Vitae keynote speaker calls pro-lifers “the real feminists”

People can and absolutely do change their minds when they hear the truth about abortion, which is exactly what Vitae is trying to do.”

Rachel Campos-Duffy, author and TV personality

The World Health Organization classifies Down syndrome as a birth defect.

Rachel Campos-Duffy says that’s nonsense.

“My little Valentina is not a ‘defect,’” the Catholic mother of nine told a cheering audience in Jefferson City. “She’s a human being.”

Mrs. Campos-Duffy, a well-known author, TV personality and host of the “From the Kitchen Table” podcast, headlined the Don and Ruth Ann Schnieders Pro-Life Event on March 21.

The annual event raises money for Vitae Foundation (vitaefoundation.org), a national non-profit that facilitates research to create messaging strategies to help make abortion unthinkable.

“It is such an honor to be here with fellow patriots, warriors and feminists,” Mrs. Campos-Duffy told the crowd of supporters.

“You pro-lifers are the greatest defenders of women and children,” she said. “You are the real feminists.”

She shared how her youngest daughter, age 3, has shaped the rest of the family.

“Through Valentina, we are learning patience, compassion, authentic tolerance and unconditional love,” Mrs. Campos-Duffy stated.

“She teaches us how to be in the moment,” the mother continued. “When we celebrate her achievements and milestones, we apply a better way of measuring success and happiness.”

Valentina is the first child with Down syndrome in the past decade at her public school.

“That’s just not statistically possible unless you have abortion,” said Mrs. Campos-Duffy.

She noted that only about 10 percent of babies survive a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis in this country.

In Iceland, only about two children with Down syndrome are born each year.

“Through prenatal testing and abortion, they have literally exterminated an entire class of people,” said Mrs. Campos-Duffy.

She said that’s one of numerous affronts to humanity that Vitae and the pro-life movement stand squarely against.

“You fight terrible injustice like the abortion genocide of the physically and mentally disabled,” she stated.

Mrs. Campos-Duffy began her television career as a cast member on the MTV reality series, “The Real World: San Francisco.”

She and her husband, former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, met each on the set of a spin-off program.

“We are the first and longest-lasting reality TV couple in America,” she stated. “Also the most fertile.”

She said decades of liberal feminist ideology have led to millions of lost lives while wreaking “incredible damage to what it means to be a woman or mother.”

“Treating our reproductive gift and responsibility as a curse has not elevated our gender,” she said. “In fact, it’s having quite the opposite effect.”

“Power and profit”

Hundreds of people attended Vitae’s event.

Monsignor Robert A. Kurwicki, vicar general of the Jefferson City diocese, pastor of St. Michael Parish in Russellville, and chaplain of the Missouri House of Representatives, led the Opening Prayer.

“Grant us the wisdom to know what we should do and the strength to do it your way,” he prayed. “We may move along an unknown path, but we go forward with a firm faith in the reality of goodness, truth and love and with the abiding assurance that you are with us.”

Vitae Senior Marketing Director Stacey Kromer announced that the annual Jefferson City event had been renamed in honor of Don and Ruth Ann Schnieders — Cathedral of St. Joseph parishioners who established the event over 30 years ago as a barbecue in their backyard.

Keynote speaker Mrs. Campos-Duffy said pro-lifers are the real advocates for women.

“There is nothing more empowering for women than deciding to overcome fear and embrace life,” she said.

She talked about the growing network of pregnancy resource centers around the country, and Vitae’s efforts to help women in crisis find them when they need them.

“Information is power,” she said. “You in this room are empowering women with the truth that abortion will not end a woman’s problems. In fact, it’s the beginning of a whole new set of problems.”

She pointed out that over half of the abortions taking place today are chemical abortions, and that they’re four times more likely to have complications.

“A so-called women’s clinic hands out pills to women and teenagers to carry out this gruesome do-it-yourself project alone in their bathroom,” she said.

She talked about how pro-lifers stand against the abortion industry’s exploitation of poor women and those who are members of minority populations.

Mrs. Campos-Duffy drew parallels between the current relentless efforts to promote abortion, to the campaign to keep slavery legal in the 19th century.

“In both cases, the powerful want to decide who is sufficiently human to have rights,” she said.

“Why? It’s simple: power and profit,” she stated. “Once you determine someone is not human, you can do anything you want to him or her.”

That’s why she believes this country will never be united until “the evil of abortion is resolved, and the unborn are legally welcomed into the human family.”

“You know this,” she told her audience. “You have decided to dedicate yourselves to providing women with love and a safe passage from the darkness of abortion to the light that comes from giving life.”

“Defenders and liberators”

Mrs. Campos-Duffy noted that this battle for hearts and minds is difficult, but progress is being made.

She pointed to the Supreme Court’s undoing last summer of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion-on-demand in all 50 states.

“Twenty-four states are likely to ban or severely restrict elective abortion,” she stated.

However, “overturning Roe v. Wade is hardly the end of our work,” she said. “In fact, it is just the beginning of even harder work that we must do to change the hearts and minds and culture and education.

“People can and absolutely do change their minds when they hear the truth about abortion,” she said, “which is exactly what Vitae is trying to do.”

Vitae Foundation President Brandy Meeks talked about how cities such as Chicago, St. Louis and Seattle had become “pro-life mission fields” — fueled by pro-life people in the nation’s heartland.

 “You have truly answered the call to get us prepared for a Post-Roe America,” she said.

An emerging front in the battle is the growing use of abortion pills, absent any medical physician’s oversight.

Mrs. Meeks talked at length about a group called “Plan C,” which promotes the internet marketing and mailing of abortion drugs to any home in the United States.

She likened the insidious nature of such packages being delivered to homes without parents’ knowledge, to the culture of abortion gradually subverting society unnoticed.

“When we recognize it for what it truly is, we have the power to change things, and that’s what we’re here to do tonight,” she said.

“Vitae has the tools to change hearts and minds with our research-backed messaging strategies,” she stated. “And with your help, we can build a culture of life to truly make abortion unthinkable and show the entire abortion industry that we’re done with their deception and their intent to steal our children and our way of life — not just here in Mid-Missouri but throughout our great country.”

“Chorus of gratitude”

Mrs. Kromer, Vitae’s senior marketing director, talked about the organization’s unique trove of research into the mindset of women of all ages and demographic sets at the moment they are most likely to seek abortion.

Using that research, Vitae can help those women find the help they need, quickly and close to home.

Mrs. Kromer noted that it costs about $1,000 to empower 64 women to schedule an appointment at a life-affirming Pregnancy Center.

“A thousand dollars in the wrong hands can buy about five packs of abortion pills for anyone of any age in any state from an unregulated ‘pharmacy,’” she said.

“That’s what we’re up against,” she stated.

Mrs. Campos-Duffy is convinced that helping pregnant women make the right choices has a profound effect — in this life and the next.

“I am certain that when each of you enters the pearly gates of heaven to meet your Maker, you will be recognized as defenders and liberators of millions of innocent and beautiful children, who will burst into a heavenly chorus of gratitude for all that you have done for them,” she said.