Since the fall of Roe, pro-life advocates have celebrated a number of significant victories, but there have also been setbacks. Unfortunately, the Dobbs decision galvanized the militant fringe of the pro-abortion movement, and it wasn’t long after the initial opinion leak that Catholic churches came under attack.
In America, it’s unacceptable that freely practicing your religion would result in targeted persecution. It’s even worse because the recent anti-Catholic hatred, much like the vigilante attacks against other Christian and pro-life organizations, has gone largely unaddressed.
Thankfully, a group of 20 House Republicans feels the same way. Last month, they wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice demanding the organization address the estimated 160 anti-Catholic hate crimes in 37 states that have occurred in the past two years.
With this violence, pro-abortion extremists have revealed their true colors: They are virulently — and in some instances, violently — opposed to the practice of or adherence to religion.
For pro-life advocates, the battle over abortion has always been about the preservation of innocent life. But it’s becoming increasingly apparent that it’s also about the exercise of our God-given right to religious liberty.
This battle has been ongoing since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, though in subtler ways. The federal government has a well-documented history of discriminating against Catholic organizations in particular, largely because of their religious commitments.
This war has historically been waged via complex attacks on the right of conscience, rather than firebombings or graffiti. For instance, the government revoked funding from a Catholic human trafficking aid program due to its refusal to provide abortion services. The Obama administration attempted to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions and gender transition surgeries.
This also happens at lower levels: A Vermont hospital forced a nurse it employed to perform an abortion, despite her explicit moral objections to the procedure. The state of California attempted to force local churches to provide abortion service coverage in their healthcare plans.
The list of transgressions is long, serious, and growing fast. That’s because curtailing religious liberty is essential to the success of the American abortion industry. If you are religious, or you run a religious organization or business, your very existence is an offense to militant pro-abortionists.
It’s also the case that complex and well-developed Christian infrastructure, such as the network of hospitals and ministries administered by the Catholic Church in America, pose one of the greatest threats to federally protected, universal abortions. If the pro-abortion movement wants to secure a complete victory for itself, it must find a way to abolish or supersede conscience rights.
That’s why an important new front on the pro-life battleground revolves around freedom of religion. We are no longer only working to save innocent lives; we are working to defend our First Amendment rights.
The stakes of the pro-life fight have always been high, and we must rally even now that Roe has been overturned. Some of our most important work remains, and ignorance or indifference at such a critical point in our history could result not just in the continued loss of unborn children, but in the serious and permanent compromise of God-given rights.
We cannot ignore violence or hostility against any of our allies in the defense of life. If we do so, we abandon the principles upon which our exceptional nation was founded.
Timothy Head is executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
