In 1994, Mother Teresa spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. She told her audience that America would only "be true to what the founders of this country stood for" when we protected "the weakest of the weak — the unborn child."
Twenty-eight years later — and one year ago this Saturday, June 24 — the U.S. Supreme Court took an important step toward fulfilling Mother Teresa’s wish with its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
By overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court corrected one of the worst decisions in the chronicles of constitutional law. Since Dobbs, new laws in pro-life states have saved more than 60,000 babies across the country.
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That’s more than a statistic. Because each of those children is an incalculable gift, every measure of the value added to our nation falls short. All we can really say is that we are living through one of the greatest victories of life over death in American history.
Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry, of course, see 60,000 lives saved as 60,000 lost opportunities for profit. Their allies in the activist left are doing their best to portray post-Roe America as a patriarchal hellscape — "forced parenthood and failing safety nets," in the words of Mother Jones.
This rhetoric’s hysteria and hyperbole reveal desperation and a serious disconnect from reality, not to mention ulterior motives.
The truth is, those of us seeking to protect life are pushing to provide more generous assistance to both women and their children.
For example, after one Texas mother was denied an abortion last year, she found refuge at a Christian charity, which provided her an apartment and paid for her baby shower. There are countless similar nonprofits scattered across the country, caring for anyone and everyone who comes their way.
These selfless charities put to rest the left’s tired claim that conservatives only care about babies, and only before those babies are born. But private charity alone is an insufficient safety net for post-Roe America, especially given the state of our economy and the breakdown of our communities. That is why I am leading the charge to establish new, pro-life programs at the federal level.
My "Providing for Life Act" would guarantee paid family leave with existing Social Security funds, expand the child tax credit for working families, strengthen the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and child support enforcement, protect the rights of pregnant college students and make the adoption tax credit fully refundable.
It would also create a federal resource clearinghouse for pregnant women, establish a grant program for motherhood mentoring initiatives, and increase our support for faith-based nonprofits and crisis pregnancy centers.
We need policies like these to show America that conservatives are pro-life across the board. And we need them to show that Republicans are willing to put their money where their mouths are for the sake of women and kids. States across the country are doing just that, and we need to do the same at the federal level.
Even so, it would be a deadly mistake to leave abortion out of the conversation. Left-wing activists are redoubling their efforts to take life.
And unfortunately, they are finding diabolical new ways to do so — funding abortion travel expenses through corporate health care plans, mailing dangerous abortion pills directly to women’s homes, violating federal law to perform abortions at U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs clinics and using the power of the state to smear crisis pregnancy centers.
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These efforts are having an impact. Abortions have decreased nationally, but in some states, they have increased by close to 2,000 per month, in large part due to the new availability of telehealth abortions. It’s a terrible tragedy — and it must be countered.
For my part, I will continue seeking to roll back the Biden administration’s agenda and protect life at the federal level.
Meanwhile, state legislators must do their best to shut down the abortion industry. Charities must keep saving lives, one woman, one baby at a time. And pro-life activists must sustain their efforts to transform our culture from the bottom up.
This work is essential, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because America’s continued strength depends on the unborn.
As Mother Teresa reminded us all those years ago: "[W]e must bring the child back to the center of our care and concern. This is the only way that our world can survive because our children are the only hope for the future."
