Still, as Tish Harrison Warren pointed out on Twitter after the March for Life, there’s a whole cohort of diverse “pro-life” advocates who do not fit the Republican stereotype — and they are working outside of politics and policy in an effort to shape and reform our country’s abortion position. Organizations such as the New Wave Feminists, Consistent Life Network, Latinos4Life and others are working around the nation to support women and the unborn. Some Christian pregnancy centers are expanding their services to women, so that they can offer contraception as well as other forms of counseling or maternity care. A Tennessee pregnancy center profiled by The New York Times last year focuses its energies on providing baby supplies and other material supports to needy mothers (something I also observed at a local pregnancy resource center growing up).

In 2014, half of the women in America who had abortions lived in poverty, and a 2005 Guttmacher Institute study found that approximately one-quarter of women who had an abortion said they did so because they could not afford to have a baby. It would make sense, then, that this might be an issue fought best not just through anti-abortion policy but also through efforts, at both the local and national levels, to empower and support women who need better health care access, better wages and better community supports.