‘The impossible became possible’: the women celebrate a year without Roe

It’s been exactly one year since Bethany Bomberger gathered in a makeshift group outside a hotel ballroom with fellow anti-abortion activists, overcome with gratitude and optimism as news broke that the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade just hours before the Pro- Life had destroyed. Women’s conference officially opened.

“There will be a life before Roe was overthrown and a life after that,” Ms Bomberger said this weekend, tearfully recalling what she described as a moment when “the impossible became possible”. She and her husband lead an anti-abortion organization, which has recently branched out into the fight against the rising acceptance of transgender identity — what she called “gender radicalism.”

As this year’s conference got underway, Ms. Bomberger took the stage at a modest convention center in a suburb outside St. Louis. “Who’s here with me to let go?” she asked the crowd, several hundred women leading the wave. “We pro-lifers, we have life on our side!” She was wearing a small gold chain that read “mama,” a gift from her son.

Last summer’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended the state’s right to abortion and sent the issue back to the states. It also radically changed the landscape of abortion in the United States, closing some clinics, prompting others to open their doors, and sparking new battles over abortion pills, miscarriage care, and birth control. Legal abortions fell by more than six percent in the first six months after the ruling.

For those who believe abortion is the destruction of innocent life and have fought for years to end it, June 24 now marks “a great day in the history of our country,” said Shawn Carney, the president and CEO of 40 Days for Life. The organization of Mr. Carney is a co-sponsor of a Dobb’s anniversary gathering at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, where a crowd gathered Saturday morning to hear Mike Pence and Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece.

“The work for life continues, across America,” said Mr. Pence, who has pledged to make abortion a central part of his campaign for president.

Redi Degefa, who lives in Washington and serves as a congressional staffer, said she came to the Saturday morning rally to show that young women are represented in the anti-abortion movement. She said she had studied for two years and was Catholic and came up with a sign that read “Pray the Rosary to End Abortion”.

“It’s both a celebration and a reminder that we need to hold onto this energy, the energy that we’ve sustained for the last 50 years – we need to double it now and keep going,” Ms Degefa said. “It will never be a victory until abortion is abolished in all 50 states.”

June has quickly become the new focal point of the anti-abortion calendar, a shift from the birthday on which Roe was decreed, January 1973. Carney compared the Roe anniversary to the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which Americans do not celebrate, and the Dobbs anniversary to Juneteenth, which they do. He is among those who have proposed moving the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion event held in Washington every January, to June.

Other activists are observing what they call “Dobbs Day” this weekend in state homes, including in Georgia and Wisconsin. Some are calling for social conservatives to rename June “Life Month,” a celebration of the decision that serves as a swipe at Pride Month.

In the exhibition space this weekend in Missouri, bumper stickers, prayer bracelets, and colorful stacks of “Pro-Life Kids” coloring books lay on tables. Nuns in habit mingled with young women in T-shirts that read “Love Wildly” and “Life Has Purpose.” A selfie station had a neon sign reading “Pro-Woman Is Pro-Life.”

Attendees were invited to “come dressed up in your best outfit from 1972 or 2022” at a Saturday night dance, a reference to the year before Roe was ruled and the year the court reversed itself 50 years later.

“It makes me so happy to know that I’m dancing to celebrate Roe’s overthrow,” Danielle Pitzer, director of sanctity of human life at Focus on the Family, said Friday. She had packed a sequined kaleidoscopic “disco dress,” complete with platform shoes and a matching headband.

While many American women mourned the loss of the national right to abortion, conservative women—especially young women—had fueled the anti-abortion movement and imbued it with the fresh energy of a new generation. For them, this was a moment to celebrate and recognize the new challenges ahead.

American public opinion is moving toward increased support for abortion rights, making the issue a painful political liability for Republicans. The party has struggled to come to a consensus on abortion restrictions, and many GOP presidential candidates have so far avoided the issue. At the same time, women have not stopped having abortions, even in states with a ban: instead, they have turned to abortion pills or traveled to other states.

“We learned this year that there is still a lot of work to be done,” said Angela Huguenin, director of operations for And Then There Were None, an organization that aims to convince abortion clinic workers to join the anti-abortion movement. . That effort has been met with more hostility by many clinic staff over the past year, she said. Dozens of clinics have closed since Roe was overthrown, and many have had to be uprooted and moved to neighboring states.

For Missouri’s true believers, many of whom work or volunteer for anti-abortion organizations, part of the political fallout can be attributed to a communication error: if the public better understood the movement’s commitments to both mothers and babies, seeing things differently.

Some in the movement are skeptical that Dobbs represents a clear victory. Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, the founder of the small anti-abortion group New Wave Feminists, was at a conference hosted by National Right to Life last year when the court delivered its ruling. The room erupted in almost panicked elation, she said. Her own feelings were more mixed.

“It didn’t solve or do anything, it just created chaos,” she said. Some of the new state laws do not include rape or incest exceptions and, she said, Since then, “horror stories” have surfaced in which women have been denied care for pregnancy complications.

“Pro-lifers may have won the battle, but they won’t win the war,” unless they write better laws and advocate for a more comprehensive social safety net, she said. Missteps, she added, “could easily lead to the codification of abortion rights.”

In Missouri, conference host Abby Johnson addressed the women from the podium on Friday afternoon, sitting on a white couch next to a panel of former abortion clinic employees. Ms. Johnson is a former director of the Planned Parenthood clinic and now a prominent anti-abortion activist.

She warned the enthusiastic crowd of the rise of drug-induced abortion and of the abortion rights movement’s commitment to “never stop killing babies.”

“We just got this big win,” she said. “Let’s keep winning.”

Zach Montague contributed to this article.