This May, many college seniors are exchanging their years of hard work for diplomas and attending commencement ceremonies seeking inspiration.  Unfortunately, graduates at Saint Mary’s College (SMC), a Catholic women’s liberal arts college in Indiana, will likely leave their commencement discouraged.   

The 2025 Commencement Speaker at Saint Mary’s College is Dr. Mary McAleese, a pro-abortion and anti-Catholic scholar whose pro-abortion views and rejection of Church teachings are in direct contrast to the purported values of Saint Mary’s College. Dr.  McAleese has a long history of pro-abortion advocacy, and, as such, cannot be tolerated as a speaker at a Catholic university. 

Click here to send a strong message to Saint Mary’s College: a pro-abortion politician can’t be welcomed as a speaker on your Christian campus! 

Here’s Dr. McAleese’s track record on abortion: 

• Dr. McAleese chaired a meeting at Liberty Hall in Dublin that advocated for abortion, where she was quoted as saying, “I would see the failure to provide abortion as a human rights issue.” 

• Dr. McAleese stated, “The Catholic Church is one of the last great bastions of misogyny. It’s an empire of misogyny.” She continued to say that a Church hierarchy that is “homophobic and anti-abortion is not the Church of the future.” 

• Most famously, Dr. Mary McAleese voted to remove the recognition of the “right to life of the unborn child” from the Irish Constitution, ushering in a new era of dangerous legislation and the ending countless preborn babies’ lives. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to hosting problematic speakers, SMC is a repeat-offender. This is not the first time the college has invited pro-abortion speakers.: 

• They hosted Camryn Manheim as part of the Margaret Hill Endowed Visiting Artist Series and listed Planned Parenthood as part of Manheim’s social activism.  

• In 2024, they hosted Dr. Emily Reimer-Barry at the Center for the Study of Spirituality to discuss reproductive justice.   

• In 2023, they hosted April Lidinsky, who gave the talk entitled “No One’s Going to Tell Me What Kind of Christian I Am: Religion and Reproductive Justice in South Bend, Indiana.” (The recording of the event was removed from their website after public controversy.)   

The increasing number of Christian school administrations, health centers, and professors willing to compromise on their biblical values by promoting known pro-abortion speakers is alarming. Christian school administrators are losing sight of the biblical principles that formed the very institutions they are hired to safeguard. This has resulted in schools across the nation misleading students, families, and donors. 

Since 2021, Students for Life of America’s research arm, The Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement, has identified and exposed Christian schools with connections to the abortion industry with the goal of breaking those ties.  After investigating all 732 colleges and universities affiliated with Christian churches in the United States throughout 2024, results showed more than one in ten Christian schools maintained some type of relationship with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry.    

Saint Mary’s College is now a “C” school for hosting numerous pro-abortion speakers.  Help us send a clear message that these speakers are not acceptable for Christian colleges to support, and that Saint Mary’s College must remove these speakers from their website here.

This is one of many schools caught promoting abortion.  Check back in August when we release the full study of schools abandoning their Christian values in support of killing preborn children.