I will never forget the day my attorney, pro-life legal champion Tom Brejcha, told me this:
“You must know how to punch.”
I just lost a big court decision, and if it stands, I’ll be on the hook to pay Planned Parenthood nearly $500,000 in legal fees.
In the end we won that case, and I never paid Planned Parenthood a dime. And in the end, that bad decision actually helped us win the case on appeal.
I’m thinking about Tom’s comment today, when the entire pro-life movement is reeling from the beating we took yesterday on Issue 1 in Ohio. One of our most pro-life states has become pro-abortion.
But that is not the end of the story.
Pro-lifers in Ohio are not giving up. They won’t leave. They can’t forget about the babies threatened with abortion in Ohio.
And neither are you and me.
Our opponents made the most of the backlash against the Dobbs decision to reverse Roe v. Wade. They seized this moment. But this moment will not last forever.
And we will get through this – if only you could punch.
Every victory we won — from the 49-year war to the fall Roe to a baby saved from an abortion by a counselor on the sidewalk this morning — only happened because we don’t give up.
It may take 50 years to remove abortion from the Ohio constitution, where Ohio voters only designated it. Or it may take less time than that, when Ohio voters realize how they’ve been lied to.
But either way, we will not give up.
Pro-life activists in Ohio continue to go to abortion facilities to offer help to women. They will continue to press the anti-abortion case with their friends and neighbors. They will continue the fight!
And not just pro-lifers in Ohio, but all of us, everywhere.
My father Joe was 45 when Roe v. Wade has decided. He died at the age of 93, almost 18 months before Roe is reversed. He did not live to see that day. You and I will not live to see yesterday’s loss reversed in Ohio.
But we can be absolutely confident that — long after we’re gone — committed pro-lifers will fight for that day.
Because we survived.
Because we can punch.
