This year’s Roe Remembrance event in the Ohio Statehouse Atrium combined themes of celebration and challenge for the pro-life movement.
Speakers at the program praised the U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 2022 that returned control of decisions on abortion to individual states. But they also expressed concern about proposals by pro-abortion groups for a statewide vote on unlimited access to abortion.
Greater Columbus Right to Life sponsored the event on Monday, Jan. 23. The organization’s executive director, Beth Vanderkooi, noted that the day was in the middle of two significant dates for the pro-life movement – 50 years (plus one day) since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide on Jan. 22, 1973, and seven months (minus one day) since the same court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning the Roe ruling.
The Dobbs decision allowed Ohio’s Heartbeat Law banning abortion after the first six weeks of pregnancy to go into effect immediately, but that law was put on hold by a Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge in September.
This puts the status of abortion in Ohio in what Vanderkooi described as “legal limbo.” Abortions can still take place in the state through the first 20 weeks of pregnancy while the challenge to the Heartbeat Law proceeds through the courts.
Meanwhile, abortion supporters have said they are working on two plans to have voters consider a state constitutional amendment that would allow unlimited abortion access in Ohio, while pro-life groups are working with legislators on laws that ultimately would make abortion illegal altogether in the state.
Vanderkooi said efforts during the next year or two to determine which side will prevail will be “the fight of our lives – or their lives,” referring to the unborn. “What happens next is in our hands, and it’s coming,” she said, referring to recently announced plans by the Mission Control Inc. political consulting group to work on behalf of a pro-abortion constitutional amendment in Ohio.
Mission Control was successful in 2022 in an effort to have Kansas voters amend their state’s constitution to allow unlimited abortion. “I can’t wait to take them on to show them they aren’t in Kansas anymore,” Vanderkooi said.
She said that although Roe v. Wade no longer is law, the Roe Remembrance will continue to take place on or near Jan. 22 each year for three reasons. The first is “to mourn those children (lost to abortion) – 64 million in the U.S. since Roe, 20,000 last year in Ohio, 67 a week here in Columbus. We should mourn them. We should remember them.
“We also come together to learn,” she continued. “Our testimonies today are not by accident. Marcy (Niendam, who preceded Vanderkooi on the platform) shared her story (of the effects of having an abortion) not just as part of her journey, but that our hearts might be touched and that when we next encounter someone who has had an abortion, we can help them with resources and support and dignity.
“Our third annual purpose is that we come together to be united as people of life and to be invigorated for the year to come.
“This year, we also are here to celebrate the overturn of Roe because it was a good decision and a good day. But it is a celebration that must be tempered by our own steadfast decision to that act of seeing in each person the image and likeness of God and treating them accordingly.”
Niendam said that although it has been more than 40 years since she had an abortion as a teenager, the impact of her decision continued for decades, in part because of what she described as “disenfranchised grief – the common notion that parents who abort their children don’t have anything to grieve, or even a right to grieve.”
A few years ago, she and her husband, who had gotten away from religion, started going back to church, but it didn’t help her. “I was hearing the Gospel, but I felt I had done the unforgivable and that salvation would not be for me. I could not get my brain and my heart in sync,” she said. In time she recognized this was a continued reaction to the trauma of her abortion.
Her life changed when a speaker from the Pregnancy Decision Health Centers (PDHC) came to her church and talked about the organization’s work with pregnant mothers and with women needing healing and recovery after abortions. She called PDHC, received a response within an hour and began what she describes as an ongoing healing journey that has given her the knowledge that her aborted son has forgiven her and is waiting for her.
“The biggest ‘good’ to come from my abortion is that it eventually led me back to the Church,” she said. “My son actually saved my life in the loss of his.”
Bishop Earl Fernandes gave the invocation for the event and noted that Michigan voters in November approved a pro-abortion constitutional amendment similar to what’s being proposed for Ohio.
“Here in Ohio, we must say, ‘This must end!’’’ he said. “The people in that state up north may want abortion, but for us, it ends here! If we don’t protect the rights of the most vulnerable members of society, then everyone becomes just as vulnerable.”
Bishop Fernandes also was the principal celebrant for the diocese’s annual Respect Life Mass, held before the Roe Remembrance in Columbus St. Joseph Cathedral. In his homily, he spoke movingly of the example set by his parents. “They generously accepted their freedom as creators to bring forth new life: five boys – three physicians, a magistrate and a bishop,” he said.
He recalled a situation when he was about 10 years old in which his father, a doctor, took over the case of a woman pregnant with triplets whose original physician wanted to abort two of the babies. All three were born, and the firstborn was named Sidney, after the bishop’s father.
“I was so proud of my dad,” he said. “He saved three lives that day, right where God had placed him. He wasn’t a superhero – just my dad, who understood what it meant to care for, nurture and cherish human life.”
As he has done before, Bishop Fernandes said he hoped to spend the next 25 years in Columbus, ending his homily by saying, “As long as I have breath in my body, I want to follow the example of my parents, who did everything they could (at this point it sounded as though he was near tears) to set an example of faith.”
Gov. Mike DeWine and several members of the Ohio Legislature and state agency directors also were at the Mass. The governor did not attend the remembrance event because of other commitments, but he has spoken at it in the past.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Secretary of State Frank LaRose were speakers at the Statehouse. “For the first time in 50 years, Roe is not the law of the land,” Yost said. “The courts have returned the issue to the states, and because of that, we are in uncharted waters. Now the contest is for the hearts and minds of millions rather than just a few justices.”
Yost expressed gratitude to his mother-in-law for the choice that allowed his wife to be born, adding, “That choice had ripples – first in our kids and now in our grandkids – and those will continue.” He urged listeners to continue their pro-life efforts by “writing a new story, making a new commitment and speaking a new language of love to succeeding generations.”
“It’s not enough to be anti-abortion,” LaRose said. “To be truly pro-life, you have to be pro-mother and pro-child.” As the official in charge of state elections, LaRose acknowledged the likelihood of a pro-abortion ballot measure and reminded his listeners, “You’ve got to be registered to vote to make your voice heard. Don’t assume your family and friends are registered. Talk to them, and get them to register if they aren’t.”
Jamie Scherdin, Ohio regional coordinator of the national Students for Life organization, said her organization is on more than 1,300 campuses nationwide, making it the nation’s largest pro-life group for young adults and spoke of the post-Roe blueprint of its political arm, Students for Life Action.
“We won’t rest till we make abortion unthinkable and unavailable,” she said. “I have confidence we will abolish abortion in my lifetime.”
