Called to a cause

Q&A | The pro-life movement won over Marjorie Dannenfelser, and now she’s working to help it win over Congress | Marvin Olasky

James Allen Walker for WORLD

The year 2010 may see the most tumultuous congressional elections since 1994. One of the key players will be Marjorie Dannenfelser, president and chairman of the board of the Susan B. Anthony List, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, 280,000-member organization with an attached political action committee that helps pro-life women to run for political office.

Q: How did you become pro-life? I grew up in North Carolina in an Episcopalian family, very strongly pro-choice. I was co-chair of the College Republicans at Duke University because they wanted balance: Balance meant you had to have a pro-choice and a pro-life chair. So I was a pro-choice chair, and for that reason I was the target (in a good way) for a lot of people who knew that the intellectual underpinnings of my position were false. They approached it on a philosophical level but they also approached me as friends; they didn't judge me, though I was very outspoken on the issue, and they just engaged me in conversation in love.