- Millennials are more
liberal and less religious
than their parents' generation.
But when it comes to
the issue of abortion,
their views are surprisingly similar.
Six in 10 believe abortion should be legal
in all or most cases.
But 65% also say they are pro-life.
Numbers don't always tell the full story.
So we spoke to seven
millennial women about
what being pro-life means to them.
- I would describe myself politically
as a conservative Republican.
- Consider myself Democratic-Socialist
- Definitely Conservative.
- Currently registered as an Independent.
- I would consider myself
a pro-life feminist,
kind of without hesitation.
- I'm a small-L libertarian,
which means I want people
to have maximum freedom
to make decisions for themselves.
- I tend to lean more conservative,
just because they tend
to be more pro-life.
- I am someone who survived
an abortion attempt,
my mom walked out of a hospital,
minutes before she was scheduled to have
an abortion with me.
Nothing that I've ever done,
going to school, getting married,
would have been possible
if I was not given
the right to life, if my
mother had not walked away.
- There is a lot of silence
surrounding the issue
because people don't want to
impose their beliefs on somebody.
- At Princeton, I found
that being pro-life
was definitely—that
got people's attention.
- I am an editor at Reason,
which is a libertarian,
political and cultural magazine.
Definitely a minority voice there,
as a practicing person of faith.
- So it's not uncommon to,
you know, have engagements,
some of them friendly,
some of them less friendly
on the subject of abortion
when you are a part of left politics.
That can be difficult,
it can be a little bit
of an island over there.
- I remember, I posted last year,
a picture on Facebook when I
went to the March for Life,
and one of my Facebook
friends just gave me this,
just let me have it with all
of the pro-abortion slogans of,
you know, "Keep your
rosaries off my ovaries."
- For example, in high school,
my posters were being torn down
and my friends would glare
at me as I put new ones up.
- Gotten everything from a
middle finger, to one point,
there was a grown man
just threatening to physically hurt me.
I may get upset and I may get hurt
but I try at an opposite spirit
because I think that is
the only way you overcome,
is by loving people
and you don't want to let
hurt or anger or bitterness
turn you into someone that's,
unloving because then, what's the point?
You know, what's the point?
- Being respectful when
you're engaging in debate,
of not ascribing the worst possible
and least charitable
motives to your opponent,
I mean, that's really important to me
and probably especially so,
because I know what it's like
to be sort of surrounded by people
who don't necessarily agree
with me on everything.
- People associate being
pro-life with being Conservative,
with being Republican, with being white,
and sometimes with being older
and that's changing, there're
more and more young people
who are becoming pro-life,
more and more people who
are not of religious faith,
like secular pro-life,
- I also am an outspoken feminist,
so they're like, "hey wait, I
thought if you're a feminist,
"you'd agree with me and be pro-choice"
and I thought, "that's a
thing that goes hand in hand."
- It can be a little bit
easier for me to talk pro-life
with somebody because of
the whole stereotype of
old white man wanting
to control your bodies
that's kind of out of the way
because I'm not an old white man (laughs)
- Like a lot of my peers, for years,
I've been finding myself
at odds and frustrated
with both the traditional
right and and traditional left.
- Especially with today's,
like this year's election,
it's really hard to sort of
align yourself with one party
because we sort of got
really polar opposites
and I think most people fall
much closer to the center.
- Agitated is a very good word
that there doesn't seem to be a place
for pro-life feminists in modern society.
- Being pro-life for me,
is more of like an all-encompassing ethic
it's not just being pro-life
in terms of abortion
it's about the death penalty,
it's about helping poor people,
it's a lot about single motherhood.
- There are a lot of ways in which,
in politics, you could
better support women
in making their life choices
and I think a lot of those
difficulties have to do with
childbirth and building families.
- Women and families,
who feel like there's no
other choice but abortion,
do so because they're facing
a whole host of issues in their lives
and structural problems
that they did not create
- We need more maternity homes,
we need more resources for women.
They need to know they're supported
and that they really don't need abortion
and I think that's where
change is going to happen.
- It's just up to, you know,
the next stage of the pro-life movement,
wherever it goes from here,
to reach out to millennials
who already hold those values.
(soft electronic music)
