(CNA) A group of pro-life philanthropists in the United States has launched a $30 million Pro-Life Venture Fund to support projects aimed at making abortion “unavailable and unthinkable,” according to its founder.
The new group, called the Life Leadership Conference, was formally announced on Tuesday, Feb. 18. The intention, according to the executive director, David Bereit, is to reduce overlap and redundancies among pro-life groups and create “a team dedicated to advancing the entirety of the movement.”
“This is what the pro-life movement has needed, in my opinion, for decades,” Bereit told CNA.
Although Bereit said “everything is still in the very earliest stages” and “we have not begun the process of formal invitations and establishing the membership,” the Life Leadership Conference is already backed by influential pro-life leaders.
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Bereit previously founded and led the international pro-life 40 Days for Life and serves as a member of the Equal Rights Institute’s board of advisers. The Life Leadership Conference is also supported by Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, Princeton professor Robert George, and retired businessman Ray Ruddy.
“[We need to] bring our very best efforts to solving one of the greatest cultural problems,” Bereit added.
Bereit said the Life Leadership Conference is still finalizing its membership criteria but that the coalition will hopefully include major pro-life nonprofits as well as newer and emerging pro-life leaders.
A coordinated effort post-Dobbs
The launch of the Life Leadership Conference was announced in a Feb. 18 letter outlining its goals that was sent to numerous pro-life organizations.
According to the letter, Bereit will build membership, create channels of communication among pro-life groups, and manage a budget to facilitate gatherings, support research and polling, and wage pro-life campaigns.
“The Life Leadership Conference is our way of working to ensure that the pro-life movement’s ideals are fully and faithfully operationalized, to the end of winning more and losing and compromising less,” the letter states.
“Membership in the conference will be extended to those organizations and influencers who know how to achieve genuine victories as well as to philanthropists and donors with a significant interest and stake in seeing progress towards our goal of building an America in which every child is protected in law and welcomed in life,” the letter adds.
Tweet This: The Life Leadership Conference is our way of working to ensure that the pro-life movement’s ideals are fully and faithfully operationalized.
The pro-life movement secured major legislative wins after the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022 that states and the federal government can restrict abortion. However, the movement has struggled to win at the ballot box when the issue of abortion is put directly in front of voters through referendums.
“More people are — in general — opposed to what they perceive to be the pro-life movement’s position at this moment in time than they were five to 10 years ago,” Bereit acknowledged.
“We can’t keep operating in a pre-Dobbs world,” he said.
The letter states that “pro-life organizations need to adapt to an altered landscape and new set of challenges” given the circumstances.
“Some groups have adapted and are charting winning strategies,” the letter adds, but warns that “some are posting more losses than gains and are redefining what it means to win in ways that risk making the movement weaker and less effective.”
Building a culture of life
The letter states that the Pro-Life Venture Fund will be “spent on member projects that will actually reduce the killing of unborn children.” Its goals include making abortion less available, engaging younger generations, and providing women with assistance and resources to help them choose life.
While the specifics are still in the works, Bereit said the mission is to make abortion “unavailable and unthinkable,” adding that an essential part of that effort is “reducing the supply of and the perceived demand for abortion.”
Although Bereit said some efforts will be legislative, he also emphasized the need “to raise awareness about the injustice perpetrated by the abortion industry” and to “strengthen [pro-life] pregnancy centers” and “bring about much, much greater awareness of these resources” that are available to pregnant women.
Bereit also emphasized the need to work with younger activists and influencers, noting that young people are “the target of the abortion industry.”
“We need young people educated and then able to educate their peers, and that’s going to be a major thrust of this,” he said.
The pro-life movement “can achieve so much more” when organizations successfully work together, Bereit said.
Editor's note: This article was published by Catholic News Agency and is reprinted with permission.
