We Have to Change the Culture if We Want to End Abortion, Here’s How

When my wife first asked me why I couldn’t call myself pro-life, my answer was simple.

I didn’t believe the pro-life movement offered a valid alternative to abortion.

Abortion was horrific, I said, but it addressed the underlying crises women faced. Poverty. Housing insecurity. Fear. Isolation. Meanwhile, the pro-life movement seemed content to offer diapers and wipes to a problem that demanded far more.

What most people don’t know is that I began as the pro-choice CEO of a pro-life nonprofit.

I loved my wife. I loved her conviction. And over time, my heart changed. Like Oskar Schindler, the gray scales fell away, and the world came into color.

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That transformation became irreversible the first time I held a baby we helped save from abortion.

His mother had been scheduled for a later-term abortion. She was living in her car. She didn’t need slogans. She needed housing. Stability. Someone to show up.

We got her into housing. We stood with her. And when her son, Kiahari, was born, we were in the delivery room.

I sobbed.

This child was supposed to die. Instead, he was alive. And in that moment, I wanted to save them all. But I couldn’t. So, I focused on saving the next one.

Today, Let Them Live has helped save well over a thousand babies. And now, saving the next one is no longer enough.

We need to save them all.

Roe fell. Abortion didn’t

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, many believed abortion would finally begin to disappear.

Instead, abortion numbers have risen nearly 30% nationwide.

This is not a failure of the pro-life movement. It is a reckoning.

For decades, we fought abortion almost exclusively on the supply side: clinics, providers, regulations. Those battles mattered and still do. The abortion industry is a predatory commercial enterprise that deserves to be confronted.

But abortion is not sustained by supply alone.

It is sustained by demand.

After Dobbs, abortion didn’t vanish. It adapted. Chemical abortion surged. The abortion pill became the chemical coat hanger. The bathroom became the new back alley. Women bleed alone in silence.

The law changed. The culture did not.

Demand requires a real alternative

Let Them Live proved something revolutionary.

When women are given real options, abortions are canceled 99% of the time.

Not because of coercion. Not because of shame. But because women already want to keep their babies. What they lack is real choice.

Choice without support is coercion.

We stepped into emergencies. Housing. Food. Transportation. Childcare. Medical and emotional support. We treated unexpected pregnancy like the crisis it often is.

And it worked.

Now that model must scale.

The 80/20 issue we’ve been waiting for

The pro-life movement has long searched for a policy that could unite Americans across party lines.

That policy now exists.

President Donald Trump and his administration have asked pro-life leaders for an 80/20 issue they can champion. Something principled. Something pro-life. Something supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans.

We tested the language. We ran the polling. And the results were striking.

Approximately 85% of Americans support a true, funded alternative to abortion. Not slogans. Not bans alone. Real support. Guaranteed support.

This is not radical.

We already fund emergency services. Police. Fire departments. EMTs. When someone is in crisis, help is immediate, public, and reliable.

An unexpected pregnancy is often just as traumatic. Women are scared. Alone. Unsure how they will survive. And yet our system offers them laws without lifelines.

We are not reinventing the wheel. We are augmenting it.

We are saying women deserve the same level of care when facing an unexpected pregnancy as someone injured in a car accident because both are emergencies.

From right to life to a right to keep

The pro-life movement has rightly fought for the baby’s right to life. But if we truly care about women, we must also guarantee a Right to Keep.

A right for a mother to keep her child without being forced into abortion by poverty or fear.

That means building a robust, universal support system: housing assistance, food, transportation, medical care, childcare, and emotional support.

And yes, it must be funded.

One just solution is taxing the abortion industry itself. If abortion is legal commerce, it should carry public responsibility. Redirect those funds into life-affirming support.

A golden age is possible

As Andrew Breitbart famously said, “Politics is downstream from culture.”

If we want to change the politics, we must change the culture.

America has done this before. After World War II, we entered a baby boom. A golden era of growth, family formation, and national optimism. That generation built the modern American middle class.

We are capable of that again.

A pro-life America is not a shrinking America. It is a flourishing one. Growing again. Building again. Believing again.

This is our moment

We have the solution. It has been tested. It works. And it is supported by the vast majority of Americans.

This is not about any one leader or organization. It is about ending abortion by making it unnecessary.

Not tomorrow. Not next year. Not a decade from now.

Now.

LifeNews Note: Nathan Berning is founder of Let Them Live, a Pro-life charitable organization providing tangible assistance to mothers facing in crisis pregnancies. This column originally appeared at the Christian Post.

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