In a pre-recorded video for the annual March for Life on Friday, President Donald Trump proclaimed that his administration had made great strides to protect innocent life and support the institution of the family. The very next morning, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under Trump’s orders pinned down and executed an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis. This occurred less than two weeks after ICE murdered Renee Good in the same city, leaving behind three children without their mother. The Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that it views the anti-abortion cause as inextricably linked with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement — the same MAGA movement that spurs and cheers on the deaths of Pretti, Good and countless others.
Let me be clear — embracing the anti-abortion cause gives the Trump administration, and its brand of politics, power at a time where all American people and institutions, especially Georgetown University, ought to be resisting them at every turn.
Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, the dramatic rollback of fundamental human rights to bodily autonomy has somewhat faded from daily political conversation. Yet we cannot afford to forget the scale of this erosion of rights. As a proud resident of Republican-dominated Indiana, I have seen the closures of health care clinics across my state while state officials attack doctors and OB-GYNs. Many of my own friends who live there have confided in me that they did not want to attend in-state universities for fear of what would happen should they need an abortion.
While abortion remains legal in Washington, D.C., this could presumably change with an act from a Republican-controlled Congress. On the Hilltop, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital refuses to perform abortions. Neither MedStar nor the Student Health Center can refer students to abortion providers due to the university’s viewpoints on the procedure.
Birth control and condoms are also not allowed to be sold on campus by the bookstore or the Corp locations. These restrictions hinder the Georgetown community’s options for reproductive health access at a time when that access is under fire across the nation.
In this context, I believe that Georgetown’s continued sponsorship of the Cardinal O’Connor Conference (OCC) is very offensive. How can this conference, so tightly associated with the increasingly MAGA-centric March for Life, be held at and receive institutional support from one of the key universities of power in this country? How can Georgetown continue to fund this conference with students’ own tuition dollars, in the wake of seismic funding cuts from the very same president whom the anti-abortion cause champions? Year after year, Georgetown students demonstrate that they are a clearly pro-choice campus, most notably through the work of H*yas for Choice and other affiliated organizations. Year after year, we protest the OCC and its legacy.
While I write today as co-chair of the Georgetown University College Democrats (GUCD), I also feel the need to note that I, too, personally believe in God and the Christian faith. Perhaps similarly to my Republican peers, it forms the basis for much of my politics. I find it incomprehensible how the God I know — one of love, forgiveness and respecting the dignity of all human beings — would support this movement and the negative effects it has had on American women. I find it even more absurd that people like Trump evoke the name of God while they wreak havoc on marginalized communities. I’ve personally found great comfort in Georgetown’s religious life, but for a campus that strives to provide “care of the whole person” and seeks to embody Jesuit values in its decision-making, endangering the lives of its own students for the sake of pursuing a political, anti-abortion agenda is simply wrong. Aggressively promoting and funding a conference – with students’ own tuition dollars — that seeks to roll back the clock on women’s constitutional rights in tandem with the extremists in the White House is the complete opposite of “care of the whole person.”
In 2026, there should be no room for the OCC on Georgetown’s campus. Any movement that claims to be “pro-life” while simultaneously wrapping itself in the arms of an authoritarian president, one that has invaded American cities and begun killing peaceful protestors in cold blood, is not remotely close to deserving of that label. Any movement whose members advocate for the death or arrest of young women for the “crime” of controlling their own bodies is deeply immoral and un-American. All Georgetown students, and the university itself, need to reject this dangerous ideology and condemn Trump’s extremist agenda at large.
Students: Now is the time to demand change from Georgetown’s administration on its reproductive healthcare policies, to join and stay active with H*yas for Choice, the American Civil Liberties Union, GUCD, Free DC or some of the many other campus organizations working to stand against Trump’s extremism. Become involved in your local politics, especially if from a competitive or Republican-leaning state. The last few years have been rough for our country and our campus community. Now, more than ever, we have to stand up and believe that our communities can be better than they are today.
Braedon Troy is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences.
