The Anti-abortion Movement Won. Now What?

Paying pregnant women’s bills was not exactly part of Nathan and Emily Berning’s life plan—until they realized that doing so actually helped dissuade women from getting abortions. One of the first was Atoria Foley, who was living in her car when she found out that she was pregnant. Atoria had scheduled an abortion and the Bernings sprang to action. They flew to Sacramento, California, where she lived, and put her up in a hotel. What Atoria needed—groceries, gas, car payments—they covered, sometimes with their own money. They signed her up for every government benefit they could. When Atoria finally canceled her abortion appointment, the Bernings were elated. Her son, Kiahari, turned 2 years old in March.

Three years have passed since the Indiana couple launched Let Them Live, a nonprofit that gives financial help to women to keep them from following through with abortions. The organization has paid $2.4 million in pregnant women’s bills, and the Bernings estimate that they’ve prevented more than 400 abortions. (Let Them Live asks these women to agree to not get an abortion, Nathan told me. But now that the ruling has been , Nathan hopes that the anti-abortion movement will shift its focus to advocating for public policy to support women and families. Nonprofits like his “can provide a piece of the solution to the problem, but there’s going to have to be a government aspect to it,” he said. “The pro-life movement in general has not been thinking big enough.”