Since April 2014, Lauren (Merz) Bielinski ’10 has been building pro-life organization Live Action’s strategic development and marketing programs. Lauren serves on Live Action’s executive team, setting the organization’s messaging, marketing, and strategy, building their organizational health and culture, and managing their fundraising team. Lauren shares Live Action’s work and mission around the country and is a popular public speaker on pro-life and cultural issues. Lauren is a Leonine Fellow, is from an Air Force family, and is the oldest of 14 children. She is married and lives with her husband in Kansas. This is her story of how she came to embrace and champion the pro-life cause.
At seventeen, I was the eldest of eight children and homeschooled. And to be honest, I thought this was just the right size for a large Catholic family. The youngest in our family at the time was my adorable brother, Tony, and he was the cherry on top. Our full, energetic family seemed complete. It wasn’t long, however, before my mom shared that she was pregnant with number nine, my sister Thérèse. I didn’t share my parents’ excitement—I was exasperated. Wasn’t eight kids enough for a large Catholic family? Seven younger siblings already gave our family a very full life. Now I had to help with yet another one?
In retrospect, I can see that this was a key moment. I wasn’t sure if I was totally pro-life. I loved each of my siblings, but seriously … more? I knew that being pro-life was part of being a good Catholic, and that meant welcoming every child. But as “Mom #2,” it didn’t feel quite “fair” to have to be that open.
Lauren (Merz) Bielinski ’10.
At this point, I was very ready to get out of the house and go to college. By God’s good Providence, I went to Christendom College. I had no idea who I wanted to be or what I wanted to do long-term. I had no sense of what God was calling me to in my vocation. I made incredible friends and fell in love with studying and learning. There were a variety of extracurricular groups on campus—a debate club, the theater club, and a pro-life club called Shield of Roses. I always heard about and was invited to join the big white vans of my fellow students who drove the 90 minutes into Washington, D.C., to pray outside Planned Parenthood every Saturday morning, but I never went. For four years, I came up with excuses to not join the Shield of Roses—I was too tired, had too much homework, stayed up too late the night before. But I always had this guilty feeling every Saturday morning that I shoved down and ignored. I gave myself the excuse that I would just pray for an end to abortion on campus and check off that mental box.
While at my first job out of college working as an assistant for a conservative nonprofit, I came across Live Action’s undercover investigative videos exposing late-term abortion in our country. I learned not only about the violence happening every day in our own neighborhoods and cities, but that there is also an entire business model built up around abortion.
This story comes from the latest issue of Instaurare Magazine, the official magazine of Christendom College. Read more from Instaurare here!
I had the opportunity to hear Lila Rose, Live Action’s president and founder, speak at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast a year or two into my first job. On top of the struggle to grasp being truly open to life in a big family, in my heart I also really struggled with abortion in cases of rape—something I had never shared with anyone. I could not imagine as a young twenty-something going through such horrific violence and then having the massive responsibility of raising a child on top of it. But Lila, in her bold, fearless way, dismantled this exception. She humanized the preborn child, making the child’s vulnerability and inestimable worth real to me in a new way, and grounding me in the reality that abortion was wrong no matter the circumstances around that child’s conception.
After hearing a speech from Lila Rose, president of Live Action, Bielinski was truly, fully pro-life.
After this speech, I was truly, fully pro-life. I started digging into what abortion really is and learned about this massive fight raging in our country every day.
I learned that we have lost over 63 million children to abortion since Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973. Every day, 2,363 children are poisoned, torn apart, and suctioned out of their mothers’ wombs in our country alone. Mothers and fathers carry this burden and grief for decades, often silently, and without a path to healing.
Once I learned the full truth for myself and fully realized that every life is truly an absolute gift and miracle, regardless of circumstance, hardship, or challenges, I knew I couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer.
Through my work at Live Action, I have become painfully aware that misinformation about abortion is rampantly spewed from media groups, businesses, and social media companies. These pro-abortion companies spend millions of dollars annually to convince women and men that killing their own preborn children is necessary for their happiness and security. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have vast connections and resources, and even have over half a billion of our taxpayer dollars at their disposal. Our school systems, media, the federal government, and big tech are nearly all pro-abortion. They target schoolchildren, prey on mothers when they are in their most vulnerable state, distort the understanding of human nature, and lead parents down a path to destroy the most precious gift they could ever receive.
Since joining Live Action, Bielinski has seen massive gains made in the pro-life movement — especially over the past year.
And yet, even with all the power, money, and influence of the abortion industry, and with so many institutional forces against us, we are making massive pro-life gains.
In 2021, more pro-life legislation was passed than ever before. With the Supreme Court considering the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case, I am hopeful that the decades-long battle against Roe v. Wade may finally come to an end this year.
If the Supreme Court just does the minimum of up-holding Mississippi’s 15-week law (which bans the killing of preborn children beginning at 15 weeks), it will then be up to the states to defend preborn children. States who have pro-life protections in place must be bolstered to keep those protections and ensure complete legal protection for the preborn. And the battle will intensify in states currently pro-abortion, where the killing of preborn children is per-mitted—and even promoted—through all nine months of the baby’s life in the womb. If the Supreme Court decides not to uphold the MS 15-week law, it will be clearer than ever that the battle must be fought at the state and community level in order to impact federal law.
This is the tipping point for the pro-life movement. The battle is at a fever pitch and will never be the same again. But the battle is not primarily at the legislative level. Politics flows from culture, and culture flows from the spiritual battle within our own hearts and families. Our own relationship with Our Lord and how we allow Him to transform us and our relationships within our families is how we will truly win this battle. Abortion is downstream from the breakdown of the family. This violence will stop with strong, united, self-sacrificing families centered around Christ and His One True Church. With strong families rooted in the Sacraments of the Church, we will be able to engage and win this raging fight for preborn children.
This year, Bielinski’s alma mater, Christendom, led the National March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Looking back, I can see that I initially clung to a selfish, inaccurate definition of the term “pro-life,” and I challenge Catholics everywhere to ask themselves if what we truly believe reflects the totality of Catholic principles on the sacredness of life for those preborn, born, and also near death. If we all truly believe and act on this, 2022 will be the year we do more than ever before in the fight to defend preborn children—whether that is praying harder than ever before outside of abortion facilities, donating more than ever before to pro-life organizations and Pregnancy Resource Centers, and, most importantly—loving the families right in front of us through Christ who strengthens us.
Contributed by Lauren (Merz) Bielinski, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Live Action.