The March for Life, an annual pro-life event that both cheers the movement’s progress and calls for further action to protect human dignity, took place this week in Washington, D.C. As a young woman who attended this joyous gathering for the first time, and as someone who was formerly quite vocal about my pro-choice beliefs, hear me out: As I navigated my way through the abortion lobby’s litany of lies, pro-life activists’ kindness made all the difference.
I was pro-choice for many years because I bought the abortion industry’s nonsense. I was convinced that letting women treat their unborn babies as inconveniences to be disposed of rather than incredible blessings to nurture was compassionate — if not for the child, then at least for the mother. I listened as abortion advocates shrugged off questions about the unborn child with half-baked arguments hinging on bodily autonomy.
I even believed that being pro-choice had something to do with the separation of church and state, as though protecting the unborn was exclusively some niche religious belief. I thought that babies placed for adoption would be without families, not realizing that there are an average of 36 couples eagerly waiting to adopt every baby in the United States.
Many women are even misled about the morality of creating families in the first place, buying into the belief that the Earth is overpopulated and that not having children will help save the planet from climate change. These are oft-debunked, though stubborn, lies. I, too, want to reduce carbon pollution — but never at the cost of treating human beings like pollution.
Women such as myself have also been misled by abortion advertising that makes rare edge cases seem like the norm. My heart broke for women seeking abortion after a rape, but abortion advocates never mentioned that these only make up about 1% of cases. Likewise, my stomach turned for women seeking abortion due to incest, but the abortion industry never mentioned that these cases are even more unlikely, making up about 0.5% of cases. Most of all, abortion activists failed to mention that ending an unborn life does not take away a mother’s trauma — it just adds another trauma to the list.
Eventually, I became confused. If abortion were primarily about helping women in crises they had no part in creating, why did it need to be legal in every case? Were we really pretending there was no ethical downside?
The answer, at least from modern abortion advocates, turned out to be a resounding “yes.”
While the early pro-abortion movement touted the “safe, legal, and rare” ideal for abortion in the U.S., the tacit admission of guilt that exists in such a phrase no longer has a place in a movement that completely ignores the gruesome reality of abortion. “Shout your abortion” campaigns have given way to women bragging about getting multiple abortions on social media and about how they’ve found the experience spiritually enriching.
Over time, conversations with a wide range of kind pro-lifers (some friends and some total strangers) showed me the truth about abortion. In one instance, a classmate painstakingly but kindly sat with me over coffee to debunk every talking point I’d learned. By the end of our talk, the coffee shop was closing, but her reverence for life and logic had finally defused the abortion lobby’s hold on me.
These pro-lifers showed me the physical and mental harm that abortions cause, as well as how abortion can serve as a get-out-of-jail-free card for men who fail to step up as fathers. I learned that most women who abort are pressured to do so and that most would have kept their babies if they only had more support. Abortion doesn’t empower us as women: It just lets men off the hook.
Pro-lifers also showed me what it means to truly bring unborn children into the picture by talking about them like sons and daughters instead of mere clumps of cells — a change that feels so honest you can’t help but realize it’s the right thing to do.
Pro-lifers showed me, over and over again through actions, that their support for life is real and comprehensive. While abortion clinics send women away once the baby is dead (or leave them to endure at-home abortions on their own), pregnancy center volunteers care for women both throughout their pregnancy and long after.
Conservatism writ large could take some notes from the pro-life crowd. We often appear like angry curmudgeons, just trying to shut down others rather than promoting the goodness of what we believe in. Pro-lifers truly love life, before and after birth, and I’m living proof that this positivity is a winning tactic.
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Alina Cough is a writer at Evie Magazine and graduated with a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government in 2022.