Family man

Abortion | At the United Nations, resident thorn-in-the-flesh Austin Ruse makes enemies by promoting pro-life values | Priya Abraham

Austin Ruse is a friendly six-footer with a merry laugh, but he has plenty of enemies. Waiting to appear on CNN's Crossfire once, the pro-life Catholic prepared to greet his debating opponents from the pro-abortion Catholics for a Free Choice. One refused to share the studio's green room with him. The other refused to shake his hand.

High-tension snubs are usually reserved for the influential, and in nine short years that is what Ruse has become: As president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, or C-Fam, he heads a small, six-person nonprofit with a large agenda. As the only full-time pro-life group working at UN headquarters in New York, C-Fam often stands alone against what Ruse likes to call "UN radicals"—lobbyists and bureaucrats who manipulate global agreements to pressure often impoverished countries into changing abortion and other family-related laws.