The pro-life movement is set to receive a $30 million boost from a new coalition that wants to redefine the national discourse surrounding abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade nearly three years ago.
David Bereit, founder of 40 Days for Life, will lead the newly formed Life Leadership Conference, which will be compromised of a number of pro-life groups. The $30 million Pro-Life Venture Fund will be used to distribute $30 million to member groups that will work toward lowering the abortion rate.
The new organization marks the first project to centralize pro-life groups that, as Bereit describes, have been isolated in “silos” for far too long.
“We have been losing more than we’ve won on state ballot initiatives and other measures,” Bereit told National Review. “There was a sense that there is an urgent need for strategic coordination of the movement, and to not only get leaders, organizations, philanthropists working together, but also to get an infusion of financial investment to help launch and build new projects, new initiatives, and start winning more life-saving victories.”
The coalition and fund were announced on Tuesday in a memo written by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, Princeton University politics professor Robert George, and Catholic philanthropist Ray Ruddy to major pro-life leaders across the nation.
While the reversal of Roe was a monumental pro-life victory, the organizers emphasized the importance of anti-abortion groups adapting their cultural messaging in a post-Dobbs era.
“It should come as no surprise that, with the passage of time and changes in circumstance, old strategies for building public support and advancing the pro-life cause in legislatures and courts need to be rethought and, in some cases, revised. Nor is it a surprise that pro-life organizations need to adapt to an altered landscape and new set of challenges,” a copy of the memo obtained by NR reads.
Bereit hopes the Life Leadership Conference, which manages the $30 million fund, will rise to the challenge by streamlining the pro-life movement and enhancing the effectiveness of its messaging.
The big investment aims to reduce the number of unborn children killed, the memo states, “by making abortions less available, by engaging younger generations that are more skeptical about abortion and are trying to find the right answers, and by providing women in need the assistance and resources that will help them to reject a catastrophic choice that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
The challenges that the Life Leadership Conference faces involve ballot measures designed to enshrine abortion rights into state constitutions.
In November, voters in seven out of ten states passed referendums supporting abortion access. The three states in which voters did not approve their respective abortion measures were Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
Bereit, who will now serve as executive director of the Life Leadership Conference, noted pro-life leaders and advocates have thanked him for establishing the new coalition and fund in the hours since the announcement. He left his full-time job in the pharmaceutical industry to join the pro-life movement in 2001.
While President Donald Trump has communicated conflicting messages on the issue in the past, he promised to leave abortion up to the states during his 2024 campaign. His stance differed from that of former Vice President Kamala Harris, who vowed to expand federal abortion access if elected.
During his first week back in office, Trump signed an executive order to strip federal taxpayer dollars from funding or promoting elective abortion. The move ensures that no medical professional feels forced to violate their own conscience or religious beliefs by participating in an abortion. It also further enables Republican states to pursue pro-life policies without federal overreach.