From Silence to Strength: Unveiling the Activist Journey – Part 1

March 11, 2020, is a day that will live in infamy. You might think this was the dark day when Larry Hogan announced the first shutdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic in my state, Maryland, but you’d be wrong. On March 11 of that year, for the third year in a row, myself and thousands of pro-life individuals beat back a proposed constitutional amendment that would have enshrined the right to an abortion in our state constitution. Over 75 advocates, adorned in bright blue t-shirts, cheered and celebrated in the halls of the Miller Senate Building as SB664 was withdrawn by its sponsor before our first witness could even testify in her hearing. We laughed and bumped elbows; the fears of the coronavirus were only a whisper in the hallways of that legislative building. That afternoon, my husband and I sat down for coffee with a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist friend of ours to catch up while we were in the capital for the day. I asked him, “Do you think they’ll close the legislative session early?”

“Are you kidding?” he replied, “How will the lobbyists make their money?”

Still on Cloud 9, I awoke on March 12, 2020, thinking the world would continue as normal. By noon, the most life-altering event of my generation was announced by Larry Hogan in a press conference as the world watched: schools were closed, businesses shutdown, gatherings limited. The two-and-a-half-year hell under the leadership of Lockdown Larry began, and the next chapter of my already-seasoned activist life unfolded.

How did I become a local hero, defeating lockdowns and mask mandates in my blue county in my deep blue state? It didn’t start with the Covid-19 pandemic. It began five years earlier when another life-altering event was the catalyst for a change I had to make for myself — to stop sitting on the sideline silent while injustice was everywhere.

I was just a quiet stay-at-home mom when the first Center for Medical Progress video expose on Planned Parenthood’s fetal-parts trafficking scheme was released in the summer of 2015. The world watched in horror as Dr. Deb Nucatola described crushing the throats of unborn babies to leave their underdeveloped heads as usable, and profitable, research material. In subsequent videos, we found out that the heads, livers, and eyes of these poor victims were being sold to biotech companies for $50-$75 each, all while the mothers who signed, or were coerced into signing, the consent forms believed they were “donating” the tissue to science. Each week, David Daleiden, the founder of CMP, released a video more horrific than the last, exposing Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry’s crimes. By the seventh week, I watched a Planned Parenthood employee pick through the remains of a set of 22-week-old twins, and I knew my life could never be the same when I saw the fully formed but tiny arm David Daleiden had picked up with a set of large tweezers, showing so clearly to the undercover camera that was 10-15 feet away. I could no longer just be pro-life. I had to do pro-life things.

I had only been pro-life for a few years, a conversion sparked by my first pregnancy. Prior to that, I would have described myself as a pro-choice activist, serving in student leadership roles in college that sought to advance a woman’s “reproductive rights” to the most extreme levels. So, imagine my former self looking on with horror when I joined my local Right to Life chapter that next month with my husband and our third baby in tow. The members of the chapter were passionate and committed, but I was frustrated at meetings. None of these people had ever been pro-choice and believed in perpetuating many of the tactics I had seen every pro-lifer who could never convince me of anything use. Sign campaigns, stickers with pro-life messages stuck to purses, handing out Lifesaver candies at the Fair Grounds. None of it was ever going to change anyone’s mind and changed minds were what we needed! I left the first few meetings defeated.

Since I was nursing a young infant, I had lots of time to read and research on my smartphone. I had just finished reading what I think is one of the best pro-life apologetic tools out there, “Persuasive Pro-Life” by Trent Horn. Each chapter is a manual for dialogue with a pro-choice person, breaking down every argument into understandable content so that you can graciously and persuasively deliver the message to your interlocutor with confidence. In my entire experience as a pro-choice person, no one had ever actually made a rational argument to me about why abortion is wrong or should be illegal — they all just shrieked about how “it’s a baby!!” When I finished Trent’s book that same summer that the CMP videos came out, and as I sat in the dark rocking my own baby girl to sleep, I wondered if Trent would just come and teach my fellow Right to Life chapter members these same arguments. I also felt that if more pro-life people, the most motivated constituency I had ever encountered when it came to political elections, were confident in their arguments that they would also naturally become more active in their advocacy. On a whim one evening, I emailed Mr. Horn from my iPhone, one-handed while I rocked my infant, “Do you ever do seminars?” To my shock, he responded right away: he would love to.

I had the speaker lined up. As a part-time employee at my church, I had a hall to host him in. But how to market, set up, and pay for this endeavor when I don’t know anyone and I’m a complete novice on the pro-life scene? The full story I may tell in detail at another time, but it’s hard to issue a challenge to me and expect that I will do anything but crush it. From winter 2015 until we hosted Trent Horn at our first annual “Pro-Life Symposium” in September 2016, a fearless steering committee I assembled hosted book studies with Trent’s book, attended pastoral meetings with local clergy begging for sponsorships, spoke to congregations, handed out flyers, applied for grants, and bartered with local vendors to take my tiny idea about a pro-life workshop and blossom it into a full day, multifaceted local pro-life conference. When Trent Horn arrived at the event site where I had 10 local pro-life exhibitor tables, 2 additional speakers, and two hundred eager attendees, he told us it was the largest and most enthusiastic event he had ever headlined up to that point.

We went on to host three more annual conferences with our growing pro-life ministry. Our success was undeniable as our Right to Life chapter began to grow in participation, and our activism increased. We reignited dormant respect life committees at local Catholic parishes and became way more involved in the state bill hearings in Annapolis, MD when the General Assembly met for their annual legislative sessions. I joined another state level pro-life steering committee and networked with some of the smartest grassroots advocates I’ve ever met. I learned citizen-lobbying from the best and brightest and soaked in all of the education I could get my hands on to find new ways to motivate and persuade our own side to get active and do something. I took over leadership of my local Right to Life chapter in January 2018, and my first test came the following year when a physician-assisted suicide bill almost passed the state legislature in Spring 2019. My chapter members, in concert with the entire pro-life apparatus of the state of Maryland, killed the bill when we lobbied our own state Senator from a co-sponsor of the legislation to a “no” vote in the body and the legislation died on a 23-23 tie vote on the senate floor.

To hear the movie-script-like tale, join me tomorrow for part 2…