‘Unthinkable’: Post-Roe Generation Looks Beyond Dobbs to End Abortion

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia — “I am hoping that in my life, I will see abortion completely gone,” college student Skylar Culbertson told Breitbart News at the March for Life. “That’s the dream, that’s the goal.”

Now that Roe v. Wade is gone, Culbertson’s dream seemed like a realistic possibility to many Americans in attendance.

While realizing the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization framework returned the decision to regulate abortion to state legislatures, students speaking with Breitbart News maintained that the state houses are the next step on the road to completely outlawing abortion in the United States.

To Culbertson, that is why it is so important to keep fighting, and marching, for life.

“It really just comes down to abortion is still legal in many areas, and we want to see abortion completely outlawed,” she said. “We want to make it unthinkable. And, you know, having a pro-life presence and talking to people is one of the steps of doing that.”

The Virginia native and William and Mary student said she is the president of Tribe for Life on campus, and that in her experience through “tabling and having conversations, we’ve been able to change lots of minds.”

Returning the decision to state houses has brought several different legislative models for regulating abortion. Some states have a 15-week ban on the procedure, some have a heartbeat bill (about six weeks), while others have extremely restrictive near-total or total bans. However, these half-measures do not appear to be enough, as they create an untenable situation where life is defined differently across the country.

“Honestly, I don’t think we should be compromising. We need protection at conception,” Culbertson said. “I think that every congressman and woman should be fighting for that. It doesn’t matter if they have a heartbeat or not: from the moment of conception, they are a living human being and they deserve protection. So we need to fight for that.”

Even while the focus is on state legislation now, Culbertson maintained, “I am hoping that in my life, I will see abortion completely gone. That’s the dream, that’s the goal.”

College student Jaden from Michigan also wants to see abortion completely outlawed.

“It’s a huge hill that we overcame to overturn Roe v. Wade, but it’s still important that we fight in states like where I’m from, Michigan, we have abysmal laws on abortion,” he said. “There might be some red states, some Republican states, that are very strict on abortion now, but we need to continue to fight, show our presence to these politicians, that we are fed up with this murder.”

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Matt Perdie / Breitbart News

Regarding some of the half-measures taken by states, Jaden made clear that human life needs to be protected, regardless of the circumstances behind conception.

“It’s very sad to say, in the rare cases of rape or incest, it truly is a human life,” he said. “However they came into this world, whatever sin the father committed, that should be dealt through the courts and he should be thrown in jail for life, or whatever the states decide on that. But we believe that it is still truly a human life in God’s image, so we believe that in every case, we should always choose life.”

However, there will need to be an overwhelming cultural shift in America and in the Western world more generally in order to overcome the “culture of death” that has been created in the wake of Roe.

Citing Canada’s extremely lax euthanasia laws, Jaden told Breitbart News that “we need to fight for life whether it’s conception all the way to natural death.”

“I really believe that it’s a spiritual battle, so we need to socially come back to Christianity and fight the Devil, whether it’s the Rosary, prayer, showing up to the March for Life,” he concluded.

For Cassidy, a Michigan State student, changing the culture around abortion is key, particularly as it relates to how society tells young women it needs to view abortion.

Essentially taking to task Betty Friedan’s 1963 atrocity The Feminine Mystique, Cassidy said, “To tell a pregnant woman that abortion is her only option to be successful or to have a fulfilling life — it just boggles my mind because that’s not the point of life.”

“The point of life is not to succeed in a career, there’s so much more to that and you’re taking away what it means to be a woman, which is to be able to foster life and create something that’s amazing and beautiful,” she continued.

So much of American culture is built around abortion under the false pretenses that it is necessary for women to be successful.

“I hear that a lot. I got to Michigan State and it’s very liberal there and a lot of the time, ‘Women need abortion to be equal to men,'” Cassidy said. “That’s not true, and I find it really sexist because you’re telling me I can’t be successful in my career if I have a child, and that’s just simply not true. … To say that I need to be like a man in that way, when being a woman is amazing, and beautiful, and wonderful.”

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Matt Perdie / Breitbart News

When asked if she thinks American culture can make such a dramatic shift, Cassidy said, “I really do. I really have hope.”

“There’s science to back it up. Philosophically it makes sense,” she said. “I think it’s gonna take a lot more time than we think. I think that changing people’s minds takes a really long time, it takes a lot of convincing. And to admit that yo were wrong — it’s embarrassing, it’s terrifying, it’s scary.”

“For someone to switch from being extremely pro-abortion to being pro-life, I just feel like that’s going to be a really big turn,” she concluded. “But I definitely think that there’s a lot of hope. I mean, have you seen everybody here? We are trying to make a difference and we are trying to get that message out.”

Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.