OPINION:
New research suggests that chemical abortions are responsible for a greater share of abortions in America than ever before — and that abortion numbers have gone up after the fall of Roe.
It is, or should be, a sobering moment for anyone invested in the pro-life cause, in part because it underscores the fact that our battle to save children in the womb begins long before a mother receives those fatal pills in the mail.
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Dobbs was indisputably a critical victory for the pro-life movement. It overturned nearly half a century of badly reasoned and gravely harmful legal precedent. But the struggle for life is not over.
Dobbs was no silver bullet. The downstream effects of the ruling have accelerated the distribution of the abortion pill, thanks to activists using the backlash to profit from the deaths of children. We must stop living in reactive mode and instead construct a comprehensive, collaborative long-term strategy to promote life.
Consider the “success” of Planned Parenthood. It targets young girls beginning in elementary school, influencing children through gender and sex education. It continues as a trusted partner through the teenage years by providing these girls contraception — and, of course, abortion – into adulthood.
SEE ALSO: Mail-order abortion scheme prioritizes politics, not health care
By the time they reach early adulthood, many of these women say they would consider abortion viable and reasonable as a health care option.
That’s because Planned Parenthood has re-engineered American culture through gender and sex education, policy, and programs. It had a total revenue of just under $2 billion in 2022, vast sums of which it used to monopolize the hearts and minds of women and men, grooming them for these moments of crisis.
Planned Parenthood spends more on federal lobbying than any other abortion advocacy group. Hundreds of thousands of dollars annually target federal legislation alone.
It’s no accident that politicians like Vice President Kamala Harris are able to publicly and repeatedly claim that abortion is health care without any politically mainstream pushback. Organizations like Planned Parenthood have worked for decades to normalize abortion, redefining and rebranding both death and health care.
They didn’t change culture overnight, and neither will we.
While it is important for life-affirming care to be made available to women facing unexpected pregnancies — as is usually done through the hard work of pregnancy center staff — part of our long-term mission is also to provide solutions at many other junctures in these vulnerable mothers’ lives.
SEE ALSO: Study finds mail-order abortion pills surged by nearly 30K after the end of Roe
The pro-life movement must go on the offensive, and it starts with parents taking an active role in the formation of their children – including and especially on sex and parenthood. Because if our kids don’t learn the pro-life message from us, they’ll most certainly learn it from Planned Parenthood or the internet.
We must also continue to address maternal health care deserts, and increase the resources we need to reach women who are searching for help from the privacy of their home, on their phones. The traditional image of a woman walking into an abortion clinic is a relic of the past. The abortion clinic comes to her now, wherever she might be. At Human Coalition, we’ve seen this problem for years and we’ve been meeting these women where they are, online, by offering them true alternatives to abortion.
For the millions of women who live in a county with no maternity care whatsoever, that telecare abortion clinic might feel like her only means of care at all. For women who are afraid, ashamed, confused or isolated, telecare abortion could feel safer than any of the other resources available to them.
We can’t afford not to reach them. Telecare in particular will be an invaluable resource in both of these efforts. With telecare, we directly challenge the abortion industry’s hegemony.
And if we have any chance at all, we must take it. Millions of lives depend upon us.
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Benjamin Watson is a former Super Bowl champion and current vice president of strategic relationships with Human Coalition.
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