By Amber Roseboom, President, Right to Life of Michigan
Independence Day is one of my favorite holidays. The family gatherings, the backyard barbeques, the parades… and, of course, the fireworks! But the Fourth of July isn’t just America’s birthday party, it’s an opportunity to reflect deeply on what it means to be an American.
I started my early career by serving at Right to Life of Michigan, and 25 years later, I am blessed to serve here again. In between, I spent time in our nation’s capital, involved in politics and government, working to serve the public interest.
Government service can be a very difficult but rewarding career. I thought it was worth doing because I believe we live in an exceptional nation, and I want it to stay that way.
Why did I come back home to Michigan to serve in the pro-life movement? Because I believe America is failing to live up to its ideals, particularly in securing our right to life, and the battle to defend life sits squarely in the states. Our rights as enumerated in the Declaration of Independence — “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — are not independent, but interdependent. To fully experience any of them, we must respect all of them.
That’s my vision of America’s founding, which I believe was also that of our founding fathers. It is never a perfect vision, but we are always striving to be a more perfect union!
Tragically, it seems some Americans do not share our vision of America, rather something radically different.
Last year, Jocelyn Benson – Michigan’s Secretary of State, Democrat candidate for governor and a recipient of then-President Joe Biden’s Presidential Citizens Medal – said the quiet part out loud when she told Politico, “The challenge and opportunity is to link reproductive freedom to economic freedom and political freedom.”
“Reproductive freedom” is a euphemism for abortion. The attempt to link abortion to our broader freedoms is a disturbing, destructive perversion with widespread implications. State by state, radical abortion-obsessed activists are peddling the lie that unfettered abortion equates to freedom. Michigan, sadly, is no exception.
The celebrated overturn of Roe via the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision was short-lived, as less than five months later, Michigan voters passed Proposal 3, a state constitutional amendment making abortion a constitutional “right” at any point in a woman’s pregnancy for any reason. The narrative of a late-term, partial-birth abortion for any reason has become entirely possible, not just as the dark end of a slippery slope, but as a constitutionally guaranteed right.
Consider this sad fact in the context of Warren Hern’s dark legacy. Hern is considered a founding father of Big Abortion and even penned a textbook on performing abortions. His particular specialty? Late-term, partial-birth abortions. Thankfully, he finally closed his Colorado abortion facility in April after 50 years of practice.
In advance of his retirement, The New Yorker ran an extensive profile of him, calling him “America’s Abortion Doctor.” How does such a celebrated figure view America? As a cancer! Hern described how he sees his fellow Americans at a 1998 meeting of the American Anthropological Association:
“Aerial and satellite views of urban centers taken over a period of years bore a striking similarity to images of cancerous tissue (particularly melanoma) invading the healthy surrounding tissue… In many parts of the world the increase in human numbers is rapid and uncontrolled, that it invades and destroys habitats, and that by killing off many species it reduces the differentiation of nature. All of these features are characteristics of cancerous tumors.”
Jocelyn Benson’s and Warren Hern’s vision for America isn’t just anti-American…it’s a direct assault on our very humanity.
Freedom is found by fostering life, not taking it.
In Michigan, against all odds, we are focused on fostering life by expanding safeguards for women, families and children, born and unborn. The stakes could not be higher, and they serve as a warning siren for the rest of the country. With abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy, radical abortion activists pressed on, removing long-standing abortion clinic health and safety regulations, striking down informed consent for abortion, and ending abortion reporting.
Their intention is an abortion-only response to pregnancy with zero transparency, particularly troubling when you consider the final abortion report showed a stunning 38% spike in serious complications from abortion in just one year. (Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Abortion Report, 2024)
The good news is that, even with our laws failing to uphold the right to life, the power to do so ultimately rests in the hands of the people, of every woman and couple facing an unplanned pregnancy. Our mission now is to reach everyone possible in our communities with the truth about the dangers of abortion and the support to make a hopeful, courageous choice for life. (Learn more at rtl.org.)
As a country, it is time we got serious about securing the right to life at all levels, in Washington D.C., in our state capital, and in each and every home.
The question now, if we care about our great country, is how can we help further shore up America’s foundation and our great cause for life? This Independence Day, take time to remind those around you that the vision our founders had, the vision the American Dream is rooted in, is one of interdependence, not just with each other as a community, but foundationally, in our very rights.