Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement

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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

A couple weeks ago, we asked our awesome subscribers to email us and tell us how they’re feeling about the current state of the pro-life movement, and we were blown away by your responses. 77 of you replied, and it was so encouraging for our team to hear from you and connect with you. A bunch of you shared that you felt:

  • Excited that we have more access to great pro-life arguments 
  • Frustrated because good dialogue—the courage to speak up at all, and the calm to stay kind when you do—is really hard
  • Excited because Dobbs gave us the ability to pass state laws against abortion
  • Frustrated because the pro-choice side has a much bigger microphone and budget
  • Excited by the dedication, passion, and commitment they see in the pro-life movement, no matter the obstacles, no matter how laws change over time
  • Frustrated because some pro-life leaders talk in a way that makes it easy for pro-choicers to paint the whole pro-life movement as the pro-everything-Trump-does movement
  • …and many other excitements and frustrations

Sometimes the pro-life movement feels a little bit like an unhealthy family Christmas where everyone has to pretend like everything is fine and we have no problems—everything about the pro-choice movement is 100% evil; everything about the pro-life movement is 100% perfection.

So it was so encouraging to hear you all name both the beauty and the brokenness of the pro-life movement. Because this side of heaven, just about nothing is all one or all the other—we humans are all both broken and beautiful, and so are the systems and institutions we create. (Mild Christianese alert—if that doesn’t resonate for you, take what’s helpful and leave what’s not.)

Sometimes it’s hard to hold both. We feel disloyal if we name anything that’s not good on our side, or we feel like abortion is so horrific and the pro-choice side is so radical that anything bad the pro-life movement does isn’t even worth talking about. Or on the other end, we feel like there’s so much brokenness in the pro-life movement that it’s hard to see good in it anymore, or feel like it could ever be a healthy movement. 

To hold and take seriously both brokenness and beauty, grief and hope, sometimes feels like a kind of madness. But I also think it’s the only sane way to live in a world as beautiful and broken as ours.

All that to say—thanks for writing in and sharing your excitements, frustrations, thoughts, and feelings. We always love hearing from you, but it was particularly encouraging and grounding to hear from so many of you about how you hold the complexities of the pro-life movement.

The post Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

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Rebecca is the Director of Scholarship at Equal Rights Institute. She is a PhD candidate and former teaching assistant in philosophy at the University of Southern California, where she also cofounded and co-led the student pro-life club.

A sought-after speaker, Rebecca frequently delivers lectures all across the country at academic conferences, colleges, churches, high schools, and other events.

Rebecca’s favorite part of her work at USC was teaching both her philosophy students and her pro-life club members how to cultivate mutual, respectful dialogues with people they disagree with. That work has led her to the strong conviction that if we can teach one side of an issue how to approach dialogues well, people on the other side will very often follow suit, so that we really can radically transform the state of public discourse on abortion just by helping the pro-life side to have a better approach: we can create a culture where people on both sides value each other more and perceive the truth more clearly, and ultimately we can change more minds and save more lives. At ERI, Rebecca uses that passion and experience and her philosophical expertise to train and inspire pro-lifers through writing, video content, live speaking and interviews, academic research, and individual consulting for pro-life advocates and politicians.

“You can’t fix a dialogue single-handedly—it takes two good-faith interlocutors to make a good-faith dialogue. But what you can do is make the first move. You can clearly communicate and demonstrate your care for the other person, your genuine desire to understand where they’re coming from, and your openness to considering their point of view, even while they’re not doing the same for you. It takes a little bit of work and a lot of charity, but if you do that, far more often than not the other person will meet you halfway—even people you think of as crazy extremists.”

Rebecca expects to complete her PhD in philosophy at the University of Southern California in May of 2026. Her dissertation is in metaethics; her other areas of research include philosophy of law, epistemology, and philosophy of religion. She has earned an MA in philosophy from USC, as well as a BS in philosophy, summa cum laude, from Hillsdale College, with minors in mathematics and theatre.

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