“We Make History”: Remarks at the Maryland March for Life

Pro-life atheist Terrisa Bukovinac, who is the vice president of Secular Pro-Life and executive director of PAAU: Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, recently spoke at the Maryland March for Life. Video is available on our YouTube channel, and her remarks are transcribed below.

Emcee: I said it before, we need every voice in this fight, every people group represented, and that is why I am so excited for our next speaker. You can just take every myth, every broken talking point that the abortion industry has tried to use against the pro-life movement, and throw that out the window. Because we have Terrisa Bukovinac, founder and executive director of PAAU: Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. She is leading the charge to end the influence of Big Abortion within the Democratic Party and in progressive cities across the nation. Welcome, Terrisa!

Terrisa Bukovinac: Hey everybody! I want to thank the organizers so much for inviting me to speak today at the Maryland March for Life. It is a privilege to make history with you all. I know the word “historic” gets thrown around a lot these days, and you don’t have to tell me that it’s been a crazy couple of years. But I know we are all looking forward to that historic day, sometime in late June, when the U.S. Supreme Court reverses Roe vs. Wade.

We have good reason for hope. But we do not have good reason for complacency. Roe is just the first step. We won’t be able to end the killing immediately. The abortion-industrial complex is not going to give up their lucrative violence without a vicious fight. And we know that it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to save a child.

Now is the time to make a plan. Our pro-life village is beautifully diverse. We have people from every political persuasion, every religious background. If you’re Catholic, what are you going to do to promote life in your parish? If you are Jewish, what are you going to do to help young families in your synagogue? If you are a Protestant, what are you going to do to end abortion in your congregation? If you are from another faith, what are you going to do to promote a culture of life in your religious community? And if you are like me and not religious, what are you going to do to end child-killing in your community?

I am an atheist. I am politically progressive. And I am pro-life!

Big Abortion doesn’t want you to believe that people like me exist. They are wrong. There are more than 12 million non-religious pro-lifers in America today, and more than 21 million pro-life Democrats. There is a vibrant community of people working hard to defend the defenseless.

We are gathering in large groups outside public places, like we are right now. We are congregating around the facilities where abortions are happening, where the killing is happening, while the killing is happening. We are moving past our fears and we are going into facilities and rescuing these children and their parents from exploitation and death. And we are boldly putting our bodies in between the oppressors and those who they are oppressing! And we are doing it with the knowledge that in order to fight the injustice of abortion, we must also in turn face injustice ourselves.

Social justice movements have won when the odds were completely against them in this nation. But the odds are in favor of life! Now is the time to find out what you’re made of, and to help usher in a pro-life revolution — for this nation and for the globe!

So today, we make history in Annapolis. And tomorrow, we make history in our conversations with our friends and our co-workers and our classmates. And next week, we make history out on the sidewalks and inside abortuaries. And in the coming months, we are making history as we call our legislators daily, and every elected official, and remind them to defend the unborn! And every action that we take is historic when we take an action to preserve life — because every life that we save changes the world.