A House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring Southern Poverty Law Center interim CEO Brian Fair produced a striking exchange when Congressman Brandon Gill asked Fair directly whether he believed pro-lifers are white supremacists, a position the SPLC has effectively advanced by labeling pro-life and pro-family organizations as extremist groups. Fair was unable to answer yes or no, eventually saying he did not think pro-lifers are white supremacists while pivoting immediately to reproductive liberty talking points. Gill then noted that approximately forty percent of abortions in the United States are of Black babies while Black Americans represent about thirteen percent of the population, asking whether opposing that outcome sounds like something a white supremacist would do. Fair had no coherent answer. Alvita King, testifying from the pro-life side, offered the more direct response: pro-lifers cannot be white supremacists because they fight for every baby in the womb regardless of skin color, and if anyone has a racist founding and agenda it is Planned Parenthood, whose founder Margaret Sanger was an explicit eugenicist who sought to reduce the Black population.
Scott Wilder, spokesman for Pre-Born, joined Dan Proft on Chicago’s Morning Answer to discuss the hearing and Pre-Born’s ongoing fundraising campaign.
Wilder said it is rich to have the pro-life movement characterized as white supremacist when the very founding of Planned Parenthood was rooted in the white supremacist eugenics movement. He said Pre-Born’s work reflects the opposite of that philosophy, standing for life for all and providing free services without judgment to any woman in need regardless of background or circumstance.
Pre-Born provides free ultrasounds at no cost to patients, accepts no taxpayer dollars, separately fundraises for all administrative and overhead expenses so that one hundred percent of donated funds go directly to providing ultrasounds, and pairs each ultrasound with a two-year mentorship program that includes free maternity and baby clothes, diapers, strollers, cribs, formula, parenting classes, and counseling. The organization is in its twentieth year. Wilder said research shows that providing an ultrasound doubles the likelihood a woman will choose life, because the central lie that what she is carrying is not a baby collapses the moment she sees the image. When a woman sees the baby and is told not just that it is a baby but that it is her baby, the decision changes in ways that no amount of argument or persuasion can produce.
He told the story of a woman named Sarah who came into a Pre-Born center, received a free pregnancy test and ultrasound, saw everything, thanked the staff warmly, and then told them she was going to keep her other appointment at an abortion clinic. The Pre-Born staff did not lecture her, argue with her, or withdraw their warmth. They told her they would be there for her no matter what, that if she needed help the next day, the next month, or the next year, they would not be going anywhere, and that post-abortive counseling was available if she wanted it. She left. About a year later she returned with her baby. She told the staff that as she walked out the door, they had known where she was going and still told her they loved her, and that something happened in her heart on the way that she could not explain. She wanted them to meet the baby who would not exist without what they had done and how they had done it.
Wilder framed the broader pro-life opportunity in terms of a shift in public sentiment. A recent survey from LifeNews found that the percentage of Americans who view abortion as morally acceptable has dropped to forty-nine percent from a high of fifty-four percent the prior year, with four in ten Americans now saying abortion is morally wrong. He said those numbers are moving because of the kind of honest, non-confrontational work Pre-Born does, presenting the reality of what an unborn child is through science in the form of ultrasound imaging. He said he thinks of women facing unplanned pregnancies not as abortion-minded but as abortion-vulnerable, susceptible to a convenient lie that he acknowledged he would want to believe himself in a desperate situation. Providing the ultrasound provides the truth, and the truth does the work that arguments cannot.
Pre-Born is currently in an active fundraising campaign. A donation of $28 provides one ultrasound. $280 provides ten. A one-time gift of $15,000 places an ultrasound machine in a center, and the organization placed more than 126 machines last year. The number to donate is 833-850-BABY, or 833-850-2229, and donations can also be made at 560theanswer.com/baby.