Charlotte Pence Bond, daughter of Vice President Mike Pence, shows that the pro-life movement in the United States is positive, compassionate and pro-woman.

A new generation of pro-life leaders is emerging across the Atlantic. Charlotte Pence Bond, only 26-years-old, has risen to prominence in recent years after her father, Mike Pence, assumed the office of vice president in 2017.

Headlining pro-life summits and rallies in the United States, Mrs Bond, recently married, represents an encouraging move forward for a pro-life movement that is compassionately pro-woman – and states it as such. She is also an example of how a young person, thrust into the public arena, has been called to affirm the pro-life cause – and has done so intelligently and in a manner befitting the sensitivities inherent in the abortion debate.

Bond’s rising star

Bond has by now gained recognition even in the UK, having recently been interviewed by the Guardian. It is a testament to the tempered approach of Vice President Pence’s daughter that the only real criticism the Guardian could muster against her was that she was just too amiable. Of course, the Guardian did not admit it as such, but it was Bond’s attempt to reach out and, essentially, be reasonable that roused Jessica Glenza, the interviewer, to make some criticising remarks.

For example, Glenza evidently took exception to Bond’s claim that she is “not very political”. “I personally don’t believe abortion should be legal,” she told the Guardian, but also added that: “I’m not a politician.”

The Guardian piece, though obviously tilted in favour of abortion, was not unfair when it highlighted Bond’s reluctance to engage with actual policy matters regarding abortion in the United States. When asked what her view on birth control was, for example, she responded:

“Maybe one day I’ll run for office and I’ll have a whole plan about it that I’ll be happy to talk to you about it. I wouldn’t say that I really have too much of an opinion on that right now that I’d like to speak openly about.”

Of course, one might accuse Bond of providing an evasive answer on birth control. However, it seems to me that her thought on this issue was, as she admitted herself, underdeveloped. It might also be that Bond was concerned that providing a definite answer would risk alienating certain elements within the pro-life movement – in other words, it was a “politician’s answer”. In a sense, Glenza was not wrong to raise this point.

Framing abortion

If there is one issue that Bond must, I think, contend with – and she is likely aware of this herself - it’s the problem of attempting to communicate her obvious compassion for women while at the same time not compromising her view on the matter-of-factness of abortion itself as an evil act. While compromise or vagueness on policy and language might avoid a bad mention in the Guardian, it might concede too much to the pro-abortion cause.

Interestingly, Bond followed her father on the campaign trail in 2016. She also helped frame his statements on abortion for the vice-presidential debate. Rather than simply focusing on statistics, she advised him to speak from the heart and emphasise that the pro-life movement is founded on compassion for both the mother and her child. This, it seems to me, is her strongest foundation for advancing her cause.

Despite her compassion – or rather, because of it – Bond is unequivocal in her opposition to abortion. “I don’t think there was a time that I considered being pro-choice,” she has stated. And speaking at the youth rally at the 2020 March for Life in Washington DC – the USA’s largest anti-abortion protest, held since 1973 – she made it clear that she believed that “the pro-life issue is the human rights issue of our day”. Although she has said “abortion is evil”, she also believes the women who have had abortions are mostly “people who are really hurting”.

Exciting times for the pro-life movement in the United States

By now, Bond has regular billing at anti-abortion events around the United States, such as the Students for Life summit in 2019, as well as the American Family Association’s Pro-Life Summit in 2020. She has even appeared on the American talk show The View. Above all, Bond’s message, wherever she speaks, is that the pro-life movement is not against women, but overwhelmingly on the side of improving women’s lives:

“Pro-life is pro-women. It can be a place that we encourage women, we don’t shame them. We point them in the right directions to make a decision that’s going to be better for them psychologically for the rest of their life.”

It is an exciting time in the United States for the pro-life cause. At the same March for Life rally that Bond attended in 2020, President Trump became the first ever president to speak at the event, where he also dubbed himself, not unjustly, the “most pro-life president” in history – in 2017, Bond’s father was the first ever sitting vice president to address the gathering, marking a key moment, I believe, for the pro-life cause in America.

Unfortunately, in Britain there are few politicians who are prepared to place their head above the parapet and speak up against abortion. Unlike in America, where the pro-life movement has a place in the mainstream of political discourse, not enough men and women in a position of power stand up for what is right and true. Until politicians show some backbone, here and elsewhere, the pro-life cause will remain underrepresented in government.

Seizing back the initiative

Certainly, Bond is well-placed in America to make the most of her moment. Speaking at the youth rally in 2020, she encouraged the crowd to seize back the initiative and no longer be cowed by the odds:  

“You know that you’re not the in-crowd. You’re not reflected in the mainstream media and you’re not popular all the time, but that’s OK because anyone who made a difference in the history of the world wasn’t really popular at the time.

“Let’s not allow the pro-choice movement to own these stories anymore … Let’s be the people that these women and men run to in order to tell their stories and help them to embrace life, to perhaps find healing and be able to move forward.”

We are the “modern-day abolitionists”, she proclaimed.