Priests for Life Marks Over 30 Years Defending the Unborn, From Bernard Nathanson to Norma McCorvey
Priests for Life has spent more than three decades organizing clergy and lay Catholics around a single goal: ending abortion in the United States. The organization traces its roots to a small group of priests in the San Francisco area, among them Fr. Emmerich Vogt, Fr. Frank Filice and Fr. Lee Kaylor, and was formally recognized by Archbishop John Quinn in 1991. Father Frank Pavone signed on as an early member and became the group's first full-time national director in 1993, a post he has held since. In the decades that followed, the organization grew from a small network of parish priests into one of the most visible pro-life apostolates in the country, combining legislative advocacy, media production and direct ministry to men and women affected by abortion.
Few figures illustrate the pro-life movement's power to change hearts better than Dr. Bernard Nathanson. Nathanson co-founded the National Association for Repeal of Abortion Laws in 1969 and went on to run one of the largest abortion facilities in the country, overseeing tens of thousands of abortions. Advances in ultrasound imaging in the late 1970s changed his understanding of the unborn child, and in 1984 he released "The Silent Scream," a film built around ultrasound footage that became one of the most widely viewed pieces of pro-life media ever produced. Nathanson's transformation continued for another decade, and in December 1996 he was baptized into the Catholic Church by Cardinal John O'Connor at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He died in 2011 after spending his final years speaking publicly about his reversal.
Norma McCorvey followed a strikingly similar path. As the anonymous plaintiff known as "Jane Roe," she became the namesake of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. In 1995 she announced her opposition to abortion, and in 1998 she was received into the Catholic Church. In the years that followed she worked alongside Priests for Life, telling her story at churches and pro-life events across the country. When a 2020 documentary aired footage suggesting her conversion had not been genuine, Father Pavone and others who had known her for years publicly disputed the portrayal, saying it did not reflect the woman they had come to know over nearly two decades of public witness against abortion.
Beyond these two conversions, Priests for Life says its ministries, including the Silent No More Awareness Campaign for men and women who regret past abortions and its outreach to clergy through Deacons for Life, have reached millions of people with educational and pastoral resources over the past three decades. The organization continues to train priests and deacons to speak about abortion from the pulpit and works with lawmakers on legislation aimed at restricting the practice.
Final Thoughts
Nathanson and McCorvey came to the pro-life cause from opposite sides of the same fight, one as a doctor who performed abortions, the other as the plaintiff who helped legalize them, and both found their way to the Catholic Church with the support of the same organization. Thirty years on, Priests for Life points to those two stories as proof that even the architects of Roe v. Wade were not beyond reach.