New Players Join the Old Timers in the Pro-life Movement

WASHINGTON, DC, Aug 29 — A famous senior citizen recalled on paper what happened when, as a young girl, she found herself to be pregnant. Her boyfriend abandoned her. “I was scared to pieces. Back then, if you had money, there were some girls who got abortions, but I couldn’t deal with that idea. Oh, no. No. I knew there was somebody inside me. So I decided to keep the baby.” It happened 1928 when Maya Angelou was 16. Her account of the incident was published in Family Circle Magazine in 2000 under the headline, “The Decision That Changed My Life: Keeping My Baby.”

In conclusion, she wrote, “Years later, when I was married, I wanted to have more children, but I couldn’t conceive.  Isn’t it wonderful that I had a child at 16?  Praise God!”

The National Women’s History Museum describes Maya Angelou as a “poet, dancer, singer, activist, and scholar.” She was awarded the National Medal of Arts (2000) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010). She won three Grammy Awards for her spoken-word albums (1993, 1995, and 2002). In 1994 she was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was 86 when she died in 2014.

Since the Supreme Court overturned the pro-abortion Roe vs. Wade decision in June we’re hearing and reading more and more stories such as that provided by Maya Angelou. Recently, Maria Gallagher, who heads up the Political Action Committee of the Pennsylvania’s Pro-Life Federation, told us about Betty Caffrey, president of the pro-life organization Pennsylvanians for Human Life Wyoming Valley Chapter of Wilkes-Barre, PA. 

Betty, who just turned 94 years of age, has been promoting life for the unborn for a good part of her own life and continues her tireless activism in the local pro-life movement. “She has spent decades serving pregnant women and their families in northeastern Pennsylvania, offering them everything from compassionate counseling to clothes for newborns. Her dedication on behalf of the most vulnerable is legendary,” according to Gallagher. “I have to say I admire Betty so much. She has been so faithful to the cause of restoring legal protection to preborn babies. She lived to see the fall of Roe v. Wade and the dawn of the post-Roe era. When I think of proudly pro-life female leaders, Betty Caffrey tops the list.”

And the word is spreading as the New York Times tells us. According to a report published last month, “The rollback of abortion rights has been received by many American women with a sense of shock and fear, and warnings about an ominous decline in women’s status as full citizens … But for some women, the decision meant something different: a triumph of human rights, not an impediment to women’s rights.”

Ruth Graham, who covers “religion, faith and values” for the Times, authored the story and reports that the post-Roe nation is not what it used to be nor are the players. 

The message: “Many, but not all of them, are Christian conservatives, the demographic that has long formed the core of the anti-abortion movement. Others are secular and view their efforts against abortion as part of a progressive quest for human rights. All have grown up with once unthinkable access to images from inside the womb, which has helped convince them that a fetus is a full human being long before it is viable … Many believe the procedure should be banned at conception — that even the earliest abortion is effectively murder. But they embrace the mainstream anti-abortion view that women are victims of the abortion ‘industry’ and should not be prosecuted, putting them at odds with the rising “abolitionist’ wing of the movement calling for women to be held legally responsible for their abortions.”