“Abortion-rights advocates won an epic victory in Roe v Wade. They’ve been losing ever since.”
The cover of the recent Time Magazine summarized what we’ve seen right here in Arizona over the last four decades.
But the Time’s article went on to lament how abortion advocates have squandered their victory over this period, and the magazine glossed over the root of how pro-lifers have built an American majority that favors life.
The cultural shift in America towards embracing the pro-life position has happened person by person and family by family.
And in fact, it was the very “epic victory” abortion advocates are so desperate to protect that is playing a key role in their eventual downfall.
Roe brought the devastation of abortion into our homes. Today, most of us know someone who has been harmed by the dangerous and deadly procedure, and have seen firsthand how abortion harms women and men – physically and emotionally – and ends the life of a preborn child.
The stories of those hurt by abortion led to the national dialogue that we needed to have decades ago but instead are having now. Ultrasound technology has proven the humanity of the preborn child. A new generation has been inspired to take up the pro-life cause and stand up for the most vulnerable in our society.
In Arizona, a series of stories in the Arizona Republic in the late 90s about a young mother who died at an abortion clinic led to the passage of one of the most significant pro-life laws in our state’s history – the abortion clinic regulations.
Find any pro-life law on the books in our state, and you’ll hear a similar heartbreaking story that led to that legal provision. A courageous mom and dad shared in public testimony how their underage daughter had an abortion without their knowledge because the daughter’s boyfriend sent an email posing as the mother, and Planned Parenthood accepted it as valid parental consent. Because of this, today in Arizona, parents’ signatures must be notarized before their minor daughter can have an abortion.
Other women shared how abortion left them with both emotional and physical wounds. Consequently, now a woman must be given an ultrasound exam and an in-person consultation with a doctor 24 hours before having an abortion. Non-doctors have also been prohibited from performing or providing abortions.
These stories have inspired a non-political response as well. It’s been the accounts of women who face crisis pregnancies that sparked the Pregnancy Care Center movement – organizations of compassionate individuals, many of whom have experienced a crisis pregnancy themselves, who are there solely to care for women in these difficult situations.
It is because the pro-life movement has offered a holistic response to Roe that I have such great hope for our cause. It’s taken us 40 years to get here- and to my great dismay more than 50 million preborn children have been lost to abortion, and countless men and women have been harmed during this time. Yet if we continue on this path, I believe we will see an end to abortion in our li