


There’s a striking detail in a Washington Post article about a former abortion clinic in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The fall of Roe and the subsequent enforcement of Alabama’s protections for the unborn forced the transformation of this former infant abattoir. It now provides goods and services for expecting and new mothers and their children. But it can’t entirely get rid of the traces of its past. A small sticker on the front-desk window reads: “Need to be unpregnant?” (“We can’t get it off,” the clinic’s director says.)
I wrote over the weekend about an abortion clinic that endures in its incarnadine intent, and about Christians who twist their faith to bless the place and the practice. Their ghastly advocacy, I argued, ought to motivate pro-lifers to double down on their commitment to helping mothers and their children. This Tuscaloosa clinic provides an excellent example of what that looks like.
Its work is not without challenges and complications. Many of the women who come to the clinic rely on Medicaid, a program whose fiscal challenges elected officials are right not to ignore. Questions about how best to use federal resources do have answers; see John Gerardi’s article for us last week. Once the slaughter of infants is no longer a part of the discussion, reasonable people can discuss, disagree, and compromise on how best to treat now-living infants and their mothers. Our society is better off when we accept the right to life and move next to these other concerns. May this clinic in Tuscaloosa not be the last to be so transformed. Maybe eventually they can even get the sticker off.