The Power of the Online Pro-Life Movement

Photo Credit: HellNIn 2012 LifeNews.com broke the story of Elisa Bauer, a mentally disabled Nevada woman who was nearly forced to have an abortion against her will. With the fate of the unborn baby’s life hanging in the balance, thousands of the pro-life news website’s readers took action, calling and emailing Nevada District Court Judge Egan Walker’s office by the thousands. . .

Bauer delivered a beautiful baby girl, Cierra Marie, and nearly two years later, her grandparents adopted her in, ironically, the same Nevada court where her life was once threatened.

Over the course of the last 11 years, the number of lives saved thanks in large part to LifeNews is far too many to count, let alone know. But it’s Elisa Bauer’s story that stands out to founder Steven Ertelt as a defining example of a time the news agency was able to make a direct impact.

“[Bauer] was pressured by the system, basically the foster care system, to have an abortion and her foster parents stepped in and were able to help stop that,” Ertelt tells Townhall. “LifeNews played a crucial role in connecting people together, getting prolife attorneys involved, working with pro-life groups, and getting people to lobby key players involved in that debate on what happens to her and her unborn child.”

Though LifeNews officially launched in 2003, Ertelt has been harnessing the power of the Internet as early as 1993 to spread the pro-life message, even walking away from dreams of becoming a stockbroker to focus on what he considers the human rights issue of our time. (Read more about the online pro-life movement HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.