(LifeSiteNews) — This week’s episode of The Van Maren Show is a speech Jonathon gave last summer to Created Equal, an Ohio-based pro-life group, in which he explained why he believes there’s much to be hopeful about for the future.

Jonathon begins his remarks noting that pro-life work can be surreal, recalling how he once held the victim of a late-term abortion in his hands. The label in the jar the boy was in revealed only the name of the abortionist responsible for the carnage and the location of the abortuary. At the same time, he reminds the audience that it is possible to change people’s lives regarding abortion.

He relates this possibility with the following story: A young woman once walked by him while he was passing out flyers next to a display of abortion victim photography on a college campus in Florida, and he asked her what she made of abortion. She responded that she had one three weeks prior – an admission that made him speechless. The woman, looking at the pictures, had tears in her eyes and asked why no one told her what the reality of abortion was.

“In that moment, I realized that person of commission was my sin of omission,” Jonathon admits. “I have not since that moment been able to take seriously the argument that people might be harmed by seeing a picture of an abortion victim, because I have met too many people who were profoundly harmed because they didn’t see one.”

After reflecting on the incident, Jonathon came to the realization that people could indeed become pro-life after being pro-abortion, and that if one person’s mind can change, then the pro-life movement can actually affect real change if pro-lifers get others to go out and do pro-life activism with them and their signs. The pro-life organization he worked with at the time, incidentally, would record how many minds were changed on abortion – something that from his personal testimonies could make up a small novel.

Continuing the talk, Jonathon says he seeks to dispel both cynicism and pessimism.

READ: DC medical examiner will not discard remains of five babies in abortion scandal

Regarding cynicism, he looks to examples of social movements in the past, highlighting that William Wilberforce and a small group of other activists decided to take on the slave trade, one of the oldest institutions in human history, and succeeded within 20 years. Jonathon also notes that Wilberforce had the support of Edmund Burke, a man supposed to have said that the only thing evil needs to succeed is for good men to remain silent, even though Burke himself thought that Wilberforce’s endeavor was a waste of time – an attitude Jonathon pins on cynicism.

“It’s easy to think that we can’t make change, and it’s easy to ignore 250 years of history that tells us that’s just an excuse,” Jonathon says. “250 years of history that says it’s been done before, and there’s no reason at all that it can’t be done again, and that we have the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of some of the greatest men and women who ever lived. We have the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of giants, to do what they did, to live lives of meaning, because those lives are lived for others.”

Jonathon makes a similar point about photographer Lewis Hine, who photographed the suffering of child labor in factories and making the “hidden victims” visible, which after 12 years managed to effect legislative action. He likewise notes that the civil rights movement did not start with Rosa Parks, but with the death of Emmett Till, the picture of whose corpse Parks saw, which inspired her not to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.

All the while, Jonathon addresses the 2022 death of Roe v. Wade, pointing out that the “myth of inevitability” – the belief that abortion is part of the progress of history – died when Roe died.

“Our progressive leftist counterparts believe in the myth of progress that history bends in one direction, that abortion will be legalized everywhere, that societies move steadily more liberal,” he explains. “When the greatest superpower in the world, the beacon of democracy, decides, after almost 50 years of legal abortion, to say explicitly, in the words of Samuel Alito, that abortion is not a constitutional right, that sent a thunderclap around the world.”

What the death of Roe did for developing countries with pro-life laws, Jonathon contends, is show them that there was another path for developed nations, as 13 U.S. states made abortion illegal once Roe fell. No longer would there be the impression that eventually every country adopts abortion, with one abortion activist asking what else could be possible after the death of Roe.

He also points to pro-life victories overseas, such as those in Malta, Lichtenstein, Honduras, and others, that show the pro-life movement is indeed experiencing success.

Jonathon concludes his talk by addressing the issue of social decline. Recalling his frustration hearing as a teenager that the culture was in decline, he notes that people were exchanging “war stories” the first night he and other pro-lifers were doing campus activism at the Florida college, hearing about how people changed their minds on abortion, which made him desire to be part of the pro-life story.

“I don’t want to be part of the story where we talk about how everything’s going to hell all the time, how all the major battles are lost, about how it’s going to be so hard to raise kids in a culture that is so poisonous and so toxic,” he declares. “This is the story that I want to be part of. I want to be part of the story of the people who said no. I want to be part of the people who took the opportunity history had given them, to be part of something so much bigger than themselves, something so beautiful, something that will introduce them to some of the most loyal, courageous, honorable men and women they’ll ever meet.”

To Jonathon, it is possible to rebuild the culture, and the future of the culture will belong to the pro-lifer.

“I want you to think for a moment about the story that you’ve entered, the story that you’re a part of, and don’t just see pro-life work as a responsibility. See it as an immense privilege,” he says. “See pro-life work as an opportunity to do something that few other people get the opportunity to do. Living a life of meaning in defense of the children God created is one of the greatest opportunities that will ever be presented to you.”

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