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March 27, 2025
Days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, tons of of younger anti-abortion activists gathered at Georgetown College for the annual Cardinal O’Connor Convention.
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A whole bunch of Cardinal O’Connor Convention attendees collect in Georgetown College’s Gaston Corridor to listen to from anti-abortion activists.
(Katherine Wilkison)
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On January 24 and 25, simply days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, greater than 700 largely highschool– and college-aged anti-abortion activists gathered in Georgetown College’s historic Healy Corridor to speak technique, hear from a number of the motion’s greatest names, and “pray for the unborn” at what’s often known as the “pro-life Tremendous Bowl.”
Whereas most faculty college students are pro-choice, a vocal few (or on some campuses, a vocal majority) are vehemently anti-abortion. A 2024 Gallup ballot discovered that whereas 36 % of 18-to-29-year-olds establish as “pro-life,” solely 11 % of the age group thinks that abortion must be unlawful in all instances—together with the entire activists who spoke with The Nation.
Since 2000, the convention has introduced collectively tons of of younger anti-abortion activists from throughout the nation who come to DC for the annual March for Life. This yr’s occasion was sponsored by teams just like the Jesuit Order, College students for Life, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, and CanaVox—a corporation dedicated to opposing same-sex marriage. The occasion transforms Gaston Corridor right into a shrine of pro-life relics, from neonatal coffins to fetal dolls. Whereas their imagery and language diverse, all of them agreed that abortion, at any stage and for any cause, is improper.
Rey Guevara serves on the board of Rehumanize Worldwide, a secular, nonpartisan nonprofit pro-life group devoted to advancing the “constant life ethic.” “I might say (college students) are the strongest a part of the pro-life motion. They’re very energetic, they’ve lots of time and power. We wish to get them after they’re younger,” he stated. College students for Life, for instance, America’s largest student-focused anti-abortion group, has greater than 1,500 campus teams, that means they’re current at greater than 30 % of US faculties. The group claims to have skilled greater than 213,000 advocates since 2006.
Initially coined by Catholics, the constant life ethic seeks to advertise life points from “womb to tomb” and contains an opposition to abortion and the demise penalty. Virtually all of the dialogue, although, targeted on abortion and find out how to rally folks—particularly younger folks—in opposition to it.
Now, as discussions of ready instances, gestation limits, and exceptions for abortion within the instances of rape and incest dominate the dialogue, the orthodoxy of the anti-abortion motion has turn out to be considerably obscured. Zaid Munson, a professor at Lehigh College and a scholar of social actions, has spent almost twenty years researching the anti-abortion motion. “There’s a misunderstanding about what the aim of the pro-life motion is,” Munson stated. “They need to do the whole lot of their energy to finish all abortions. All of them. Not at six weeks, not at eight weeks, not solely these that aren’t the results of rape and incest and so forth. All of them. That’s been true for many years.”
A convention sponsor from Heaven’s Gate Ministries exhibits two urns designed for fetuses and stillborn infants.(Katherine Wilkison)
Present Difficulty
One of many sponsors of this yr’s March For Life, Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, has hosted an annual “Survivors Prolife Summer season Camp” since 1998, bringing round 50 highschool and faculty college students to Washington, DC yearly. This system is a bootcamp to “equip youth to successfully combat in opposition to abortion of their church buildings, faculties, cities, and throughout the nation,” based on the group’s web site. The individuals, most of whom are 15 to twenty years previous, are taught find out how to arrange protests, pickets, and blockades. This summer season they protested exterior of the Division of Justice constructing to name for the discharge of these incarcerated beneath the Freedom of Entry to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE). The Clinton-era legislation was handed in response to the murders and tried murders of a number of abortion suppliers within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties—lengthy earlier than any of the protestors had been born—and prohibits interference with reproductive well being clinics, suppliers, and sufferers.
Survivors’ newly-appointed DC Coordinator, Kristin Turner, is simply 23-years-old, however says that she has been arrested at the least six instances. “I’ve sort of misplaced rely,” she stated.
Turner and lots of different activists mentioned supporting or collaborating in “rescues” throughout which anti-abortion activists enter reproductive well being clinics to persuade, or coerce, people who find themselves scheduled to have an abortion. Anti-abortion activists name it “non-violent resistance.” Reproductive well being practitioners name it harmful and violating. Rescues had been commonest earlier than the passage of the FACE Act, although some activists proceed to take part in them regardless of the dangers together with college students and different younger folks.
Within the early Nineties, the group Collegians Activated to Liberate Life made a reputation for itself by partaking in rescues throughout the Midwest, notably concentrating on faculty cities. The group, which largely stopped collaborating in rescues after the passage of the FACE Act, started internet hosting “various spring breaks” and “CALL weekends” in school campuses to coach and mobilize anti-abortion college students.
Simply days earlier than the convention, Trump introduced pardons for 23 individuals who had been sentenced beneath the FACE Act. He additionally introduced that the Division of Justice would now not pursue prosecutions beneath the act and would drop any ongoing investigations. Lower than 24 hours after the beginning of Republicans’ trifecta within the Home, Senate, and White Home, a consultant from Texas reintroduced a invoice to repeal the act.
Convention attendees and sponsors celebrated Trump’s choice, together with Rehumanize Worldwide, whose former Government Director, Herb Geraghty, was pardoned by the president. Geraghty, a 29-year-old activist primarily based in Pittsburgh, had been sentenced to 27 months in jail for his function in utilizing “drive and bodily obstruction” to blockade the Washington Surgi-Clinic in DC. To Geraghty, the FACE Act “hyper criminalizes purely free speech actions, or purely speech-based actions, like protests, like being in a specific place that somebody doesn’t need you to be.”
A whole bunch of Cardinal O’Connor Convention attendees collect in Georgetown College’s Gaston Corridor to listen to from anti-abortion activists. (Katherine Wilkison)
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For the reason that Supreme Courtroom’s 2022 choice in Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being Group, which overturned Roe v. Wade, there was a pointy improve in anti-abortion violence. In keeping with the Nationwide Abortion Federation, incidents of anti-abortion stalking rose 229 %, clinic invasions elevated by 25 %, and arson and bioterrorism threats doubled from 2021 to 2022. The repeal of the FACE Act will solely result in additional violence, based on Munson. “I feel that the kind of abandonment of abortion rights by federal legislation enforcement will clearly change the incentives for that comparatively small piece of the pro-life motion that’s prepared to interrupt the legislation with the intention to obtain their targets and make it extra possible that they are going to, in truth, break legal guidelines that shield folks surrounding this situation,” Munson stated.
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When requested if he thinks a potential repeal of the act might result in violence, Geraghty stated, “I feel that homicide must be unlawful, and I feel it already is. Nicely, I feel it already is, except you’re speaking in regards to the homicide of unborn kids.” For now, Geraghty says, rescues are right here to remain. “I definitely assume there’ll proceed to be rescue, no matter what that appears like. I might be excited if once more, a mass motion of civil disobedience for the pro-life trigger was reignited. I can’t predict if that may occur, however that might be cool.”
After all, some younger individuals are “completely” turned off by the anti-abortion motion’s ties to the American proper, based on Bella, a Georgetown pupil and member of the college’s “proper to life” group. “You possibly can absolutely be in opposition to abortion and never be Republican. And there’s loads of us who’re however that doesn’t essentially cease the associations,” she stated. A number of individuals who had been pardoned by Trump are affiliated with the Progressive Anti-Abortion Rebellion, a bunch of largely younger, numerous, and progressive anti-abortion activists with an in depth social media presence. With simply 9 employees members and round 6,600 followers on X, PAAU is small however a frequent supply of media consideration. In 2022, Lauren Helpful, the group’s director of activism and mutual assist, was arrested after police raided her residence and located the stays of 5 fetuses. She was later pardoned alongside Geraghty for her function within the clinic blockade.
Whereas it has not at all times been the case, for the final 20 years at the least, Munson estimates, abortion has been a litmus take a look at for politicians. “It’s now not potential, and hasn’t been potential for a very long time, for somebody who’s a Republican with nationwide political aspirations to be pro-choice,” stated Munson. “For a Democrat with nationwide political aspirations, they must be pro-choice.”
Regardless of rising up anti-abortion in a religious Catholic household, Bella was involved about becoming a member of Proper to Life after listening to how different college students mentioned the membership. From accusations of homophobia to “shaming” on social media, throughout her freshman yr she was involved about being publicly recognized as a member. Regardless of being a Catholic faculty, the vast majority of Georgetown’s pupil physique is neither Catholic nor anti-abortion.
The ability of the pro-life motion was on show as soon as once more this month when a Texas midwife, Maria Rojas, and her worker grew to become the primary folks to be arrested for performing abortions following the state’s adoption of a near-total ban in 2022. In an e-mail to The Nation, a consultant from Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust celebrated the arrests. “I’m thrilled to listen to in regards to the arrest of Rojas and her staff,” the consultant wrote. “Texas is following via on their dedication to deal with abortion as against the law and in doing so they’re defending communities most focused by opportunistic criminals like Rojas.”
Whilst some younger folks within the anti-abortion motion have sought to distance themselves from the Republican Get together, Donald Trump’s administration, the right-wing Supreme Courtroom, and the GOP-controlled Congress will undoubtedly assist their trigger within the years to return. Regardless of this institutional help and the motion’s success in utterly banning abortion in 13 states, anti-abortion activists nonetheless see themselves as social and political targets. “The truth is,” stated Turner of Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, “folks hate pro-lifers.”
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Writer, The Nation
Katherine Wilkison
Katherine Wilkison is a journalist and pupil at Georgetown College.
