Anti-abortion Ohioans 'joyous' over Supreme Court decision, say more work to be done

When Lorraine Vance became pregnant at 16, she could have gotten an abortion.

After all, it was three years after the Roe v. Wade decision came down, making abortion a constitutional right. But she said it didn't even cross her mind.

"Not in a million years did we ever think about that," she said.

Now, with the Supreme Court overturning the ruling on Friday, the North Columbus woman said she is "joyous" that "no more children will lose their lives."

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"We've been working for this for so long," Vance, 62, said. "I'm very thankful for those mothers that they will have better choices, the right choices, that they will be offered resources."

Vance, who is Catholic, now is the mother of five children.

Although thousands have filled the streets in Columbus and elsewhere to protest Friday's Supreme Court ruling, there are others like Vance who are celebrating the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. To some of them, it feels like years of prayers have been answered.

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Vance, for example, said she has been praying about the end of abortion since she was a child in Catholic school and has been involved in anti-abortion activism for the past 25 years.

She does sidewalk counseling locally at Planned Parenthood, trying to talk with clients as they come in and out of the clinic. Before that, she was part of a group praying outside clinics and offering resources to expectant mothers, she said.

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Vance also worked several years ago to take busloads of people to the March for Life in Washington, D.C., educating them about abortion on the way, she said.

Although anti-abortion advocates like Vance say they are happy at the court's decision, many also say the ruling doesn't mean their work is done.

Lexie Hall, 21, who works for Created Equal, a Columbus-based group that advocates against abortion, was out on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood on the East Side on Tuesday morning.

She said she's still fighting to change public opinion on abortion and people's hearts.

"We haven't had a post-Roe America yet," she said. "We still need to have heart changes. America is for abortion, or at least largely for abortion, so we need to see individual people in America change their hearts on abortion."

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Polls show that more than half of Americans, about 61%, say abortion should be legal, while 37% say it shouldn't, according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center.

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While the same poll showed that 74% of white, evangelical Protestants think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, it indicated that a majority of some other religious groups — Black Protestants (66%); white, nonevangelical Protestants (60%), and Catholics (56%) — said it should be legal in all or most cases. Among religiously unaffiliated individuals, that number rose to 84%.

Hall, who is an evangelical Protestant, said she was overjoyed when she heard of the Supreme Court's recent decision and has been an anti-abortion activist since she was 16 and started sidewalk counseling in her hometown of Houston with her mother.

Her faith as a Christian informs her anti-abortion beliefs, she said.

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"Every single human being is made in God's image, and we all have value, and that is why I'm opposed to abortion — because it is the intentional killing of human beings," Hall said.

While Hall said she knows her work will continue and that there will be challenges ahead, the bottom line, she said, is that "babies will be saved" because of the ruling.

'Tears of gratefulness to God'

Kristina Hoblet, 47, of the far North Side, was born months after the Roe v. Wade decision and had lived with it in effect for her whole life up until Friday.

When she heard that the Supreme Court overturned the decision, she was with a group of anti-abortion advocates.

"For me, it was tears of gratefulness to God," she said of her reaction to the news. "I don't know if I would've predicted that we would see this in our lifetime."

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But she said she also was sobered to think of "the millions of lives lost to abortion" already.

"There was mixed emotion, even as we were grateful and joyful about the lives that will be protected," said Hoblet, who identifies as an Evangelical Christian.

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Some religious anti-abortion advocates, including Hoblet, also lamented how divided the country seems on the issue of abortion access.

Ethan Houts, 33, of Westerville, who attends an Evangelical Christian church, said some of his prayers were answered — but not all — with the Friday decision.

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He still prays that the country will unify around the decision and continues to talk to friends and neighbors about his views on abortion.

"In my experience, when honest dialogue occurs it's more often than not that reasonable people come to the agreement that abortion is the murder of preborn babies," Hout said.

"I'm hoping that it then creates the need for more conversations because now it's going to be a matter of state-by-state legislatures working through this conversation of the morality of abortion."

dking@dispatch.com

@DanaeKing

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Abortion foes in Ohio joyous at Dobbs decision, but say work remains