(Oregon Right to Life) — Pro-life advocates assembled last weekend for Oregon Right to Life’s annual pro-life conference, Together We Advocate, the largest event of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. The conference was a major success, with high turnout rates, inspiring speeches, and the addition of the conference’s first-ever guided lunchtime networking opportunity.
More than 250 pro-life advocates attended Together We Advocate, held at Rolling Hills Community Church in Tualatin, on Saturday, March 1.
Two attendees, Kent and Patty McCarty, told Oregon Right to Life this was the first time they have attended the annual conference in about eight years. The couple, sidewalk advocates who frequently pray outside one of Portland’s abortion facilities, said they recently retired and want to devote more of their time to the pro-life cause.
Kent shared that he was especially interested in the Together We Advocate workshops about school board elections, as well as pro-life efforts in the legislature.
“We’re just here to reconnect,” Patty said.
Many pro-life organizations were on site to help pro-life advocates do just that.
Nearly two dozen organizations tabled at the event, including Students for Life, Patients Rights Action Fund, and Hope’s Garden Maternity Home, a new group that opened its doors in Clackamas County this year.
Hope’s Garden “House Mother” Avary Johnson and “House Grandma” Kathy Mackin emphasized the importance of “unity with the pro-life movement” in comments to Oregon Right to Life, urging pro-life advocates to rally in support of St. Maria’s Home, a new maternity home in Portland. Johnson noted that there are two homes in Washington County and now – with Hope’s Garden – one in Clackamas County, but none “yet” in Multnomah County.
Johnson and Mackin encouraged all pro-life advocates to strengthen and forge alliances to create a broader net of resources for moms in need, especially in the Portland metro area.
“We’re not in any way to be divided,” Mackin said. “We’re to be working together [and] supporting each other. And it’s not a competition. It’s a vision.”
RELATED: Hope’s Garden Maternity Home Offers Refuge and True Empowerment to Moms in Need
During the event, Oregon Right to Life Education Foundation displayed the winning artwork and essays submitted by pro-life students from across the state for the 2025 student contest themed “Love Both Heartbeats.” Oratory competition winner Evangelyn W., a seventeen-year-old senior at Chesterton Academy of the Willamette Valley, delivered her winning speech to conference attendees, sharing the deeply personal and inspirational story of her own birth to a teen mom who chose life and made an adoption plan.
“My mother made the epic choice to defy the lies and love me before I was born, and not a day goes by that I’m not grateful that she did,” Evangelyn said. “She gave me the chance of a lifetime. The chance to be alive.”
In June, Evangelyn will travel to National Right to Life’s 54th annual conference in Kansas City, where she will compete against other student orators for the national prize.
Young people like Evangelyn are swiftly taking their place in the pro-life movement, learning how to advocate for the unborn and share the pro-life message with others.
Several young people who attended Together We Advocate told Oregon Right to Life it’s often hard to talk about abortion and the pro-life message with people who disagree, especially family members. They said Together We Advocate keynote speaker and Secular Pro-Life executive director Monica Snyder gave them food for thought about shattering stereotypes and bringing more people from differing backgrounds into the pro-life movement.
“A lot of times people think of pro-life and they automatically think, ‘Oh, well that’s just your religious thing,’ and it’s not,” Aria, a homeschooled teen, shared. “But people tend to think that because that’s a big part of the movement.” She and two other pro-life teens, Jared and Levi, discussed the fact that many people – even those who do not profess a Christian faith – can recognize that abortion is wrong from a human rights perspective alone. The teens said their hope is that people of all backgrounds become pro-life and begin asking deeper questions about other aspects of life and faith.
“It doesn’t matter what your background is, or who you are, or what you believe, or what you feel like you are,” Aria said. The unborn, she said, “are still people” with a right to life.
RELATED: ‘We Are So Encouraged By You:’ Sisters of Life Visit and Pray with Pro-Life Oregonians
Together We Advocate 2025 featured twelve workshops on topics ranging from the pro-life perspective on assisted suicide, mobilizing pro-life action, and bridging the generational divide in effective dialogue. Bracketing the workshops, three keynote speakers gave general session speeches in which they shared their testimonies about their personal experiences and reasons for advocating for the most vulnerable.
In the first keynote speech, Monica Snyder urged pro-life advocates to be bold about their pro-life advocacy and work to help everyone – whether they have a faith background or not – to recognize the truth of the pro-life message.
“It’s important for us to be able to discuss this in a secular context,” Snyder said. “I want literally everyone to be pro-life.”
In her address, author and speaker Melissa Ohden, founder of the Abortion Survivors Network, spoke about the so-called “dreaded complication:” babies born alive after failed abortion attempts.
“They tried for five days to end my life, and three days to induce [my mother’s] labor,” said Ohden, who survived a saline abortion herself in 1977. “I was born alive.”
Melissa said abortion providers finally “stopped performing [saline abortions] because too many babies survived.”
Today, over 1,500 babies are born alive after failed abortion attempts every year in the U.S., according to some estimates.
Dr. Kathi Aultman, a former abortion provider who had a powerful conversion and is now a prominent advocate for the unborn, shared that she previously believed she was helping women by performing abortions.
“I realized I couldn’t kill babies anymore just because they were unwanted,” she said. “And that was the end of my abortion career.”
Dr. Aultman has advocated extensively on behalf of the most vulnerable and has worked with pro-life news and advocacy organization Live Action to create a video explaining the reality of surgical abortion in accurate detail. The video and others like it have helped countless people recognize the humanity of the unborn and come to oppose abortion.
Oregon Right to Life expresses its gratitude for the many people who sponsored, supported, and attended Together We Advocate to make it a success this year and throughout its history.
Together We Advocate was the first major event of the year for Oregon Right to Life. Upcoming events include Pro-Life Lobby Day March 26, the Oregon March for Life May 17, and Celebrate Life Month in June.
