Jackie Appleman

Jackie is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Voices for Life. She has been involved in the pro-life cause for over 20 years, beginning in high school, when she participated in pro-life clubs and received the Pro-Life Youth Award from the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. She has served as volunteer, board member and then as Executive Director for Right to Life Michiana, and Development Director for Sidewalk Advocates for Life. She still serves as SAFL’s Program Leader in South Bend, and launched the first pro-life door knocking program in Northern Indiana.

 

Andrew Bair

Andrew Bair is the Director of Administration at Maryland Right to Life and a contributor at Life News. A self-described “political nerd,” he has worked for numerous pro-life campaigns and candidates, the National Right to Life Committee, and the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation.

 

Christopher Bell

Christopher Bell is President and Co-Founder of Good Counsel, founded 41 years ago to help pregnant and parenting mothers and those affected by abortion. Good Counsel’s four maternity homes in New York and New Jersey take in any pregnant mother in need without a waiting period, and Chris has helped homes open in nine states. He holds degrees in Journalism, Spiritual Direction and Counseling, and Family Counseling. Chris and his wife, the former Joan Andrews, have seven children and
12 grandchildren.

 

Rosa Bello

Rosa Bello is the founder and President of Stories of Immigrants, a national 501(c)(3) that amplifies immigrant voices to build empathy and advocate for immigrant families. A DACA recipient, she came to this country as a child and is still pursuing citizenship. She trains immigrant storytellers, facilitates advocacy workshops, and leads a nationwide Ally Network pursuing reform. She lives in the metro DC area.

 

Emily Berning

Emily Berning is the President and Founder of Let Them Live, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping women who are facing unexpected pregnancies, and saving babies from abortion through real, practical support. Under her leadership, Let Them Live has grown into a powerful movement that has already saved more than 1,000 lives. Beyond her work in the pro-life movement, Emily is a passionate voice on faith, culture, and conservative values. She speaks boldly on the intersection of biblical truth and modern cultural challenges, offering wisdom and encouragement for navigating today’s world with courage and conviction. As young female leader, Emily brings both authenticity and authority to every stage she’s on, inspiring audiences with her personal journey of faith, leadership, and the fight for life.

 

Abraham Bonowitz

Abraham J. Bonowitz has been a leading organizer to end the death penalty since he changed his mind on the issue 30+ years ago. In 2007 he helped pass the first post-Furman legislative repeal bill. He was also directly involved in the repeal victories in NM, IL and MD and to a lesser degree in CT, NE, NH, CO & VA. Bonowitz co-founded Death Penalty Action in 2017 in response to anticipated federal executions and led the grassroots response to the unprecedented federal execution spree in the final months of the Trump Administration. As executive director, he has helped grow Death Penalty Action into the leading grassroots anti-death penalty organization in the United States. Abe is a graduate of the Ohio Institute of Photography and worked as a photographer before being bitten by the human rights bug in the late 1980s. He served on the board of directors of Amnesty International USA and worked for several years with the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation. Abe is a native Ohioan and lives in Columbus with his wife, their son, two cats and a dog.

 

Karina Breceda

Karina Breceda is a born-and-raised Fronteriza bringing a pro-life perspective to migrant advocacy as an activist, writer, and humanitarian aid worker, with 14 years of experience at the U.S.–Mexico border. She is Founder and Director of Stellar and Casa Maris shelters, supporting migrant women and children on both sides of the El Paso–Ciudad Juárez border during pregnancy and postpartum. Her work has been featured on the cover of TIME, on 60 Minutes, and in National Geographic.

 

Tom Brejcha

Tom Brejcha is the founder, president, and chief counsel of Thomas More Society. He has practiced in federal and state courts for over 45 years. Tom graduated with honors from the University of Notre Dame and earned a Root-Tilden Scholarship to New York University Law School. He served as an Army Captain in Vietnam, where he received a Bronze Star and an Army Commendation Medal. Tom has testified before U.S. Congressional Committees and appeared on national and local media. In 1986, Tom volunteered to defend pro-life leader Joe Scheidler in the landmark NOW v. Scheidler case. After three U.S. Supreme Court appearances, Tom prevailed — and in 1998, he founded Thomas More Society to continue that work full-time. The organization has since grown into a national public interest law firm with over 100 active cases.

 

Dr. Riva Brown

Dr. Riva Brown’s story has never followed a straight line—but every chapter has shaped her commitment to helping people and communities move from crisis to confidence and from resilience to restoration. Her journey has taken her from the newsroom to the classroom to the front lines of disaster response. She currently serves as executive director of the American Red Cross Greater Arkansas Chapter, after years as a journalist, professor, and disaster relief volunteer across four continents. Drawing from her own healing journey, she created the RED Zone Framework™—Release. Edit. Delete.—helping people release the beliefs and burdens keeping them from who they were created to be.

 

Sarah Burchart

Sarah Burchart is a librarian interested in metadata and data science. She has previously worked in communications for a pregnancy center and served as a chapter leader for Democrats for Life of Michigan.

 

Chris Butler

Chris Butler is a pastor, community organizer, and writer who has spent over 25 years helping people organize around shared convictions. He serves as Lead Pastor of Ambassador Church in Chicago’s Southland, Formation Pastor at Chicago City Life Center, and Chief Strategist for the AND Campaign. He co-founded WeSchool Education Foundation with his wife, Aziza, and co-authored Compassion (&) Conviction. Chris holds degrees from Northeastern Illinois University and Northwest University, and the couple homeschools their six children in Chicagoland.

 

Dr. Rebecca Carlson

Dr. Rebecca Carlson is the Director of Philosophy and Engagement at Equal Rights Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Biola University. She speaks across the country and internationally about pro-life apologetics and how to cultivate smarter, kinder conversations with people who disagree about human rights issues—even people you may not think are capable of smart, kind conversations at all. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Southern California.

 

Shannon Copeland

Shannon Copeland is a criminal justice reform advocate, returning citizen, educator, and founder of the Florida Coalition for Criminal Justice Advocates. After spending more than 15 years incarcerated in Florida, Shannon transformed her lived experience into a powerful platform for advocating for human dignity, accountability, and meaningful criminal justice reform.

Shannon holds a B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Florida and a Paralegal Certificate from Blackstone Career Institute. She has been recognized with the Stop the Stigma Award and has participated in national fellowships, leadership programs, and conferences focused on criminal justice reform, abolition, reentry, and the rights of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Today, Shannon works to amplify the voices of people impacted by incarceration, particularly in underserved and rural communities. Her advocacy is grounded in a simple belief: every person deserves to be seen as fully human, regardless of their past or circumstances.

 

Allison Daigle

Allison Daigle serves as the CEO of Woman’s New Life Clinic, a professional counseling and medical clinic offering life-affirming services for women in unplanned pregnancies, post-abortive men and women, and women coping with pregnancy loss and post-partum depression in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Her work at Woman’s New Life Clinic includes development duties, education about life issues, and implementing new programs in building a culture of life. Allison is a wife and mother and is a graduate of Millsaps College, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Biology in 2001.

 

Dena Espenscheid

Over her twenty years of professional experience, Dena held a variety of positions in public policy organizations, advertising agencies, and political campaigns including, Coalition for a Strong America, National Ballot Access, American Majority, Open and Clean Government, Vote Yes for Life, and the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. Much of her work has been focused on grassroots organizing, and training volunteers and fellow staffers. She currently serves as Senior Director of Coalitions at the Leadership Institute. 

 

Beth Fox

Beth was born with a genetic code deemed incompatible with life. When abnormalities were discovered in utero, doctors recommended abortion. However, Beth’s mom bravely chose to give her chance to experience love and life even if it was fleeting. Today, Beth lives with a host of rare diseases, including a degenerative neuromuscular disorder, Turner syndrome, narcolepsy, two rare eye disorders that have caused her to be blind, and a number skeletal anomalies. Despite her sorted medical history, Beth has completed two Master’s degree in public health and development psychology. She worked as a tutor and lived independently until this past spring when a series of nine small strokes caused a rapid deterioration of her health. Today, Beth is in multiple system organ failure and relies on machines and medications to maintain many body processes. Her medical team is sure if she has a few months or, optimistically, a few years left. Beth, with the help of her loyal medical alert dog, is here to discuss some of the challenges of accessing life-affirming end-of-life care as young adult, but also to show that not only is it possible to live with chronic and terminal illness but to truly thrive.

 

Miles Gloetzner

Miles Gloetzner entered into pro-life end-of-life care after an 11 year career with a Veterans Hospital. He founded Inhora, a New Mexico nonprofit aimed at honoring natural dying as a sacred part of living, especially expressed through a free-of-charge community hospice home in downtown Albuquerque. The home has provided real dignified care to over 100 Guests since opening in April 2025. He is supported by his wife of 18 years and their six children.

 

Lauren Handy

Lauren Handy is a direct actionist and organizer across various anti-violence movements, focused on changing the material conditions of those impacted by death-making institutions. Their work involves LGBTQ inclusion, emergent strategy, politicized healing, and abolition as a relational practice.

 

Thomas Hill

Thomas Hill is the co-founder of Virginia for Preborn Justice, where he advances local, grassroots efforts to build a Virginia beyond abortion. He has organized with pro-life groups across the ideological spectrum, and has also been involved in anti-war, disability justice, pro-immigration, and anti-euthanasia activism. Currently, Thomas is developing his senior thesis on community organizing, mutual aid, and emergent strategy as frameworks for the pro-life movement. He also serves as the sidewalk outreach coordinator for Liberty University Students for Life, helps manage the Virginia Mom & Child Fund, and leads the pro-life ministry at Memorial Methodist Church in Appomattox, Virginia. Thomas is especially passionate about advancing the Consistent Life Ethic in evangelical spaces and providing practical tools for CLE organizing!

 

Taylor Hyatt

Taylor Hyatt has been involved in disability policy since 2015, including advising a parliamentarian on his response to Bill C-14 — the federal legislation introducing euthanasia in Canada — as it was being written. Ms. Hyatt’s interest in bioethics grew out of her personal experience living with cerebral palsy and autism. She has served as a member of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, as well as the Council of Canadians with Disabilities’ Ending-of-Life Ethics Committee. She served as Policy Analyst at Toujours Vivant-Not Dead Yet from 2017-early 2020, and now works in the Canadian federal public service. Her articles and interviews have appeared at the CBC, Global News, The Ottawa Citizen, and The Catholic Register.

 

Jason Jones

Jason Jones is a human rights advocate, filmmaker, and founder of the Vulnerable People Project (VPP), a Catholic apostolate dedicated to defending vulnerable communities from violence in some of the world’s most neglected places. His work is rooted in the Church’s teachings on the sanctity and dignity of human life from its first moment to natural death, and in mobilizing others to honor the image of God in every person facing persecution, violence, and abandonment.

 

Kathy Kelly

Kathy Kelly is board president of World BEYOND War. From 2022 to 2024 she co-coordinated the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, and has made over two dozen trips to Afghanistan from 2010 – 2019, living with young Afghan Peace Volunteers in a working-class neighborhood in Kabul.
With Voices in the Wilderness companions, from 1996 – 2003, she traveled twenty-seven times to Iraq, joined subsequent delegations to the West Bank’s Jenin Camp in 2002 during and after Israeli attacks, to Lebanon during the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah and to Gaza, in 2009, during Operation Cast Lead and following the 2013 Operation Pillar of Defense.
Kathy has been an educator for most of her life, but she believes children of war and those who are victims of violence have been her most important teachers.

 

Timothy Kirchoff

Timothy Kirchoff is a Chicago-based Catholic writer with a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame in Political Science, Theology, and the Catholic social tradition. His writing can be found on the Rehumanize blog, Commonweal, and America magazine.

 

Bill Kissinger

Bill Kissinger recently celebrated his third “FreedomVersary” after serving 47 flat calendar years on a Life Without Parole sentence in Angola. He was released in March 2023 based on Ramos v. Louisiana (2020), a case he fought for years. He is a published author awaiting release of his autobiography, “47 Winters,” and writes “The Death Penalty Corner” on Substack.

 

Daisy Lavender

Daisy Lavender is the founder of Code-Bloom. He has written code for 20+ years, holds a bachelor’s in Computer Science and Physics, and has done research in Quantum Mechanics & Photonics. A lifelong pacifist, pro-lifer, and consistent-lifer, he is also a privacy and digital rights advocate who loves coding.

 

Hayden Laye

A self-described political junkie, Amtrak fan, ‘80s music enjoyer and cryptid enthusiast, Hayden Laye is the founder of Pro-Life Greenville (SC). 

 

Dr. Rachel MacNair

Rachel M. MacNair is an American sociologist and psychologist who adheres to the consistent life ethic, an activist against abortion and war. An expert on veteran psychology, she coined the term “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress” (PITS), a form of PTSD that may result from the act of killing.

 

Shannon McCormick, APRN, BSN, MSN, CFCP

Shannon was born and raised in South Louisiana. She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Louisiana State University School of Nursing in 1992 and her Master of Science in Nursing from University of South Alabama in 2018. Her nursing focus has been women’s health. In 2010 she completed her training as a Creighton Model FertilityCare Practitioner. She is currently employed as a nurse practitioner and FertilityCare Practitioner at Woman’s New Life Clinic in New Orleans. She is married and has two sons.

 

Brandi Melissa

An abortion survivor and longtime legislative advocate, Brandi has spent nearly two decades working on disability rights, the sanctity of life, criminal justice, sexual violence, and human dignity. Conceived through violence and surviving a failed abortion, she brings firsthand experience of domestic violence, disability, abortion, and religious trauma to her opposition to the death penalty. Her views evolved through legislative work, research into execution methods, and confronting the realities of state sanctioned execution.

 

Dr. Bill Murphy

Since leaving a career in IT with IBM to become a Catholic moral theologian, Dr. Bill Murphy has taught in Catholic seminaries and Universities for over 25 years, also doing scholarly writing. His original interests were in New Testament ethics and disputed questions of life and sexual ethics. Gradually he came to focus on questions of how Catholics should relate to the modern world of democratic states, market economies and technology, which is the realm of Catholic Social Doctrine.  He publishes a Substack newsletter betterpolitics.substack.com and recently edited  two-volume collection called Social Catholicism for the Twenty First Century?. 

 

Dr. Michael New

Michael J. New, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at The Busch School of Business at Catholic University of America, a Senior Associate Scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and a Fellow at Americans United for Life. A Dartmouth graduate, he earned his doctorate in political science from Stanford. He researches the social science of sanctity-of-life issues, including the 50 percent drop in the U.S. abortion rate since 1980, and appears frequently on EWTN, CNN International, and National Review Online.

 

Christy Yao Pellicioni

Christy Yao Pellicioni is a board member of the Consistent Life Network, staff writer at Rehumanize International, and mom of two.

 

Angel Pennyman

Angel Pennyman is the Relationship Specialist at Support After Abortion, where she builds meaningful partnerships and equips organizations and providers with resources to better support individuals impacted by abortion. With a strong background in leadership, relationship development, and community engagement, she brings a unique ability to connect people, organizations, and opportunities around a shared mission.

Known for her relational leadership and passion for empowering others, Angel works to strengthen collaboration, expand access to support, and create meaningful pathways toward hope and healing. Her experience leading and developing relationships across diverse communities and teams has given her a deep understanding of the power of partnership—and the importance of meeting people with compassion, dignity, and practical support.

 

Eric Scheidler

Executive Director of the Pro-Life Action League, Eric is a second-generation activist, the oldest of Joe and Ann Scheidler’s children. He grew up attending protests, leafleting, and discussing abortion with peers. Eric has been involved with the League since its 1980 founding, starting by stuffing envelopes and working summers during college.

 

Jenna Smith

Jenna Smith is a pro life advocate from South Bend, IN. She began working on the sidewalks of abortion referral facilities in August 2023 and is responsible for growing and coordinating outreach at Voices for Life’s chapter of Sidewalk Advocates for Life. Jenna previously volunteered at LifePlan, a pro life family resource center, for four years while living in Michigan and continues to volunteer at their South Bend location. She is passionate about women’s health and well-being, as well as music, theology, and writing.  She is thankful for the support of her extended family, husband, and dog while reaching out to abortion vulnerable populations.

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Julia Smucker

Julia Smucker has served on the Consistent Life Network board since 2017 and the Pax Christi Maine Council since 2021. Her work as a community interpreter of French and Haitian Creole, as well as her lifelong passion for promoting nonviolence, feed into her additional advocacy and volunteer work in support of the dignity and safety of the immigrant communities she serves in southern Maine.

 

Nathaniel Stuart

Nathaniel Stuart is the Project Manager of Southside Life House, the first maternity home on the South Side of Chicago and host to the Southside's only pregnancy resource center, and leads Meeting Stone Strategies, a consulting firm that helps values-oriented nonprofits and community organizations build the infrastructure they need to grow. A graduate of Stanford University (B.A. International Relations, M.A. Communication), he also teaches communications at Concordia University Chicago. In his career and personal time, he likes to help people who help people, building institutions especially on Chicago's South and West sides.

 

Dr. Ayana Thomas

Dr. Ayana Thomas is the Founder and Executive Director of The G.R.I.E.F. Initiative™, a grief-informed, whole-person care organization advancing healing across communities, courts, correctional facilities, and reentry systems. A grief counselor, author, educator, and advocate, she brings lived experience and professional service to spaces where loss is often overlooked and survival is mistaken for wellness. Her work gives language to losses connected to family separation, identity, safety, freedom, and the lives people hoped to live. She creates spaces where individuals can be heard without shame and supported with dignity. Dr. Thomas holds an honoris cause in Philosophy and Counseling from New Life Christian University. Compassionately known as The Grief Doc, she leads with a commitment to honoring the full humanity of every person she serves.

 

Emiliano Vera

Emiliano Vera is a researcher who focuses on the consequences of sanctions on human development. He has a Master's from the Universidad de las Américas Puebla in Governance and Globalization and a Bachelor's in Social Policy from Northwestern. Emiliano has been on the Board of Rehumanize since 2021, serving as Vice President and podcast cohost, as well as helping translate publications into Spanish. He lives between Puebla, Mexico and Western Illinois with his husband and dog.

 

Mike Vick

Mike Vick is running for governor to give Illinoisans a principled, pro-life for the whole life alternative this November. Mike is an Illinois political activist, journalist, media producer, and community advocate whose career spans journalism, organized labor, consumer advocacy, faith-based civic engagement, and electoral politics. He has organized workers with SEIU Healthcare, served as field canvass director for Citizens Action Coalition, and worked in political and nonprofit leadership. In 2024, Mike was the American Solidarity Party’s endorsed candidate for Congress in Illinois’ 2nd District. He also hosts and produces Unorthodoxing. His work centers on bridging political divides and advancing human dignity, economic justice, strong families and communities, environmental stewardship, democracy, peace, and a consistent commitment to human life. 

 

Matt Yonke

Matt Yonke joined the Pro-Life Action League in October 2007 amid the League’s fight against Planned Parenthood in Aurora, Illinois. He oversees the League’s operations, including communications and protest efforts, and documents events through photography, video, and writing. Matt lives in Millbrook, Illinois with his wife Erin and their seven children.