Organizers for the 44th annual March for Life are thrilled to announce that Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president and the first woman to lead a winning presidential campaign – who happens to be a staunchly pro-life Catholic - is planning to speak at this year’s event.LifeSiteNews is reporting on the announcement that Conway will be one of several notable speakers at the March for Life rally on the National Mall on January 27.
"We are thrilled to have Kellyanne Conway speak at this year’s March for Life," said Jeanne Mancini, President of March for Life. "As the first female to run a successful presidential campaign and as a steadfast advocate for life and family issues, Kellyanne beautifully embodies the 2017 March for Life’s theme, 'The Power of One.'"
Conway was born Kellyanne Elizabeth Fitzpatrick on January 20, 1967 in Camden, New Jersey to an Irish father who owned a small trucking company and an Italian mother. The couple divorced when she was three and she was raised by her mother, grandmother, and two unmarried aunts.
Raised Catholic, she graduated from St. Joseph High School 1985 and earned a B.A. magna cum laude in political science from Trinity Washington University in Washington DC in 1989. She earned a law degree from George Washignton University Law with honors in 1992. In 2001, she married George T. Conway III, also a lawyer, with whom she had four children, including twins. The family currently lives in Alpine, New Jersey but are in the process of moving to Washington DC.
Calling herself a “GenX conservative,” she is vehemently opposed to abortion saying, “We grew up with sonograms. We know life when we see it.”
This explains why she has never been quiet about her belief in the sanctity of life and has been an active participant in the pro-life movement.
Before jumping into last year’s raucous presidential race as the manager of Trump’s campaign, she served as the president and CEO of The Polling Company Inc./Woman Trend. Her company has conducted polls for pro-life organizations such as Students for Life of America and the National Right to Life Committee.
She was not afraid to come nose-to-nose on stage with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards at the 2012 New Yorker Festival. When Richards called abortion and contraception a “basic healthcare issue,” Conway replied that her polling results found that women don’t limit their view of healthcare services to those used by the abortion industry to suit their pro-abortion, pro-contraception agenda.
“When women talk about women’s health, they really don’t restrict it to abortion and contraception,” Conway told Richards at the time. “And part of the hijacking of a lexicon this year has been, instead of talking about abortion — then it was choice — now it’s women’s health … It’s kind of insulting women who also look at health as cancer and access to healthcare.”
When Richards claimed that Planned Parenthood regards cancer issues as healthcare, Conway shot back: “Well, I didn’t hear you say that yet today, and well, you’re group is called Planned Parenthood; it’s not called planning to be an octogenarian.”
Conway also doesn’t hide her belief that family comes first. When approached by the entertainment outlet TMZ the day before the announcement of her appointment as counselor to the President, she let him know that her hesitancy in taking a position with the incoming administration hinged on one thing – the desires of her family.
“I’m very excited, but you know, when you’re a pollster and you have 75 percent agreement on anything you’re pretty excited, but when you’re a mother you need 100 percent agreement,” she told the outlet.
During an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Network, she also stressed that her children were her top priority.
“I see people on the weekend spending an awful lot of time on their golf games and that’s their right. But the kids will be with me,” she said. “We live in the same house and they come first.”
How does President-elect Trump feel about her strong family loyalty?
“He actually thinks it’s pretty cool,” she said.
So do a lot of other prominent pro-life warriors. Students for Life of America (SFLA) President Kristan Hawkins told LifeSite that she was thrilled by Conway’s appointment as Counselor to the President.
“Kellyanne has been a prominent fixture in the conservative and pro-life movement for years, lending her wisdom and expertise to the good causes of many candidates and organizations,” Hawkins said. “She understands the value of protecting innocent life and communicating that message effectively.”
National Right to Life’s Dave Andrusko was overjoyed when Conway was tapped to lead the Trump campaign in August, noting how anti-Trump bias caused the appointment of the first female to head a president campaign to go virtually unnoticed by the media.
“But what did not go unnoticed by pro-lifers is that a movement pro-lifer, someone who has labored in the trenches for decades on behalf of unborn babies, someone who in the past has polled for National Right to Life, is now in charge of Mr. Trump’s campaign,” he said at the time.
Conway will be joined on the Mall at the March for Life by Archbishop of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, former Planned Parenthood Director and founder of And Then There Were None Abby Johnson, Mexican Telenovela star Karyme Lozano, author and radio host Eric Metaxas, and Bishop Vincent Matthews of the Church of God in Christ, who advocates for adoption in the African-American community.
"It is our hope that this year’s March for Life will encourage each of us to seek and fulfill our unique mission to the best of our ability because only in doing so we will collectively build a culture of life in the U.S. – a culture where abortion is unthinkable," said Mancini.
Conway is the perfect example of how women are fulfilling this precious mission wherever they are in life, and however they are able.
“I’m not a big gender-identity person, and I wasn’t hired for my gender,” Conway said not long ago. “But it’s ... a pretty cool thing to say to my three daughters and my son. Many women work really hard and never get their shot. I feel blessed to have gotten my shot.”
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