Democrats for Life, other pro-life groups launch Legislating for Human Dignity coalition

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Jan. 23 was what Lauren Handy called “my freedom anniversary.” It was exactly one year since President Donald Trump pardoned her and 22 others for violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act.

In May 2024, Handy, who led a blockade at Washington Surgi-Clinic in the District of Columbia in October 2020, had received the longest prison sentence of any of them: 57 months.

When she was pardoned the day before the 2025 National March for Life, she had served 17 months and was incarcerated in a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida.

She has kept a low profile since the pardon, but on this Jan. 23, the day of the 53rd annual March for Life, she appeared as one of seven panelists at the National Press Club at an event sponsored by Democrats for Life, which is joining with other pro-life organizations to launch a new coalition called Legislating for Human Dignity.

The event was held to promote the organization’s new drive to find bipartisan legislation to help new mothers lower the cost of starting families and to end what its leaders say are some sharp divisions found in the pro-life movement.

“We’re trying to all get along in the pro-life community,” said Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life. “Our vision here is to restore the dignity in policymaking.”

Handy, a former Alexandria, Virginia, resident who now lives in Washington, spoke briefly about opposing the Virginia constitutional amendment on abortion that will be on the ballot in November.

The amendment will recognize that “every individual has the fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including the ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care.” The state will still regulate access to abortion in the third trimester of fetal gestation.

And she spoke of the need to have “dignity in human relationships to connect to coalition building” and the importance of finding common ground.

Then she acknowledged her history.

“Most people know me as the anti-abortion person, but I’m just as passionate about all areas.” Later, she added, “I have been in and out of county jails for years.” She is now 32.

For a brief time in 2022, Handy was the most famous pro-life activist in the world. She gained international attention from a press conference that April where she revealed that she had recovered the corpses of five unborn children in the previous month — late-term fetuses which she had stored in a refrigerator — from a box of 115 fetal bodies obtained from a medical waste truck at Washington Surgi-Clinic.

The corpses were turned over to the District of Columbia medical examiner; no autopsies were performed. The remaining 110 fetal remains received a burial presided over by a Catholic priest. Authorities did not prosecute her for having the box.

At the time, she was calling herself the director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, or PAAU, a group founded by activist Terrisa Bukovinac in 2021.

She is no longer affiliated with PAAU, and Day told OSV News that Handy had approached her about the group’s participation in legislative action. “She came to me. She’s trying to build coalitions.”

Handy is now affiliated with a group called Hope and Horrors. She also used the occasion to identify herself as same-sex attracted.

Now she said she wants to work “in the noncontroversial field of pro-life politics as a Democrat.”

Day said the 43-day federal government shutdown that began Oct. 1 was part of the impetus for the Legislating for Human Dignity campaign. “It made us see … how dysfunctional we are.”

The primary goal is “putting people ahead of politics,” she said. Day, who has led Democrats for Life for 24 years, is a former Capitol Hill staffer who worked for three different members of Congress and saw firsthand the importance of bipartisan cooperation.

Democrats for Life supported the establishment of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and the passage of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks government funding for abortions overseas.

The new campaign is in partnership with two other organizations: Rehumanize International, which describes itself as a nonsectarian, nonpartisan organization “against all aggressive violence: from abortion to unjust war, capital punishment, euthanasia; and the Consistent Life Network, made up of organizations and individuals with the same commitment to a “consistent life ethic” as Rehumanize.

Jonathan Lucci, another panelist, ran unsuccessfully last year for the Virginia House of Delegates in a conservative district in Northern Virginia. Being a Democrat, he said, “is the most intellectually consistent approach to the important issues that we face,” particularly those related to medical care and raising families.

His race “taught me some very optimistic lessons” about voters’ actual concerns. He said he learned during his campaign that the “vast majority of Democrats who campaigned for him “supported abortion, but we had more in common than what separated us.”

The initial policy proposals Democrats for Life have put forth cover immigration, health care and maternal care.

On immigration, the group seeks “predictable and consistent laws” that don’t change when there’s a different presidential administration.

“Human dignity is neither partisan nor ideological,” it states. “It is a shared moral obligation.”

On health care, the group backs the Supporting Healthy Moms and Babies Act, a bipartisan initiative with draft legislation introduced in both the House and Senate. The proposed law would make birth free — eliminating cost-sharing for prenatal care, labor and delivery, and postpartum care.

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