When I first became director of Priests for Life thirty years ago, with no staff or budget, I knew exactly how I wanted to start: I traveled to meet one-on-one with the leaders of all the national pro-life groups to ask how I could help them.
To this day, one of my greatest joys in the movement is to interact with these leaders and to foster the spirit of unity and collaboration that is such a key to the success of our efforts.
That collaborative spirit was tangible again this past week as my staff and I welcomed several dozen national leaders to our national headquarters in Florida for three days of information sharing, careful thought and lively discussion about the key questions facing our movement.
During the receptions before the dinners, I marveled as I walked around – at one moment talking with a leader from one of the largest networks of pregnancy centers in the world, only to turn to talk to a man who almost single-handedly has sustained the work of providing alternatives to abortion in New York City.
The next moment I was side by side with innovative leaders in providing healing after abortion, only to turn to talk to one of the leading experts in pro-life legislation, lobbying, and political activism.
The next person I turned to had helped craft and pass the law that now protects unborn babies in an entire state, and then found myself talking to one of the key medical experts who has literally taught the nation about the connection between abortion and breast cancer.
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And so it continued for three days.
The meetings of these days produced some important points of consensus, which include but are not limited to the following:
- Every one of the upcoming state battles over abortion must become a national battle. These are often defensive battles against proposed constitutional amendments to “enshrine” unlimited abortion. The national groups agreed that we need to do more to help each state with messaging, volunteers, and money.
- The pharmacies that decide to sell chemical abortion drugs, their parent companies, and the individual pharmacists, have to be held legally responsible for the damage and death that will occur as a result. This is a top priority in fighting the upswing in chemical abortion.
- The House of Representatives needs to pass the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion” bill, H.R. 7, as quickly as possible to express the continued resistance of the American people to being forced to pay for someone else’s abortion.
- Candidates for federal office need to support gestational limits on abortion. It is not enough to say we’re not going to pay for abortions. The law needs to actually protect the unborn and make abortion illegal.
- Those who hold and seek elected or appointed office must not hide from the abortion issue, but address it directly and confidently. Pro-life groups need to increase their efforts to educate public officials that a pro-life position on abortion, articulated with clarity and compassion, is a winning issue.
The pro-life groups will continue communicating with one another and with the public on these points and call on pro-life Americans to implement them.
Meanwhile, the pro-life leaders also heard from Mr. Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, about the censoring of this network by AT&T’s DirecTV. The manner in which Newsmax covers issues like abortion gives the American people a clear and fair airing of the issue, without silencing the moral and religious voices of the people.
That’s why the Left wants to cut off Newsmax from millions of Americans. In fact, in 2021 Nancy Pelosi requested that DirecTV drop Newsmax.
Those who want to defend Newsmax against this oppressive censorship by the Left are invited to visit IWantNewsmax.com to take further action.
The bottom line: We are all in this movement together, and we succeed when we act like it.
