Top Five Ways Millennials Are Changing the Pro-Life Movement

1. It’s Not Just for Church Ladies Anymore

Well, it never really was.

The pro-life movement had already begun prior to Roe, as well as the split in the feminist movement over the rights of the unborn. Feminists for Life (FFL) was founded in 1972 as a feminist alternative to the more vocal pro-abortion wing of the movement that produced household names like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. FFL aimed to be true to the first-wave feminists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Pearl S. Buck, who were pro-life.

Yet the second-wave feminists (now referred to as old guard feminists) were well organized and media savvy. Steinem appeared on television often and published Ms. Magazine, so her ability to reach wide audiences helped cement the cultural association between feminism and abortion. Steinem and her contemporaries controlled the narrative about abortion through the media, and by the 1980s, with the unwitting help of The Moral Majority, all those who championed the rights of the unborn were painted as religious zealots who sought to drag women into a patriarchal past that threatened to re-emerge at any moment. That narrative survives to this day, and was witnessed in full force when the organizers of last weekend’s Women’s March disinvited pro-life feminist groups from participation. (They marched anyway.)

Yet this narrative was never quite honest. True, many religious organizations are impassioned members of the pro-life cause, including and especially the Catholic Church. But there has been a growing sector of the pro-life movement that includes atheists and humanists who present a purely secular argument against abortion. Their anti-abortion rationale is based on scientific and humanistic grounds, and doesn’t hinge on religious faith.

A big-tent coalition has formed in the pro-life movement.

“From the start, most faith-based pro-life groups have been happy to see us,” Kelsey Hazzard, president of Secular Pro-Life explained. “Of course, there are a few exceptions. But on the whole, as the ‘culture war’ mentality fades, more Christians see the benefit of taking a secular approach. After all, abortion is a life or death issue. There’s no time to waste on theological debates.”

Hazzard also stated that while a slim majority of Americans refer to themselves as pro-choice, they support limitations on abortion. “In short: the vast majority of Americans oppose the vast majority of abortions. The ‘on demand’ position is not nearly as popular as the media would have you believe.”

Pro-lifers will work with other groups where they are in agreement. It’s also worth noting that while those who are pro-life are often accused of being simply “pro-birth,” the activists I interviewed were adamant about addressing the circumstances that lead women to choose abortion.

Serrin Foster, the current president of Feminists for Life, states that her organization advocates support for women, often working with other feminists where they are in agreement. “At this increasingly divisive time,” she said, “we need a path forward to focus on ending the feminization of poverty that drives women to abortion: lack of support in school, the workplace, and from the fathers of the children. These are the same issues that Sarah Weddington cited during her oral arguments before the court in Roe v. Wade. Since then, abortion has solved nothing. The stats prove it.”

Along with Secular Pro-Life, organizations such as Atheists Against Abortion and Pro-Life Humanists are locking arms with those who object to abortion on religious grounds.