August 19, 2025 • 32 mins
“Eric Scheidler is a second generation pro-life activist, the oldest of Joe and Ann Scheidler’s children. He was only 6 years old when his parents first got involved in the pro-life movement, shortly before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that stripped unborn children of their legal right to life in 1973.
Eric grew up attending protests and rallies, leafleting neighborhoods and talking about abortion with friends and classmates. Eric has been involved with the work of the Pro-Life Action League since its founding in 1980, stuffing envelopes during the League’s early years and working occasional summers during college.”
Thank you for watching The Ever-Living Podcast, a heartfelt space to share the stories and voices of women who champion a culture that values and protects life. Each episode we seek to empower, offering connection, hope, and strength through the journeys of those who work and pray for this cause. Crafted for women seeking purpose and community, we welcome you to join us in cherishing every single heartbeat.
Eric grew up attending protests and rallies, leafleting neighborhoods and talking about abortion with friends and classmates. Eric has been involved with the work of the Pro-Life Action League since its founding in 1980, stuffing envelopes during the League’s early years and working occasional summers during college.”
Thank you for watching The Ever-Living Podcast, a heartfelt space to share the stories and voices of women who champion a culture that values and protects life. Each episode we seek to empower, offering connection, hope, and strength through the journeys of those who work and pray for this cause. Crafted for women seeking purpose and community, we welcome you to join us in cherishing every single heartbeat.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to ever Living podcast. I'm your one of your hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Cindy, and I'm Jessica.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hi, Jessica on ever Living. Every on ever Living, we
showcase the voices and stories of people who work and
pray to protect life in New England and beyond.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to ever Living. Welcome everyone, Welcome back. How are you,
Sidney good.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm doing well. How's your summer going.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's going going well, it's been I feel like it's been.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
A few weeks since we've we've really gotten to tribe
and been busy, busy with some work things. We did
a one of the weeks I missed, we were doing
a protest outside of the CVS headquarters in Rhode Island.
I did it with some of the students I work
with because CVS they dispense the abortion pill, so we
(01:03):
were trying to tell the people who worked at CBS
headquarters about this and kind of raise awareness about the
fact that they're selling abortion pills.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So so, yeah, so it's been busy, but but good.
I can't believe it's August. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, it's winding down. Well, Jessica, when you hear Action League,
what do you think of action League.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh, I think of like superheroes.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, if you were a superhero, what power superpower would
you have?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Ending abortion?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Oh? Wow? Okay, so is that like a once and
for all like you?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I don't know, I guess yeah, right, Like I feel
like if I had the ability to do that myself,
I know that I can't. I'm only a small part
of the puzzle. And you know, God plays a big
role in helping them this, but that would be my superpower.
But maybe invisibility as well. I feel like that'd be cool.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Okay, Yeah, Well I think to end abortion, I think
it's it's the power to change hearts and minds, right,
It's the power to to really reach people and that
they would realize that they don't want to aboard any
more children, you know. So well, we have someone from
(02:28):
an Action league today. Yes, yes, let's welcome Eric Schidler,
the executive director of Pro Life Action League.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Welcome, Eric, glad to be with you.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
So, Hi, Eric, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
It's great to be with you, guys. I'm excited to
be in this new space too, podcasting, because I'm a
huge podcast fan myself. I've got a couple of podcasts
I listened to religiously, most of them having to do
with soccer and improv, but I also follow many other
kinds of podcasts, so it's really great to be in
this podcast space and sharing the message.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Awesome. So you're a guest, yes and guy right.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yes, And I like to do a few other things too.
I'm really into art. I recently started seeing art classes
and discovering a whole new, you know world there of
getting back into the kind of painting and drawing like
I used to do back in high school. So that's
been really fun, and I think the whole improv thing
sort of opened me up to that. Saying yes to
(03:31):
somebody's goofy idea on stage, you know, that translates into
other areas, saying yes to the idea of going back
to the arts, you know, in addle age, or saying
yes to becoming involved in the fight to protect babies
and their moms from abortion. I think we can all
the idea of like improvising that way, saying yes to
something and then adding something more to it.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Okay, let's talk about your parents, how they said yes,
they said yes and to protecting lives back in the seventies, right,
can you tell us about your parents and how it
all started.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, interestingly enough, you might want to say that my
parents came into the issue with like a yes. But
they said yes to the idea of joining the pro
lict movement way back in nineteen seventy three, shortly after
Roe v. Wade was decided. But they thought it would
only take about five years. They thought that the American
(04:23):
people are good at heart. My dad saw Roe v.
Wade as a kind of suicide note that the society
had written to itself, a kind of giving up on
the future, giving up on posterity, the posterity that we
talk about in the United States Constitution, that you know,
we want to secure the blessings of liberty for our posterity. Well,
maybe we don't anymore. But they thought the American people
(04:46):
are good at heart and would quickly see the injustice
of abortion and you know, pass a constitutional amendment to
end it, or do whatever would you would take. So
they said, we'll give it five years. Five years later
they were help struggling in the thick of all of
it to make some headway, and it became clear that
(05:06):
it was going to take a lot more than just
five years to end the scourge of abortion in America.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Wow, So how would you How do you think your
parents would view like twenty twenty five where we are now.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Well, my mother Anne is still very active with the
Pro Faction League. She is our vice president, and she's
actually at my office right now reaching out to some
of our donors and sharing with them what we're doing.
So she takes a very active role. My father passed
away in January of twenty twenty one, so he did
(05:41):
not live to see Rovers's way overturned, but he was
very excited to see what was going to happen with
the Dobbs case, which was by that time was on
everybody's radar.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
The hearing came later that year, and then finally the
ruling in twenty twenty two. I think he would be
proud to see that the probue movement is still carrying on,
still fighting, and still winning some legal victories. I know
that he would be really dismayed though to see some
of the losses we've suffered since Dobbs was handed down.
(06:13):
The most heartbreaking of all probably are the referenda in
Missouri and Ohio, two states that we saw is really
pro life. You know, Ohio had a Heartbeat bill, that
was an act that was that was you know, protecting babies,
and and Missouri, you know, had completely banned abortion, so
that those are real heartbreakers. I know that he really
(06:33):
took those things to heart, so he would really be
challenged by some of what we've seen happen. But you know,
above all, you know, my father really believed in putting
people to work in their own spheres of influence wherever
they can, and that's something that we continue to do
with the Pro Life Action League. We are holding nationwide
(06:54):
events every year to give people an opportunity to get
actively involved in their own community. The next one come
up is the National Day of Remembrance for Aboarded Children,
which was very very dear to my dad. He would
always speak at that event that we held at Queen
of Heaven Cemetery in Chicago, where three thousand babies were buried,
(07:16):
and he would share the story of how he recovered
the bodies of those babies back in the nineteen eighties
and worked with Cardinal Bernardine to get them buried here
and another we sent them. We sent the bodies of
these babies all over the country to be buried where
they were killed. So they would be back home. So
we visit the burial places of aborted babies. We visit
(07:38):
the memorial markers that were set up in their honor
that aren't burial places at many many Catholic churches and
cemeteries and other locations. That's taking place in September thirteenth.
It's the second Saturday of September every year, and it's
a very very moving event. We hear from women who
have had abortions. They tell us their stories of regret
(07:59):
and they also also stories of transformation and healing. We
hear from adoptive parents about what it means to them
that some other mom chose life for her baby. We
hear from former abortion providers. We hear from those who
counsel women who've had abortions, who are recovering from abortions.
So if you go to one of these events around
the country, you will be moved. And one story in
(08:21):
particular that I'd like to share, And my father was
still with us at the time that this happened, and
I know it meant a lot to him. We were
wrapping up one of our memorial services on the day
of remembrance. This is maybe four or five years ago now,
and a woman came up to me and she had
tears in her eyes. She was bawling, but she wasn't.
(08:44):
She had just learned. She had just learned that her
first grandchild had been aborted. The way she found out
was an insurance bill showed up, and that's how she
found out her daughter was still on their insurance. She's
wit college and she had an and the woman she
was full of anguish over this happening. But the reason
(09:06):
she was full of tears that day wasn't because of
the you know, it wasn't solely because of the heartbreak
from that, which also included the heartbreak of having this
secret to herself. She didn't tell her husband that their daughter,
that their grandchild had been aborted because she didn't want to,
and she don't want to between the mother with the
father and the daughter. So she was alone in her sorrow.
(09:27):
She was completely isolated until she found out about this event.
She could come and she could cry for that baby
that she lost, that grandchild, that granddaughter or grandson that
she lost. And so she was coming up with tears
of gratitude in her eyes. Thank you for giving me
a place to come and be sad about this because
I've been carrying this around by myself for months now.
(09:47):
So that became an opportunity for healing for her, and
that was a real insight to me. That healing is.
It's not just mourning for these babies that we're doing.
It's offering healing to our entire society over the wounds
of abortion that runs so deep we don't even know
sometimes you know how deeply those wounds run. Mothers who
(10:11):
are having a hard time caring for their born children
because of guilt over an abortion that they they haven't
processed yet, for example. So we need this healing and
that's a big part of what this event is going
to be about.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Something I've noticed is I do a lot of on
campus outreach in my role, and something I've noticed on
campus is some of the people who are the most
angry about the activism we're doing on campus are women
who have had abortions, and it seems like they're just
you know, so they need healing, right, they need it,
maybe a space like this to be able to remember
(10:45):
their child and like you said, exactly like heal and
not only more, but also heal from it and get
you know, get through those emotions.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
So one of the real horrible things about abortion in
our society is that it's it's a wound that we're
not allowed to acknowledge. It's a wound that we're not
allowed to talk about. It's become so polemic and so politicized,
you know, and we know that people who are self
described as pro choice, who support you know, legal abortion,
often nevertheless struggle with abortion themselves and regret the abortions
(11:18):
that they've had. If you go to a website like
shout your Abortion dot Com, which is run by pro
abortion people, you will find sad story after such tragedy
after tragedy after tragedy of women who feel horrible about
their abortions, and they'll talk about, you know, I haven't
slept a good night's sleep since I had my abortion
two years ago, but I know it was the right decision.
(11:38):
So their brain is in conflict with itself. There's a
part of you that knows this is the worst thing
you ever have done. You haven't been at peace since then,
But another part of you being forced to believe that
it was an affirming choice because that's what the politics
say or what you know, the social propagandists say, yeah,
so we're giving, we're getting, and we know, we know that,
(11:59):
you know, when it comes to too, like the trauma
of the abortion pill, which is so isolating, women are
having these abortions all by themselves. You know, the embryo
or the tiny little fetus is showing up in their
you know, their mestrual path or in their toilet. They
have to decide whether to flush it. They don't know
what to do. They're calling pregnancy centers and asking for
counsel and what to do with the body. We've heard
(12:20):
stories of couples going and burying that body, you know,
in the park and under a favorite tree, maybe near
a playground where their child might have played. You know,
to us as pro life people, that seems like madness,
but there's a humanity there. They're struggling to come to
terms with the guilt that our society won't let them
really deal with, and so they're coming up with creative solutions.
(12:42):
We want to invite them into our community of fellowship
and love and compassion and forgiveness, but it's very hard
for us to do that sometimes because the pro life
movement has such a reputation. Sometimes unfair and sometimes fair
for being judgmental of those folks. So you know, we're
called to really turn inward too and ask ourselves how
(13:04):
welcoming and opening we're really being at times like these.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, And that abortion, it could it touches so many families,
and it's it could be unknown until later in life
and then because you know, you don't see the sibling
that would have been your sibling, but the but then
(13:31):
you know, the the pain of it is there, you know.
So can we go back to that National Day of
Remembrance website. Let's look at that again, so this people
let's grow up or you could say, find a memorial?
Is that how people find find out find a memorial?
(13:54):
And then okay, wow, so these are all the locations.
We can look by state. We could look at New
Hampshire for instance.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So these are all the events that are happening.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
These are the locations across the country that we have.
We're still in the recruiting stage right now. We're still
a little early days. Okay, so right now we're still
in the middle of recruiting leaders. These are locations where
people could hold services. I don't think we have the
actual confirmed locations listed yet because we're still in the
middle of the recruiting process. We're still a bottom month out.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Okay, so I see where people at the top can
host a memorial. Is that where?
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Yeah, that's another important thing to realize memorial right, if
there's not a memorial service in your area, then we
can plug you in as a leader, you know, and
it could be very simple. That's one of our big
beliefs theply Faction League is to make things scalable. So
if you have a small group of Polife friends that
(14:55):
you could bring out to a memorial that set your
church on a Saturday, maybe after morning Mass, the like that,
you can have a very simple pray the rosary together.
Keep it simple. Maybe next year you grow it, you
advertise more in the bulletin and try to make it
a bigger event. Maybe you have guest speakers. We want
to make it possible for people to get started with
something simple, but then scale it up and scale it
(15:17):
up as years go by, so no one should feel intimidated.
I've never organized it. I don't know how to write
a press release or anything like that. We got you covered.
We've got templates for emails, we've got a flyer that
you plug in with your information. It's very easy to
print out. We have suggested, you know, email templates and
memes and all kinds of tools for people no matter
(15:38):
what event it is that we're doing so that it's
very easy for people to get involved, not just as volunteers,
but also as local leaders. We're always trying to recruit
more people into leadership on a small scale to a
big scale.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Awesome, Wow, that's d Let's spread this all over.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
You know, Eric, something I was thinking about when you
were going through this, and you're talking about how it's
really very difficult in our society for a woman to
acknowledge like that she's hurting from an abortion. It also
made me think about miscarriage and how miscarriage. You know, obviously,
we know a miscarriage is not the same thing as
an abortion, because a miscarriage is a you know, the
(16:18):
way that a baby's life ends naturally. You know, abortion
is purposely using violence to end the.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Life of a baby.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
But I think miscarriage doesn't get a lot of attention either,
And the reason for that, I think is because if
you acknowledge that miscarriage is a loss, you have to
acknowledge abortion is a loss of a child.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Well, it's just one more example of the kind of
schizophrenia and our whole society around this stuff. You know,
when a celebrity posts a you know, an ultrasound image
of their unborn baby, you know, fans celebrate, but then
that same celebrity, maybe two months later, is advocating for
abortion of those very same babies. You know, how is
(17:02):
it possible that when the mom and dad, or even
just the mom is excited about the baby coming, it's
something to celebrate, but otherwise it's not really a person
at all. You know, we talk about a baby when
it's convenient. Other times we want to talk about a fetus.
Those are the same persons that we're talking about. Look
at our fetal homicide laws. You know, in state like Illinois,
(17:27):
you may not be able to get compensated if someone
does harm to you and causes your unborn baby to
die because in the state of Illinois, according to our
Reproductive Health Act, a fetus has no rights. It specifically
spells that out. So it's an area where our laws
are in contradiction with each other. Where our minds are
(17:48):
in contradiction with each other, our cultural activities are in contradiction.
We pro abortion people constantly talk about unborn babies when
it's a baby that we're happy about, you know, but
then when we're not happy, we talked about a fetus.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, it's there's this this line where where does it?
Where does the child become human? And then it's kind
of human, but then not that you know, it's like
where does it? Where does it begin? How did you
guys get the second Saturday of September? How did the
(18:25):
just starting the national day question?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Well? In the first National Day of Remembrance for a
boarded Children was held in September of twenty thirteen, and
it was it was held very close to the exact
twenty fifth anniversary of some burials. So going back to
nineteen eighty eight, there was a historic burial that got
a lot of national news coverage and local news coverage
(18:51):
in Wisconsin. And these were babies that their bodies had
been discovered by a security guard who who was on
duty at a business no longer an operation called vital Med.
Vital Med was a pathology lab and one of their
jobs was to take in the remains of abortions and
(19:13):
test them, make sure that there was no pathology going
on there, make sure the tissue was all intact and
there was no issues, and then dispose of them right.
And these boxes and boxes and boxes of aborted babies
were sitting on the loading dock of vityal Med, just
sitting there waiting to be processed. And this security guard
was a Christian guy. He had a conscience, and so
(19:34):
he reached out to a pregnancy center to say. This
was in the suburbs of Chicago. I think it was
like Schomberg or Hoffmann Estates or something, and he contacted
the local pregnancy center to say he didn't know where
else to turn. You know, so there's these bodies in
this boxes on the back loading dock here, what do
I do? The pregnancy center director reached out to the
(19:56):
proy Faction League and to Monica Miller, a dear friend
of mine who has an organization called Citizens for a
Pro Life Society, and together they organized basically a raid.
They went out at night and stole, as the courts
would try to put it later, stole these remains, photographed them,
(20:17):
recorded the injustice that was done to these children. Many
of the images that we've used over the years to
try to turn people's hearts towards compassion for the unborn
child came from those photo shoots. Monica Miller of Citizens
for Polite Societies and a very talented photographer, So she
took photographs of these of these images of these of
these actual not of these images, of these bodies, of
(20:39):
these corpses of aborted babies. Each one of them was
marked with the location that had come from the town.
And so they sent they organized with pro life leaders
in different locations around the country. They were arranged to
send the bodies to them for them to be buried.
So some of those bodies were buried in nineteen eighty
(21:01):
eight in I think it's the suburbs of Milwaukee in Wisconsin.
And so when the twenty fifth anniversary of those dramatic
events came back around, some of us started to ponder
what we could do to mark that, and we decided
to hold a big Memorial Day National Day Remembers for
(21:22):
a boarded children to mark that twenty fifth anniversary and
to invite people to think about the impact of abortion,
because when you think about it, you know when you go,
when you go out to a burial place. You know,
there's thousands of babies buried at Queen of Heaven Cemetery
in Chicago or the suburbs of Chicago. You stand above
(21:43):
that grave and you think, below my feet are these tiny, tiny,
tiny little bodies. And you know, twenty five years ago
this body was ripped out of a woman's womb a
suction aspiration to that kid would be twenty four years old.
Now a kid might have become a mother or father,
(22:04):
might have become a heroin dealer. For all I know,
there's a whole life there that never took place. It
becomes very real to you when you're standing there at
the place where those bodies are interred. And over the years,
I've returned now to Queen of Heaven Cemetery for the
memorial service every year for many years now, and so
(22:27):
now I'm thinking back and wondering, you know, with those
children who are aborted back in nineteen eighty eight, eighty seven,
eighty six, those years, would they have their own grandchildren now? Maybe,
you know, you really start to think about the intergenerational
impact of abortion, how it cascades through the years. You're
cutting off a whole lifeline you're cutting off a whole heritage,
(22:52):
a whole branch of humanity when you kill one single,
little tiny, you know, eight week embry Oh yeah, so
you know, those are the feelings that are evoked by
this process. It makes it all very very real to you.
And that's why it's so important to me, and I'm
(23:13):
so passionate about it. For so many people, abortion it's
just something they don't want to think about. They don't
want to see it, they don't want to talk about it,
they don't want to hear about it. Until suddenly it's
in their life. They're faced with an unprimed pregnancy, or
they get a girl pregnant, or their sisters dealing with
this issue, or they find out that their mother aborted
one of their siblings even the years before. Now they
(23:35):
have to deal with it. You know, we're inviting people
to enter into the enter into the morning and the
sorrow of abortion make it somebody. Look, somebody has to
Somebody has to shed tears for these babies. Somebody has
to shed tears for their mothers. Somebody has to care
that a whole generation of human beings was cut out
of the human family tree. We are those people. We
(23:58):
invite people to mourn with us.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
That's awesome, that's really good.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I think it's so wonderful that you guys have a
day dedicated to that, and the history behind that is
crazy but so powerful. And I know, just myself, I've
been to the Shrine National Trying to Divine Mercy, which
is in Massachusetts, and they have a and this isn't
you know, you guys are doing this a specific day,
which I think is so important. They have a Shrine
of the Holy Innocence there and I've been there, and
(24:23):
that in itself was even just so powerful of being
able to go there, and I've seen when I've gone
there were many people that were there and crying, and
you don't know what they've they've been through, you know,
if they've had abortions themselves, they've obviously been affected by abortion.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
But it is super powerful.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
But yeah, definitely people should definitely participate in that National
Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, we should all be grieving because these are you
know people, you know, it's you know, whether we're directly
related to them or not, these sort of millions of
people like yeah, gone, and.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
That's also millions of that's millions of moms. It's millions
of moms with a wound in their heart and wounds
that are so hard for them to face because of
the social pressure. Did not care about your abortion?
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah, let's talk about unwanted abortion. What is you know,
pro Life Action League and how are they addressing this
this topic.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
It's a it's a terrible phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
A couple of years ago, the uh, the wing of
Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America that that focuses on
on pro life data and research, the Charlotte Lsure Institute
Charlotte Lewser published a paper on coerced and unwanted abortions, UH,
and they found David Reardon and some other researchers looked
(25:52):
through they did some surveys and they they discovered that
women who who have had abord they looked at they
talked to women in their forties. So these are women
as many years now after their abortion, so they'd have
one discreete you know, kind of cohort of women who'd
had abortions. And they found that only about a third
(26:13):
of women said that their abortion was a free choice
that they made themselves, and that had good consequences for them.
This is contrary to the propaganda that abortion is always
a free choice and that women are better off for it,
you know, things like the Turnoway study that claim that
women who are denied abortion suffer much worse, you know,
facts that not true, and their study doesn't even really
(26:36):
say that at all. But what reared In in his
co research has discovered was that two thirds of the
women who were reflecting back on their abortions described them
as not what they really wanted. Many of them said
that while they did choose the abortion, it was not
their first preference, and that they wanted to parent the child,
(26:58):
but that things like economic pressures or social pressures, or
feeling too young, you know, kept them from from doing
what they really wanted to do in their hearts. About
twenty five percent of them explicitly said the abortion was unwanted.
It was not what they wanted. They wanted to give
birth to that child. And this is the most shocking
(27:20):
of all. Fully one in ten, one in ten women
you know in their forties now looking back, said that
their abortions were coersive. They were coerced, whether it was
a threat of violence, a threat of murder, a threat
of unemployment, a threat of being unhoused, A mother and
(27:41):
father saying you get that abortion, I'm kicking you out
of my house, which, by the way, is illegal. You
cannot kick a minor child out of your home. That's
against the law. We don't accept that as a society.
Parents have a responsibility to care for their kids till
they're eighteen. And you know, it's just astonishing though, to
think that one out of ten women getting abortions. You know,
(28:02):
if you know, this is just a very early study.
We need more data. That's part of what we've been
working on is trying to In fact, we've even worked
with pro choice sociologists on branching out and getting funding
from more research into this area so we can find
out more about these unwanted abortions. But our early data
suggests that fully two thirds of abortions are not what
(28:25):
the woman really wanted, not her free choice, and this
is important for us, I think rebuilding after some of
the losses we've had since Dobbs came along and we
saw these referenda and we saw public opinion beginning to turn.
We saw more people turning against the pro life movement.
If we can reach out to people who are pro
(28:46):
choice and say, you know, abortions not so much of
a free choice as you thought. Here's the data to
show it. We can build common ground. And when I
talk to pro choice people, I have lots of pro
choice friends in the improv world and the arts world.
When I can talk to reporters about this and bring
up these questions, they always stop and listen. They are interested,
(29:08):
They interested to learn more about this because they you know,
I'm going to take them at their word. They say
they're not pro abortion, they're pro choice. They want it
to be a choice. Well, look, it's often not a choice.
If that's the case, and you combine that with, you
know the fact that we have an obligation to help
women so that they don't make you feel that that's
their only choice, you know, it gives us encouragement because
(29:31):
if we know that they don't really want abortions, then
we know that offering some housing assistance, or offering medical care,
or even just offering some affirmation that they can do it,
that they could be a mom, will be enough to
encourage them to choose life for their babies. That decision
to get an abortion is made under so much pressure
(29:54):
and so much could turn it at the last moment,
and so we want to be there. We want to
be there to make don happen.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Okay, you just want to plug the twenty twenty five
New Here After Right to Life Benefit banquet. It's on
October sixteenth, and our speaker, if you could scroll down,
is Darlene Pollock. She's our keynote speaker, and she is
(30:21):
pro life and former vice president of Save the One
and anti and she does she's part of an anti
trafficking organization. So it's going to be an amazing So
tickets are still available. Please visit NHRTL dot org. You
can get tickets for yourself, for a whole table for
(30:42):
your church. You can sponsor the banquet as a business
or anything helps to support the pro life work in
New Hampshire.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
All Right, She's an amazing speaker. I've heard her speak
before and she tells her story about how she was
she herself was trafficked and she actually escaped trafficking through
a pregnancy resource center. They helped her get out of traffic,
human trafficking. So definitely a powerful speaker and definitely worth
coming to the banquet and listening her speak.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So yeah, if we scroll down more a little bit more,
here you can see where you can buy your ticket,
become a sponsor. There's still early bird tickets before August
twenty eighth, so just like a week or so, so
get your early bird price in. It's going to be
the Manchester Country Club, all right, everybody, thanks for listening.
(31:37):
This is a thanks for Eric Schidler coming to the
pod today and hopefully you can get on Brogan someday
and this is just a stepping stone, all right, God
bless you. Okay, goodbye everyone.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Hi, thank you for listening to part one of our
episode with Eric Scheidler from the Pro Life Action League.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
We'd like to hear the rest of our interview with Eric.
Please tune in next week The Ever.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Living See you next week.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Thank you for listening to The Ever Living podcast, a
podcast by New Hampshire Right to Life, Newhampshire's oldest and
most active pro life organization. You can learn more about
our work and learn how to get involved at www
dot NHRTL dot org. If you would like to donate
to our mission, you can make a donation at www
dot NHRTL dot org backslash donate. See you next week.
(32:30):
May God bless you and be very near to you,
and may you be ever living
Welcome to ever Living podcast. I'm your one of your hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Cindy, and I'm Jessica.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hi, Jessica on ever Living. Every on ever Living, we
showcase the voices and stories of people who work and
pray to protect life in New England and beyond.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to ever Living. Welcome everyone, Welcome back. How are you,
Sidney good.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm doing well. How's your summer going.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
It's going going well, it's been I feel like it's been.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
A few weeks since we've we've really gotten to tribe
and been busy, busy with some work things. We did
a one of the weeks I missed, we were doing
a protest outside of the CVS headquarters in Rhode Island.
I did it with some of the students I work
with because CVS they dispense the abortion pill, so we
(01:03):
were trying to tell the people who worked at CBS
headquarters about this and kind of raise awareness about the
fact that they're selling abortion pills.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
So so, yeah, so it's been busy, but but good.
I can't believe it's August. It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, it's winding down. Well, Jessica, when you hear Action League,
what do you think of action League.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh, I think of like superheroes.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, if you were a superhero, what power superpower would
you have?
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Ending abortion?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Oh? Wow? Okay, so is that like a once and
for all like you?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I don't know, I guess yeah, right, Like I feel
like if I had the ability to do that myself,
I know that I can't. I'm only a small part
of the puzzle. And you know, God plays a big
role in helping them this, but that would be my superpower.
But maybe invisibility as well. I feel like that'd be cool.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Okay, Yeah, Well I think to end abortion, I think
it's it's the power to change hearts and minds, right,
It's the power to to really reach people and that
they would realize that they don't want to aboard any
more children, you know. So well, we have someone from
(02:28):
an Action league today. Yes, yes, let's welcome Eric Schidler,
the executive director of Pro Life Action League.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Welcome, Eric, glad to be with you.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
So, Hi, Eric, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
It's great to be with you, guys. I'm excited to
be in this new space too, podcasting, because I'm a
huge podcast fan myself. I've got a couple of podcasts
I listened to religiously, most of them having to do
with soccer and improv, but I also follow many other
kinds of podcasts, so it's really great to be in
this podcast space and sharing the message.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Awesome. So you're a guest, yes and guy right.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yes, And I like to do a few other things too.
I'm really into art. I recently started seeing art classes
and discovering a whole new, you know world there of
getting back into the kind of painting and drawing like
I used to do back in high school. So that's
been really fun, and I think the whole improv thing
sort of opened me up to that. Saying yes to
(03:31):
somebody's goofy idea on stage, you know, that translates into
other areas, saying yes to the idea of going back
to the arts, you know, in addle age, or saying
yes to becoming involved in the fight to protect babies
and their moms from abortion. I think we can all
the idea of like improvising that way, saying yes to
something and then adding something more to it.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Okay, let's talk about your parents, how they said yes,
they said yes and to protecting lives back in the seventies, right,
can you tell us about your parents and how it
all started.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, interestingly enough, you might want to say that my
parents came into the issue with like a yes. But
they said yes to the idea of joining the pro
lict movement way back in nineteen seventy three, shortly after
Roe v. Wade was decided. But they thought it would
only take about five years. They thought that the American
(04:23):
people are good at heart. My dad saw Roe v.
Wade as a kind of suicide note that the society
had written to itself, a kind of giving up on
the future, giving up on posterity, the posterity that we
talk about in the United States Constitution, that you know,
we want to secure the blessings of liberty for our posterity. Well,
maybe we don't anymore. But they thought the American people
(04:46):
are good at heart and would quickly see the injustice
of abortion and you know, pass a constitutional amendment to
end it, or do whatever would you would take. So
they said, we'll give it five years. Five years later
they were help struggling in the thick of all of
it to make some headway, and it became clear that
(05:06):
it was going to take a lot more than just
five years to end the scourge of abortion in America.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Wow, So how would you How do you think your
parents would view like twenty twenty five where we are now.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Well, my mother Anne is still very active with the
Pro Faction League. She is our vice president, and she's
actually at my office right now reaching out to some
of our donors and sharing with them what we're doing.
So she takes a very active role. My father passed
away in January of twenty twenty one, so he did
(05:41):
not live to see Rovers's way overturned, but he was
very excited to see what was going to happen with
the Dobbs case, which was by that time was on
everybody's radar.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
You know.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
The hearing came later that year, and then finally the
ruling in twenty twenty two. I think he would be
proud to see that the probue movement is still carrying on,
still fighting, and still winning some legal victories. I know
that he would be really dismayed though to see some
of the losses we've suffered since Dobbs was handed down.
(06:13):
The most heartbreaking of all probably are the referenda in
Missouri and Ohio, two states that we saw is really
pro life. You know, Ohio had a Heartbeat bill, that
was an act that was that was you know, protecting babies,
and and Missouri, you know, had completely banned abortion, so
that those are real heartbreakers. I know that he really
(06:33):
took those things to heart, so he would really be
challenged by some of what we've seen happen. But you know,
above all, you know, my father really believed in putting
people to work in their own spheres of influence wherever
they can, and that's something that we continue to do
with the Pro Life Action League. We are holding nationwide
(06:54):
events every year to give people an opportunity to get
actively involved in their own community. The next one come
up is the National Day of Remembrance for Aboarded Children,
which was very very dear to my dad. He would
always speak at that event that we held at Queen
of Heaven Cemetery in Chicago, where three thousand babies were buried,
(07:16):
and he would share the story of how he recovered
the bodies of those babies back in the nineteen eighties
and worked with Cardinal Bernardine to get them buried here
and another we sent them. We sent the bodies of
these babies all over the country to be buried where
they were killed. So they would be back home. So
we visit the burial places of aborted babies. We visit
(07:38):
the memorial markers that were set up in their honor
that aren't burial places at many many Catholic churches and
cemeteries and other locations. That's taking place in September thirteenth.
It's the second Saturday of September every year, and it's
a very very moving event. We hear from women who
have had abortions. They tell us their stories of regret
(07:59):
and they also also stories of transformation and healing. We
hear from adoptive parents about what it means to them
that some other mom chose life for her baby. We
hear from former abortion providers. We hear from those who
counsel women who've had abortions, who are recovering from abortions.
So if you go to one of these events around
the country, you will be moved. And one story in
(08:21):
particular that I'd like to share, And my father was
still with us at the time that this happened, and
I know it meant a lot to him. We were
wrapping up one of our memorial services on the day
of remembrance. This is maybe four or five years ago now,
and a woman came up to me and she had
tears in her eyes. She was bawling, but she wasn't.
(08:44):
She had just learned. She had just learned that her
first grandchild had been aborted. The way she found out
was an insurance bill showed up, and that's how she
found out her daughter was still on their insurance. She's
wit college and she had an and the woman she
was full of anguish over this happening. But the reason
(09:06):
she was full of tears that day wasn't because of
the you know, it wasn't solely because of the heartbreak
from that, which also included the heartbreak of having this
secret to herself. She didn't tell her husband that their daughter,
that their grandchild had been aborted because she didn't want to,
and she don't want to between the mother with the
father and the daughter. So she was alone in her sorrow.
(09:27):
She was completely isolated until she found out about this event.
She could come and she could cry for that baby
that she lost, that grandchild, that granddaughter or grandson that
she lost. And so she was coming up with tears
of gratitude in her eyes. Thank you for giving me
a place to come and be sad about this because
I've been carrying this around by myself for months now.
(09:47):
So that became an opportunity for healing for her, and
that was a real insight to me. That healing is.
It's not just mourning for these babies that we're doing.
It's offering healing to our entire society over the wounds
of abortion that runs so deep we don't even know
sometimes you know how deeply those wounds run. Mothers who
(10:11):
are having a hard time caring for their born children
because of guilt over an abortion that they they haven't
processed yet, for example. So we need this healing and
that's a big part of what this event is going
to be about.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Something I've noticed is I do a lot of on
campus outreach in my role, and something I've noticed on
campus is some of the people who are the most
angry about the activism we're doing on campus are women
who have had abortions, and it seems like they're just
you know, so they need healing, right, they need it,
maybe a space like this to be able to remember
(10:45):
their child and like you said, exactly like heal and
not only more, but also heal from it and get
you know, get through those emotions.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
So one of the real horrible things about abortion in
our society is that it's it's a wound that we're
not allowed to acknowledge. It's a wound that we're not
allowed to talk about. It's become so polemic and so politicized,
you know, and we know that people who are self
described as pro choice, who support you know, legal abortion,
often nevertheless struggle with abortion themselves and regret the abortions
(11:18):
that they've had. If you go to a website like
shout your Abortion dot Com, which is run by pro
abortion people, you will find sad story after such tragedy
after tragedy after tragedy of women who feel horrible about
their abortions, and they'll talk about, you know, I haven't
slept a good night's sleep since I had my abortion
two years ago, but I know it was the right decision.
(11:38):
So their brain is in conflict with itself. There's a
part of you that knows this is the worst thing
you ever have done. You haven't been at peace since then,
But another part of you being forced to believe that
it was an affirming choice because that's what the politics
say or what you know, the social propagandists say, yeah,
so we're giving, we're getting, and we know, we know that,
(11:59):
you know, when it comes to too, like the trauma
of the abortion pill, which is so isolating, women are
having these abortions all by themselves. You know, the embryo
or the tiny little fetus is showing up in their
you know, their mestrual path or in their toilet. They
have to decide whether to flush it. They don't know
what to do. They're calling pregnancy centers and asking for
counsel and what to do with the body. We've heard
(12:20):
stories of couples going and burying that body, you know,
in the park and under a favorite tree, maybe near
a playground where their child might have played. You know,
to us as pro life people, that seems like madness,
but there's a humanity there. They're struggling to come to
terms with the guilt that our society won't let them
really deal with, and so they're coming up with creative solutions.
(12:42):
We want to invite them into our community of fellowship
and love and compassion and forgiveness, but it's very hard
for us to do that sometimes because the pro life
movement has such a reputation. Sometimes unfair and sometimes fair
for being judgmental of those folks. So you know, we're
called to really turn inward too and ask ourselves how
(13:04):
welcoming and opening we're really being at times like these.
Speaker 5 (13:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, And that abortion, it could it touches so many families,
and it's it could be unknown until later in life
and then because you know, you don't see the sibling
that would have been your sibling, but the but then
(13:31):
you know, the the pain of it is there, you know.
So can we go back to that National Day of
Remembrance website. Let's look at that again, so this people
let's grow up or you could say, find a memorial?
Is that how people find find out find a memorial?
(13:54):
And then okay, wow, so these are all the locations.
We can look by state. We could look at New
Hampshire for instance.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So these are all the events that are happening.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
These are the locations across the country that we have.
We're still in the recruiting stage right now. We're still
a little early days. Okay, so right now we're still
in the middle of recruiting leaders. These are locations where
people could hold services. I don't think we have the
actual confirmed locations listed yet because we're still in the
middle of the recruiting process. We're still a bottom month out.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Okay, so I see where people at the top can
host a memorial. Is that where?
Speaker 4 (14:32):
Yeah, that's another important thing to realize memorial right, if
there's not a memorial service in your area, then we
can plug you in as a leader, you know, and
it could be very simple. That's one of our big
beliefs theply Faction League is to make things scalable. So
if you have a small group of Polife friends that
(14:55):
you could bring out to a memorial that set your
church on a Saturday, maybe after morning Mass, the like that,
you can have a very simple pray the rosary together.
Keep it simple. Maybe next year you grow it, you
advertise more in the bulletin and try to make it
a bigger event. Maybe you have guest speakers. We want
to make it possible for people to get started with
something simple, but then scale it up and scale it
(15:17):
up as years go by, so no one should feel intimidated.
I've never organized it. I don't know how to write
a press release or anything like that. We got you covered.
We've got templates for emails, we've got a flyer that
you plug in with your information. It's very easy to
print out. We have suggested, you know, email templates and
memes and all kinds of tools for people no matter
(15:38):
what event it is that we're doing so that it's
very easy for people to get involved, not just as volunteers,
but also as local leaders. We're always trying to recruit
more people into leadership on a small scale to a
big scale.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Awesome, Wow, that's d Let's spread this all over.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
You know, Eric, something I was thinking about when you
were going through this, and you're talking about how it's
really very difficult in our society for a woman to
acknowledge like that she's hurting from an abortion. It also
made me think about miscarriage and how miscarriage. You know, obviously,
we know a miscarriage is not the same thing as
an abortion, because a miscarriage is a you know, the
(16:18):
way that a baby's life ends naturally. You know, abortion
is purposely using violence to end the.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Life of a baby.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
But I think miscarriage doesn't get a lot of attention either,
And the reason for that, I think is because if
you acknowledge that miscarriage is a loss, you have to
acknowledge abortion is a loss of a child.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
Well, it's just one more example of the kind of
schizophrenia and our whole society around this stuff. You know,
when a celebrity posts a you know, an ultrasound image
of their unborn baby, you know, fans celebrate, but then
that same celebrity, maybe two months later, is advocating for
abortion of those very same babies. You know, how is
(17:02):
it possible that when the mom and dad, or even
just the mom is excited about the baby coming, it's
something to celebrate, but otherwise it's not really a person
at all. You know, we talk about a baby when
it's convenient. Other times we want to talk about a fetus.
Those are the same persons that we're talking about. Look
at our fetal homicide laws. You know, in state like Illinois,
(17:27):
you may not be able to get compensated if someone
does harm to you and causes your unborn baby to
die because in the state of Illinois, according to our
Reproductive Health Act, a fetus has no rights. It specifically
spells that out. So it's an area where our laws
are in contradiction with each other. Where our minds are
(17:48):
in contradiction with each other, our cultural activities are in contradiction.
We pro abortion people constantly talk about unborn babies when
it's a baby that we're happy about, you know, but
then when we're not happy, we talked about a fetus.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, it's there's this this line where where does it?
Where does the child become human? And then it's kind
of human, but then not that you know, it's like
where does it? Where does it begin? How did you
guys get the second Saturday of September? How did the
(18:25):
just starting the national day question?
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Well? In the first National Day of Remembrance for a
boarded Children was held in September of twenty thirteen, and
it was it was held very close to the exact
twenty fifth anniversary of some burials. So going back to
nineteen eighty eight, there was a historic burial that got
a lot of national news coverage and local news coverage
(18:51):
in Wisconsin. And these were babies that their bodies had
been discovered by a security guard who who was on
duty at a business no longer an operation called vital Med.
Vital Med was a pathology lab and one of their
jobs was to take in the remains of abortions and
(19:13):
test them, make sure that there was no pathology going
on there, make sure the tissue was all intact and
there was no issues, and then dispose of them right.
And these boxes and boxes and boxes of aborted babies
were sitting on the loading dock of vityal Med, just
sitting there waiting to be processed. And this security guard
was a Christian guy. He had a conscience, and so
(19:34):
he reached out to a pregnancy center to say. This
was in the suburbs of Chicago. I think it was
like Schomberg or Hoffmann Estates or something, and he contacted
the local pregnancy center to say he didn't know where
else to turn. You know, so there's these bodies in
this boxes on the back loading dock here, what do
I do? The pregnancy center director reached out to the
(19:56):
proy Faction League and to Monica Miller, a dear friend
of mine who has an organization called Citizens for a
Pro Life Society, and together they organized basically a raid.
They went out at night and stole, as the courts
would try to put it later, stole these remains, photographed them,
(20:17):
recorded the injustice that was done to these children. Many
of the images that we've used over the years to
try to turn people's hearts towards compassion for the unborn
child came from those photo shoots. Monica Miller of Citizens
for Polite Societies and a very talented photographer, So she
took photographs of these of these images of these of
these actual not of these images, of these bodies, of
(20:39):
these corpses of aborted babies. Each one of them was
marked with the location that had come from the town.
And so they sent they organized with pro life leaders
in different locations around the country. They were arranged to
send the bodies to them for them to be buried.
So some of those bodies were buried in nineteen eighty
(21:01):
eight in I think it's the suburbs of Milwaukee in Wisconsin.
And so when the twenty fifth anniversary of those dramatic
events came back around, some of us started to ponder
what we could do to mark that, and we decided
to hold a big Memorial Day National Day Remembers for
(21:22):
a boarded children to mark that twenty fifth anniversary and
to invite people to think about the impact of abortion,
because when you think about it, you know when you go,
when you go out to a burial place. You know,
there's thousands of babies buried at Queen of Heaven Cemetery
in Chicago or the suburbs of Chicago. You stand above
(21:43):
that grave and you think, below my feet are these tiny, tiny,
tiny little bodies. And you know, twenty five years ago
this body was ripped out of a woman's womb a
suction aspiration to that kid would be twenty four years old.
Now a kid might have become a mother or father,
(22:04):
might have become a heroin dealer. For all I know,
there's a whole life there that never took place. It
becomes very real to you when you're standing there at
the place where those bodies are interred. And over the years,
I've returned now to Queen of Heaven Cemetery for the
memorial service every year for many years now, and so
(22:27):
now I'm thinking back and wondering, you know, with those
children who are aborted back in nineteen eighty eight, eighty seven,
eighty six, those years, would they have their own grandchildren now? Maybe,
you know, you really start to think about the intergenerational
impact of abortion, how it cascades through the years. You're
cutting off a whole lifeline you're cutting off a whole heritage,
(22:52):
a whole branch of humanity when you kill one single,
little tiny, you know, eight week embry Oh yeah, so
you know, those are the feelings that are evoked by
this process. It makes it all very very real to you.
And that's why it's so important to me, and I'm
(23:13):
so passionate about it. For so many people, abortion it's
just something they don't want to think about. They don't
want to see it, they don't want to talk about it,
they don't want to hear about it. Until suddenly it's
in their life. They're faced with an unprimed pregnancy, or
they get a girl pregnant, or their sisters dealing with
this issue, or they find out that their mother aborted
one of their siblings even the years before. Now they
(23:35):
have to deal with it. You know, we're inviting people
to enter into the enter into the morning and the
sorrow of abortion make it somebody. Look, somebody has to
Somebody has to shed tears for these babies. Somebody has
to shed tears for their mothers. Somebody has to care
that a whole generation of human beings was cut out
of the human family tree. We are those people. We
(23:58):
invite people to mourn with us.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
That's awesome, that's really good.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I think it's so wonderful that you guys have a
day dedicated to that, and the history behind that is
crazy but so powerful. And I know, just myself, I've
been to the Shrine National Trying to Divine Mercy, which
is in Massachusetts, and they have a and this isn't
you know, you guys are doing this a specific day,
which I think is so important. They have a Shrine
of the Holy Innocence there and I've been there, and
(24:23):
that in itself was even just so powerful of being
able to go there, and I've seen when I've gone
there were many people that were there and crying, and
you don't know what they've they've been through, you know,
if they've had abortions themselves, they've obviously been affected by abortion.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
But it is super powerful.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
But yeah, definitely people should definitely participate in that National
Day of Remembrance for Aborted Children.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, we should all be grieving because these are you
know people, you know, it's you know, whether we're directly
related to them or not, these sort of millions of
people like yeah, gone, and.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
That's also millions of that's millions of moms. It's millions
of moms with a wound in their heart and wounds
that are so hard for them to face because of
the social pressure. Did not care about your abortion?
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Yeah, let's talk about unwanted abortion. What is you know,
pro Life Action League and how are they addressing this
this topic.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
It's a it's a terrible phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
A couple of years ago, the uh, the wing of
Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America that that focuses on
on pro life data and research, the Charlotte Lsure Institute
Charlotte Lewser published a paper on coerced and unwanted abortions, UH,
and they found David Reardon and some other researchers looked
(25:52):
through they did some surveys and they they discovered that
women who who have had abord they looked at they
talked to women in their forties. So these are women
as many years now after their abortion, so they'd have
one discreete you know, kind of cohort of women who'd
had abortions. And they found that only about a third
(26:13):
of women said that their abortion was a free choice
that they made themselves, and that had good consequences for them.
This is contrary to the propaganda that abortion is always
a free choice and that women are better off for it,
you know, things like the Turnoway study that claim that
women who are denied abortion suffer much worse, you know,
facts that not true, and their study doesn't even really
(26:36):
say that at all. But what reared In in his
co research has discovered was that two thirds of the
women who were reflecting back on their abortions described them
as not what they really wanted. Many of them said
that while they did choose the abortion, it was not
their first preference, and that they wanted to parent the child,
(26:58):
but that things like economic pressures or social pressures, or
feeling too young, you know, kept them from from doing
what they really wanted to do in their hearts. About
twenty five percent of them explicitly said the abortion was unwanted.
It was not what they wanted. They wanted to give
birth to that child. And this is the most shocking
(27:20):
of all. Fully one in ten, one in ten women
you know in their forties now looking back, said that
their abortions were coersive. They were coerced, whether it was
a threat of violence, a threat of murder, a threat
of unemployment, a threat of being unhoused, A mother and
(27:41):
father saying you get that abortion, I'm kicking you out
of my house, which, by the way, is illegal. You
cannot kick a minor child out of your home. That's
against the law. We don't accept that as a society.
Parents have a responsibility to care for their kids till
they're eighteen. And you know, it's just astonishing though, to
think that one out of ten women getting abortions. You know,
(28:02):
if you know, this is just a very early study.
We need more data. That's part of what we've been
working on is trying to In fact, we've even worked
with pro choice sociologists on branching out and getting funding
from more research into this area so we can find
out more about these unwanted abortions. But our early data
suggests that fully two thirds of abortions are not what
(28:25):
the woman really wanted, not her free choice, and this
is important for us, I think rebuilding after some of
the losses we've had since Dobbs came along and we
saw these referenda and we saw public opinion beginning to turn.
We saw more people turning against the pro life movement.
If we can reach out to people who are pro
(28:46):
choice and say, you know, abortions not so much of
a free choice as you thought. Here's the data to
show it. We can build common ground. And when I
talk to pro choice people, I have lots of pro
choice friends in the improv world and the arts world.
When I can talk to reporters about this and bring
up these questions, they always stop and listen. They are interested,
(29:08):
They interested to learn more about this because they you know,
I'm going to take them at their word. They say
they're not pro abortion, they're pro choice. They want it
to be a choice. Well, look, it's often not a choice.
If that's the case, and you combine that with, you
know the fact that we have an obligation to help
women so that they don't make you feel that that's
their only choice, you know, it gives us encouragement because
(29:31):
if we know that they don't really want abortions, then
we know that offering some housing assistance, or offering medical care,
or even just offering some affirmation that they can do it,
that they could be a mom, will be enough to
encourage them to choose life for their babies. That decision
to get an abortion is made under so much pressure
(29:54):
and so much could turn it at the last moment,
and so we want to be there. We want to
be there to make don happen.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Okay, you just want to plug the twenty twenty five
New Here After Right to Life Benefit banquet. It's on
October sixteenth, and our speaker, if you could scroll down,
is Darlene Pollock. She's our keynote speaker, and she is
(30:21):
pro life and former vice president of Save the One
and anti and she does she's part of an anti
trafficking organization. So it's going to be an amazing So
tickets are still available. Please visit NHRTL dot org. You
can get tickets for yourself, for a whole table for
(30:42):
your church. You can sponsor the banquet as a business
or anything helps to support the pro life work in
New Hampshire.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
All Right, She's an amazing speaker. I've heard her speak
before and she tells her story about how she was
she herself was trafficked and she actually escaped trafficking through
a pregnancy resource center. They helped her get out of traffic,
human trafficking. So definitely a powerful speaker and definitely worth
coming to the banquet and listening her speak.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So yeah, if we scroll down more a little bit more,
here you can see where you can buy your ticket,
become a sponsor. There's still early bird tickets before August
twenty eighth, so just like a week or so, so
get your early bird price in. It's going to be
the Manchester Country Club, all right, everybody, thanks for listening.
(31:37):
This is a thanks for Eric Schidler coming to the
pod today and hopefully you can get on Brogan someday
and this is just a stepping stone, all right, God
bless you. Okay, goodbye everyone.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Hi, thank you for listening to part one of our
episode with Eric Scheidler from the Pro Life Action League.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
We'd like to hear the rest of our interview with Eric.
Please tune in next week The Ever.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Living See you next week.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Thank you for listening to The Ever Living podcast, a
podcast by New Hampshire Right to Life, Newhampshire's oldest and
most active pro life organization. You can learn more about
our work and learn how to get involved at www
dot NHRTL dot org. If you would like to donate
to our mission, you can make a donation at www
dot NHRTL dot org backslash donate. See you next week.
(32:30):
May God bless you and be very near to you,
and may you be ever living
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