For more than 30 years I worked to overturn Roe v. Wade. As an evangelical minister, I was deeply engaged in the world of the religious right, beginning with my vote for Ronald Reagan for president in 1980. I believed he would appoint Supreme Court justices committed to protecting unborn children, and Antonin Scalia, appointed in 1986, fulfilled my expectations. Later, when President George Bush nominated to the court another strong pro-lifer, Clarence Thomas, I led a vigil at our church to pray for his confirmation.

During those years I also recruited, trained and directed thousands of protesters who blocked the doors to abortion clinics, marched in the streets to denounce “baby killing” and staged sit-ins at the offices of legislators. I was a leader of Operation Rescue, the activist pro-life group; I helped stage the epic 1992 anti-abortion demonstrations in Buffalo. I went to jail and paid exorbitant fines for my advocacy, and was even arrested by the Secret Service for my role in thrusting an aborted fetus at Gov. Bill Clinton during his 1992 presidential campaign. Eventually, I founded a national organization to advance the anti-abortion agenda.

Given my history, you might think I would be thrilled at the perilous threshold at which Roe now stands, following the passage of sweeping new abortion restrictions in such states as Alabama, Georgia and Missouri. I’m not.

Over the last decade, I have changed my view on Roe. I’ve come to believe that overturning Roe would not be “pro-life”; rather, it would be destructive of life. I have witnessed firsthand and now appreciate the full significance of the terrible poverty, social marginalization and baldfaced racism that persists in many of the states whose legislators are now essentially banning abortion. If Roe is overturned, middle- and upper-class white women will still secure access to abortions by traveling to states where abortion is not banned, but members of minorities and poor whites will too often find themselves forced to bear children for whom they cannot adequately care.