The Pro-Life Women’s Conference: Our Seneca Falls

We love to compare the right-to-life struggle to earlier causes like women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery, but we shy away from seeing that comparison through and concluding that victory is centuries away. We “only” have 43 years and 55,000,000+ victims behind us, but we tell ourselves the end is within our lifetimes. I’d like to think so, but I grow pessimistic. I think about how I won’t get to see justice prevail because there’s no afterlife. I listen to really sad music. I drink wine.

The diversity was incredible. Beyond being pro-life women, we had little else in common. People old enough to remember 1973 mingled with high school students. Mothers brought their young children. A significant fraction of attendees and speakers were people of color. The conference was friendly to wheelchair users. 

I encountered stridently conservative Christians, and members of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians. I met the president of Democrats for Life, and a woman who is running for state office as a libertarian. And we came from all segments of the pro-life movement: pregnancy center leaders, campus activists, abortion survivors, sidewalk counselors, political lobbyists, birth mothers, and former abortion workers.

Pictures speak louder than words, so check out our photo album.

If I were on the other side, and I spied on the Pro-Life Women’s Conference, I would be petrified. We’re unified. We’re learning from each other. We’re thinking historically. We aren’t giving up. 

The Seneca Falls convention took place in 1848. The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote, wasn’t enacted until 72 years later, and not enforced for women of color for several additional decades. It is our duty as pro-life advocates to shrink that timeline as much as we possibly can. Lives depend on it.