From the SFLA Blog

Roe’s Reversal Was a Milestone, Not the End of the Road  

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Caroline Wharton - 30 Oct 2022

There are a lot of misconceptions about the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and one is that the fight for the right to life is over — when in actuality, it has only just begun. Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins recently wrote an op-ed on this topic in a CNN symposium called “The Conflicts in a Post-Roe America are Just Beginning.” As the only pro-life organization asked to participate in this project of eleven participants, Hawkins made the most of representing the pro-life movement with a piece entitled, “We’ve Been Preparing for Years to be the First Post-Roe Generation.” 

A history buff, Hawkins began by calling a familiar, ancient battle to mind, writing:  

“Anyone familiar with a section of the Alps called the Semmering knows the story of an impossible feat – a thread of tracks built impossibly high between Vienna and Venice before an engine existed with the force to pull a train from one place to another. That kind of vision has driven Students for Life of America, founded as a post-Roe organization, years before it seemed possible to many people that the Supreme Court’s wrong-headed decision in Roe would ever be gone. 

“When I set out to help build what is now a nationwide network of more than 1,300 groups in all 50 states, I was unwavering in my belief that Roe would eventually be overturned – even as people told me privately it would never happen. But abortion was not written in invisible ink in the Constitution, and single-issue voters like my colleagues and me persevered through political wins and losses, fixed on the goal of seeing life protected both in law and in practice.”  

President of SFLA, Kristan Hawkins, wearing a Life Dress made by Angelique Clark

Hawkins continued by writing on the pro-life movement’s plan, including supporting women through SFLA’s Standing with You supportive services initiative, training students across the country to become dedicated pro-life activists, and working with pro-life action organizations like Students for Life Action (SFLAction) to help protect life in law.  

The most important part of Hawkins’ op-ed, however, is the reminder to our country that our end goal, to make abortion unthinkable and unavailable, won’t happen tomorrow. She wrote,  

“But getting where we want to go won’t be quick. The day after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, we did not elect a Black president. The day after the 19th Amendment was ratified giving women the right to vote, we didn’t have a woman Speaker of the House. And the day after Roe fell, our work in defending the innocent wasn’t finished. 

“We’re battling 50-year-old talking points and assumptions to reopen conversations. We’re not running away from that. We plan to have one million conversations this year alone – many of which have already started and are focused on engaging younger voters whose voices need to be heard – because you can’t build new law and new services without new consensus. And we need new consensus that rejects Roe’s outdated and prejudiced legacy.”  

To read the rest of the article, click HERE.  

READ NEXT: This is How the Pro-Life Movement Saves Babies: Truth, Love, & Support 

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