Battles in Blue: Fighting for Life Amidst Legislative Challenges

In 2018, still in the hospital after giving birth to my fourth child, I was elected with little fanfare to take over my small but mighty county Right to Life chapter. At my first meeting, I had my newborn, three other small children, and only three other members. Our participation was dwindling, and I think people were burned out from many years of action with not much changing in our state. This was oddly juxtaposed with an apathy that arose after the election of President Donald Trump. The pro-life constituency across the country was sure that he would usher in a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe versus Wade, and the fight for life would be done without having to lift another finger. I became frustrated with people who should have known better that in the state of Maryland, a Roe versus Wade overturn meant nothing! The voters of Maryland had already codified Roe versus Wade into state statute via a ballot referendum in 1992.

The movement saw renewed vigor from an unlikely source: Andrew Cuomo in January 2019. The elder brother of a famous political family finally saw his party break the gridlock in the New York State Legislature after the historic midterm elections of 2018, which ushered in a blue wave in many state houses across the country, along with Congress, and overtook the NY state senate. His first priority? Passing the especially heinous Reproductive Health Act (RHA), which had been lying in wait in the New York State Legislature for many years, ready to rise up and destroy any modest pro-life statutes in a quintessential blue state. The RHA, as it is dubbed, literally nullified any protection for unborn babies in New York. It negated the ban on elective late-term abortions after 20 weeks, erased fetal homicide statutes, and even got rid of protections for babies born alive after a botched abortion, which would have required physicians to provide treatment that saved their lives. While Andrew Cuomo celebrated by lighting up the Empire State Building in pink, the universal symbol for abortion, apparently made popular by Planned Parenthood, the pro-life world awoke from its slumber.

I did my first Facebook live presentation on the RHA for my little county chapter’s Facebook page, letting enraged pro-life Marylanders know that the RHA was not lying in wait to come to Maryland; it was already here. The voters in 1992 in the state of Maryland already approved some of the most permissive abortion statutes in the country. Our abortion laws can fit on a postcard, allowing abortion up to viability with no gestational age enumerated, determined by the abortionist himself, with special exceptions for the health of the mother and fetal disability, ensuring that if a woman wants an elective abortion at any point in her pregnancy and the abortionist can’t find a reason to perform the barbaric procedure. It shocked me to find out that there are a great many pro-life Marylanders who had no idea about the brutality of our state statutes. The ripple effect of the outrage toward Andrew Cuomo’s RHA led to states like Alabama deciding to directly challenge Roe versus Wade and pass abortion bans. The blowback to blue states like mine was pledges from Democratic leadership to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution, which is precisely what Speaker of the House Michael Busch initiated during the 2019 General Assembly of the Maryland state legislature.

Busch’s “abortion amendment” was not the only threat to human life in the 2019 General Assembly, but a dangerous physician-assisted suicide bill that had been winding its way through committee for years finally got a big break that same year when it passed the Maryland State House of Delegates. My new leadership as county president was put to the test in a big way, as we had legislators in significant decision-making capacities for both of those proposed bills. A state delegate of ours was a co-sponsor of the abortion amendment, and our state senator was a co-sponsor of the physician-assisted suicide bill in the Senate.

When I began my pro-life advocacy in 2015-2016, I was lucky to be mentored by some really amazing citizen and professional lobbyists. They revealed many “secrets of the trade” to winning on the state level by just sticking to a few important principles:

• If you know how the state legislative process works, you can figure out how to kill a bill before it makes it to a floor vote.

• Your talking points should be crafted and refined, and there is a specific way to address a legislator to get them to listen to you.

• Technology is your friend.

• There are people out there who will back you up on your issue, but you’ve got to organize them (I call them a constituency).

• At the end of the day, it is about the volume of response to a bill, vote, decision that will move a legislator in your favor. You need to have more of your people making phone calls, sending emails, or knocking on their office door before a vote.

To kill both of these bills, my county chapter worked on our legislators. Legislators in other counties don’t care much what non-constituents have to say. Our job was to urge our representatives to drop their co-sponsorship of those bills and ultimately vote no if needed. We were grateful that the abortion amendment died a premature death when the president of the senate signaled to the speaker that his bill would be DOA in his chamber. But physician-assisted suicide was still alive throughout the legislative session. Our members sent dozens of personal emails to our senator, and then we took a delegation of about 20 people to see him in the state capital during a lobby night. This in-person visit was the turning point for that bill. When the proposed law crossed over to the senate and was assigned a committee, our senator submitted an amendment to take his name off the bill!

The final week before the fateful vote of physician-assisted suicide could be written into a movie script. The final 24 hours were some of the most intense of my life. I had just sat down with a cup of coffee while my little ones were napping when the executive director of our right to life affiliate called me and said, “Ali, we’ve been given another day before the floor vote. We’re targeting the president of the senate.” I spent the rest of the day texting, emailing, and calling every Maryland voter I personally knew with the phone number for our senator, the senate president, and our governor. By 8 pm, we had secured our senator’s no vote. When I went to bed, the vote count was close, according to our coalition lobbyists.

The following day, I listened to hours of floor speeches in the state senate, a ball of nerves and running on pure adrenaline. When the clerk recorded the vote, the count was 23 – 23, and the bill was DEAD. We had done it. We had killed the bill in a state where the issue enjoyed the favor of over 60% of the electorate. But more than that, I proved that by following the playbook I really could win with the grassroots. The hope I felt for the future is indescribable.

We got back to work on the future of life issues in Maryland for 2020, of course not knowing what that year had in store for us. But what it had in store for me was a life-altering mission. To find out how I became a lockdown resistance hero, tune in tomorrow for part 3!