Necessity is the mother of new friendships
Hi All,
SPL’s mission is three part:
- Make secular arguments against abortion
- Create space for non-traditional pro-lifers
- Build interfaith (any faith or no faith) pro-life coalitions
I’ve told you about our 2024 wins regarding part 1 (creating debunking content) and part 2 (connecting with non-traditional pro-lifers).
Our progress with part 3 (coalition building) has also been exceptional.
Coalition-building is crucial to the pro-life movement’s success. We’re often outfunded and outresourced by abortion advocates. We can’t afford to be inefficient. Coalition work helps us avoid duplicating efforts and allows us to pool resources, supporting each other’s varied strengths.
To that end, in 2024 SPL created public-facing content with major pro-life organizations. AAPLOG invited us to interview Dr. Christina Francis, and the first interview went so well they invited us back twice more. Americans United for Life published our piece “The Overlooked Findings of the Turnaway Study.” Live Action featured me in their video “Is opposing abortion religious extremism?”
We had many collaborative projects. We were able to work with other pro-life orgs to send coalition letters to Congress and amicus briefs to courts.
I’m especially proud of my joint effort with Eric Scheidler (Pro-Life Action League) and Dr. Charles Camosy (bioethicist at Creighton University). Together we co-authored “Pivoting to Unwanted and Coerced Abortion: A Manifesto.” Decreasing unwanted abortions should be easy common ground between pro-life and pro-choice people. I’m hoping to do more work on this in 2025.
This year SPL worked tirelessly to both expand our network and strengthen ties between other pro-life orgs. We’ve connected philosophers, communications experts, attorneys, activists, doctors, and researchers to SPL and to one another. As we learn from and support each other, our power increases. (The upcoming Storytelling Symposium—which you should all register for—is one of the fruits of these labors).
SPL has an outsized online presence, but the most influential networking is in person. Face-to-face meetups build stronger connections through nonverbal cues, spontaneous interactions, and shared experiences. Often these events are more social than formal, and give people a chance to get to know each other beyond professional, task-oriented contexts.
In other words, we’re not just connecting to colleagues. We’re building friendships.
Your donations make these partnerships possible. You’ve covered travel costs allowing us to get where we need to be when we need to be there. Donations also help us train volunteers to absorb countless necessary tasks, freeing staff to arrange, prep for, and attend key meetings. Your dollars drive our coalition-building work.
Come together. Help us get our full $15k matching grant.
For 2024 we were projected to have a $23,000 budget gap. To our delighted shock, a long-time SPL donor offered a $15,000 matching grant until the year’s end (so tomorrow, 12/31). If we match the full amount, that’s $30,000, eliminating our budget gap and then some.
You guys have already matched $8,700. I and SPL’s whole team are so honored.
This also means we’ve got room to match another $6,300 (for $12,600 to SPL in total). If you can pitch in, please do. Consider an extra gift to SPL or, if you were already planning on giving, a slightly larger gift. Help us hit our mark!
And whether you can give or not, another powerful way to advocate is to recommend us to your friends and family. Suggest SPL as a worthy nonprofit for their 2024 charitable giving. They can go to secularprolife.org and click the “donate” button. Super simple support.
Thank you for helping us create pro-life alliances.
Monica
If you appreciate our work and would like to help, one of the most effective ways to do so is to become a monthly donor. You can also give a one time donation here or volunteer with us here.
