of Texas Planned Parenthood and now a vocal pro-life activist, was overflowing with hope. She had just spent a weekend in Dallas with 550 pro-life women. As she explains it: “Women are obviously targeted for abortion in a unique way, and we are also affected by abortion in a different way than men. It was a beautiful time to come together as women and network with each other, share ideas, and decide how to best move forward as a unified front in order to combat the dangerous narrative that is being sold to the women in our society. We came together to proclaim that being truly pro-woman means embracing life, not destroying it.”

She sees these pro-life women as an “antidote to the dangerous narrative being promoted by Planned Parenthood.” Having women from across the country on the same page creates an opportunity to work for a “unified” counterstrategy to the “war on women” narratives Planned Parenthood and its political candidates tend to drive, news cycle after news cycle, campaign after campaign.

‘Our goal cannot be to simply make abortion illegal — it must be to make abortion unthinkable.’ — Abby Johnson


A highlight of the weekend was a panel where birth mothers talked about their experiences with adoption. “In the pro-life movement,” Johnson argues, “we need more education on adoption — how to talk about adoption, how to present adoption as an option, and the realities of adoption. These women were able to share their experiences so beautifully and candidly, in a way that resonated with every woman in attendance.” Another highlight was the introduction and discussion with a former Planned Parenthood nurse who was able to shut her former clinic down after she quit. It’s always good to hear from those who have been inside the clinics and have learned the true motives of the abortion industry.”


Johnson runs a ministry that offers people who work in the abortion industry a way out. She herself knows what it is like to believe you are helping women and then watch women come back for second and third abortions. She saw firsthand that their lives weren’t better for what she had been doing.

Her breaking point was participating in an ultrasound-guided abortion. When you see life and death before your eyes, she told the group, it’s hard to look away and pretend you didn’t. There’s got to be a better way. And she invites people to join her — including abortion-clinic workers who need jobs but really don’t want to be supporting their families in an industry of death any more.



Johnson said: “I encourage those celebrating this decision to really look at what this is doing to women’s health care. Women have been treated as second-class citizens when it comes to the basic standards of health care for far too long. It is time for all women to demand better treatment and better regulations.”

#share#I rather liked what Elise Italiano, a senior fellow with Catholic Voices USA, put on her Facebook page that day: “We need to build stronger communities so that an unplanned pregnancy, a death, an injury, an illness, or any burden someone faces is not faced alone. We should be carrying one another’s burdens and celebrating each other’s blessings. In an individualistic and lonely culture like ours, abortion on demand is proposed as a necessary evil. The only real solution is to build communities in which no undue burden is faced alone, but is carried together by many. Let’s be good neighbors, shall we?”

Legislation is only one thing, and obviously can go only so far when the Supreme Court is what it has become and does what it does — legislate on sea-change cultural issues. As Johnson put it: “This ruling only confirms what we already know to be true. While pro-life legislation is important, our focus cannot simply stop there. Our goal cannot be to simply make abortion illegal — it must be to make abortion unthinkable. Now is the time for us to step up our support of the organizations that are providing practical assistance to those in need.”


#related#And now also is a time — a point Students for Life made in the wake of the decision — when millennials are open to the points Johnson and Italiano are making. “Fifthy-three percent of Millennials think abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances,” according to Barna Group polling.

The Supreme Court will do what it will — as it has been doing for the more than 40 years of this grave Roe v. Wade regime. But others are working toward a revolution that may yet demonstrate that the most powerful voices in our country are not in the halls of power in Washington, D.C., but in your home and right next door to you. Women deserve better than abortion. Women such as Johnson and Italiano are working to help us find something better — as mothers and sisters and leaders of a culture of life, welcoming all.