The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Cook Children’s Medical Center’s request to remove a child from life support against her mother’s wishes. The case returns to a lower court, where Tinslee Lewis’ supporters at Texas Right to Life expect the court to allow the child to keep living.

Sam Lee was sitting in a doorway when he met Roberta, a white girl in her early 20s with glasses and long brown hair. She couldn’t get past him, and that was his goal. It was around 1980, and in those early years of the pro-life sit-in movement, Lee was experienced in using his body to barricade abortion facility entrances. He was 23 and had been doing it since 1978. 

John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe co-founded in 1977 the Pro-Life Nonviolent Action Project and was arrested more than 20 times at sit-ins. In recent years he’s concentrated on supporting immigrants and opposing racism. My questions and Cavanaugh-O’Keefe’s answers follow.

Last year’s COVID-19 lockdowns in the United States sparked fights between state governments and abortion groups over whether abortion is essential or elective. State governments in March and April halted nonessential medical procedures to conserve medical supplies. Governors in states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia carved out exceptions for abortion facilities, while 11 other states deemed abortion procedures elective. 

In Spring 2020, abortion advocates went to war. As COVID-19 spread, some U.S. abortion facilities closed. Others limited in-person procedures. Some governors called abortions nonessential, and the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute was livid: “Reproductive health care needs and decisions cannot be put on hold.” Its April press release claimed abortion is “as essential to people’s lives as food, shelter and security.” 

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that Supreme Court precedent didn’t allow it to lift a restraining order against two pro-life laws. Arkansas had passed bills to protect unborn babies from abortion after 18 weeks of gestation or based on a Down syndrome diagnosis. The ruling from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a 2019 decision from U.S. District Court Judge Kristine Baker.

María Inés Franck avoided wearing blue for most of December. The president of the Latin Foundation for Culture in Argentina sometimes passed green-clad pro-abortion demonstrators on the streets of Buenos Aires, and she feared the color of the country’s pro-life movement would unnecessarily provoke them. But she wore blue the night of Dec. 29. Franck, her colleagues, and other pro-life friends stayed in the square outside the congressional building to hear the results of the Senate vote on the bill to legalize abortion.