Editor’s note. This appears on Page One of the June issue of National Right to Life News which arrived in your inbox this afternoon. Please share this—and the entire contents of the 48-page issue—with your pro-life family and friends.
The pro-life movement envisions an America in which abortion is unthinkable.
We want to build an America that safeguards the lives of both unborn children and their mothers. We aspire to live in a society where women can succeed and realize their dreams without being pitted against their children, where the lives of children are never considered disposable, where tax dollars are never used to fund abortions, and where human rights begin when life itself begins.
Step by step, state by state, in Congress after Congress, we are making that happen. But the successful passage of protective legislation hinges upon who is elected to public office. That is why political engagement remains central to our efforts!
our elected representatives on both the state and federal levels new opportunities to enact protections for unborn children and their mothers. These include protections that would have previously been struck down under Roe v. Wade (1973). Dobbs and the new abortion legal landscape it ushered in further underscore the importance of pro-life involvement in the political process.
Following Dobbs, abortion advocates stirred up and exploited confusion about the ruling. They falsely claimed that the pro-life movement wanted to punish or prosecute women who have abortions. They intentionally blurred the definitions of miscarriage and abortion. They tried to discredit proven science about human life before birth. And they actively spread misinformation about abortions in the rare cases where the life of the mother is at risk, there is a serious medical emergency, and when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
In the 2022 elections, pro-life candidates were subjected to an almost unprecedented onslaught by their opponents on abortion. Well-funded pro-abortion groups lobbed barrages of attack ads filled with fearmongeringand outright lies. It cannot be overstated just how much pro-abortion candidates were bolstered by election spending from pro-abortion political action committees like EMILY’s List, Planned Parenthood Action, and NARAL Pro-Choice America, who reported spendinga collective $150 million to influence the midterm elections. To gin up their supporters, abortion advocates painted even the most modest pro-life proposals as draconian and the pro-life candidates who supported them as extreme.
Meanwhile, pro-abortion Democrat candidates were actually the ones embracing radical positions. They made it no secret that they want unlimited abortion nationwide, for any reason until birth, and they want to use taxpayer dollars to cover the cost. If Democrats had their way, far from being unthinkable, abortions would be widely available, free of charge, and common.
Nearly every Democrat nominee for Congress in 2022 signaled support for the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act (more aptly named the “Abortion Without Limits Through Birth Act”). This would enshrine unlimited abortion in federal law and strike down existing protections for unborn children and their mothers on the state level, including parental involvement and informed consent laws. Democrat candidates also expressed support for using tax dollars to pay for abortions. Some even called for legislation to impede, or render impossible, the work of more than 3,000 pregnancy help centers across the country that serve women and babies in need.
Despite a challenging political landscape in 2022, pro-life candidates prevailed in retaking the U.S. Houseand ending the one-party rule that Democrats had enjoyed during the first two years of the Biden presidency. National Right to Life and its network of state affiliates and chapters were instrumental in achieving this huge win. Through focused messaging, strategic spending, and targeted get-out-the-vote efforts, National Right to Life helped to deliver key margins of victory for pro-life candidates in many of the most hotly contested districts.
In 2022, National Right to Life and its political entities supported 284 pro-life candidates running in U.S. House and Senate races, winning 236, or 83% of those races. Eleven competitive Congressional House seats flipped from pro-abortion Democrat to pro-life Republican. National Right to Life’s political entities were actively engaged in reaching thousands of pro-life voter households in each of those eleven competitive races.
With their new majority in the House, Republicans ousted Nancy Pelosi, one of the pro-abortion movement’s fiercest allies, as Speaker. In the first few months of the 118th Congress, House Republicans, led by pro-life Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have delivered on their promises to advance pro-life bills, block pro-abortion ones, and serve as a critical check against the extreme pro-abortion agenda pushed by Senate Democrats and the Biden Administration.
In the Senate, Democrats gained a narrow majority in 2022, picking up one seat. The breakdown of the Senate currently stands at 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans. Several pro-life Senate candidates defied predictions and prevailed in competitive races including Marco Rubio in Florida, Ted Budd in North Carolina, JD Vance in Ohio, and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
With the 2024 elections on the horizon, please remember that voting is one of the most important things we can do to safeguard lives threatened by abortion. We must continue to elect leaders on all levels of government who back protections for the unborn as well as opportunities for their mothers to receive the support and resources they need to make life-affirming decisions.
(To assist pro-life candidates in navigating the abortion issue, National Right to Life published a helpful messaging guide entitled, “What Every Candidate Needs to Know about Abortion.”)
Electing pro-life lawmakers, and defeating pro-abortion ones, helps to bring us closer to an America where abortion is unthinkable. In that America, no woman would be made to feel that abortion is the only solution to an unexpected pregnancy. Abortion would not be used as a form of birth control. Unborn children would not have their lives violently taken from them simply because they are labeled “inconvenient” or “unplanned.” And no more women would be devastated by the physical and psychological after-effects of abortion and be resigned to suffer them in silence.
That is what we are fighting for. Thank you for standing with us.
With your votes, your prayers, and your dedicated support of National Right to Life, you are making a difference. You are making abortion unthinkable.
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
