March Leaders Can Thank the Unaborted Bishop

My favorite argument against abortion is the George Bailey argument.

This year, Benedictine College will be leading the March for Life in Washington, D.C., thanks to a mother who refused to abort a bishop.

My favorite argument against abortion is the George Bailey argument. Bailey is the character in It’s a Wonderful Life who gets a glimpse of what the world would be like if he never existed.

What George Baileys are we missing because of abortion? What kind of world would we have if they had lived?

One near miss: The Ravens Respect Life group leading the March for Life this year would have gotten aborted away, if one doctor had his way.

Bishop Andrew Cozzens of St. Paul-Minneapolis told me the story. In October, Pope Francis named him a bishop, making him the seventh “Raven Bishop” (Benedictine alum bishop) in the 21st century.

Growing up, he said, his mother would tell him, “God saved your life because he has a plan for you and your job is to find out what that plan is,” said the bishop. “That’s true of everyone but this story made that impressed on me in a deeper way.”

One of the things that God created him to do was to cofound Ravens Respect Life at Benedictine College, apparently. “We were the first group to organize trips to the March for Life to Washington, D.C.,” said Bishop Cozzens. “We took a couple of buses back then.”

But he almost wasn’t there to start it.

“When my mom was 20 weeks pregnant with me, her water broke and she went immediately to the hospital,” he said. “She and my father spent a night in prayer that they would not lose the baby. The next morning, the doctor came in after running some tests.”

The doctor said, “I need to tell you that your child is severely deformed and I recommend that we induce labor” — in other words, end the child’s life prematurely.

Mrs. Cozzens said, “Absolutely not.”