WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Pro-life activists examined their cause as a global one and heard a keynote address about “clarifying” their position at the 26th annual Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life on Jan. 25.
The conference, organized by students at Georgetown University, gathered under the theme “Life and Dignity: A Global Commitment,” a day after the national March for Life in Washington.
More than two years after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned the court’s previous abortion precedent, including the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, organizers of the conference said they wanted to examine global circumstances for the issue, as human dignity doesn’t end at U.S. borders.
The Cardinal O’Connor Conference is typically held the day before or after the annual March for Life in Washington, according to the university. It was first held in 2000 and later named in honor of the late Cardinal John J. O’Connor, who was archbishop of New York, a Georgetown University alumnus, and founder of the Sisters for Life. Cardinal O’Connor was known for his pro-life activism on abortion, but also for his opposition to the death penalty and his support for social safety net programs.
Lila Rose, president and founder of Live Action, gave a keynote address that centered more on U.S. abortion politics, telling attendees she believes the pro-life movement is in a “war for hearts and minds.” She said participants should spend time at the conference “clarifying the vision for what we are aiming towards.”
“The pro-life movement’s fight to protect the pre-born, to establish a country that is welcoming and friendly to families, that sees children as gifts: This is a battle for hearts and minds,” Rose, who is Catholic, said.
Rose pushed back on what she described as a “talking point from people on presumably the pro-life side,” namely that abortion is a state’s issue after Dobbs.
“No democracy has the right to vote for the death of an innocent person like a mob,” she said.
The day before the conference, President Donald Trump delivered a video message to the March for Life rally, saying he was “so proud to be a participant” in the process of overturning Roe.
But in his 2024 bid for the White House, Trump argued that abortion should be a matter for the states rather than Congress. He promised to veto a federal abortion ban if one reached his desk.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion data, abortions in 2023 were up 11% over 2020. The 2023 data represents the first full year after Dobbs created what Guttmacher called a “fractured abortion landscape” as states enacted restrictions on, or protections of, abortion access.
Rose sought to draw a distinction between abortion from the death penalty, arguing the latter involves an individual “convicted by a room of your peers.”
“But if you’re an under born baby, you’re innocent,” she said. “That hasn’t happened, obviously, and you have a right to life like everybody else in this room.”
However, the Catholic Church’s official magisterium opposes the use of the death penalty as inconsistent with the inherent sanctity of human life. It advocates for the abolition of the practice worldwide on that basis.
“The ultimate end game of the pro-life movement, the ultimate solution to the human rights tragedy that we are facing of abortion, has to be this revolution of love,” Rose argued.
“It has to be a return to seeing the other, the other person, not as an end, not as a means to an end, not as an object for our own pleasure or use, not as an enemy, and in the case of the child in the womb, not to be rejected, but seeing the other as a beautiful gift. As someone that we can love,” she said.
Asked about Vice President JD Vance’s in-person address to the March for Life the previous day, Rose said he delivered “really beautiful words.” But she added, “During the campaign cycle — I’m just being real here — he said some things that went against Catholic moral teaching.”
Rose cited comments Vance made supporting Trump’s position of abortion as a state issue as well as ones Vance made arguing for mifepristone, a pill commonly used for first-trimester abortion, “being accessible.”
Although mifepristone can be used in early miscarriage care protocols, Vance did not qualify his statement. Approximately nine out of 10 abortions take place within the first trimester, with more than six of 10 abortions performed through mifepristone.
“It’s stupid,” she said of Vance’s position.
“I love JD Vance. I think he’s wildly talented, and we have to pray for him and urge him publicly” to change his position, Rose said. She added, “As a Catholic convert, he should know better, right? He should have that moral formation.”
Rose herself is a former evangelical Protestant who came into full communion with the Catholic Church in 2009.
Other speakers at the conference included Sister Patricia Ebegbulem, a Sister of St. Louis, and Sister Maryann Agnes Mueller, justice and peace coordinator for the Felician Sisters of North America. They spoke about efforts to combat human trafficking around the globe.
Dr. Kathi Aultman, a retired board-certified OB-GYN and an associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, spoke about her change of heart after she was previously a medical director for Planned Parenthood of Northeast Florida, Inc.
Dominican Father Gregory Pine, an instructor of dogmatic and moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies and an assistant director of the Thomistic Institute, gave a talk on rights and duties.
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