What Is the State of the Pro-Life Movement? | Maggie DeWitte

Bob Vander Plaats: Welcome back to All In To Win. I’m Bob Vander Plaats, your host, and wherever you’re tuning in today, we want to say thank you. Even if you’re taking time off work to tune in, that’s a good thing to do right now because we got a special episode for you, Maggie DeWitte. Maggie is, she’s been a friend for a long time. She is key to our coalition of pro-life leaders. And you are the CEO, the executive director, whatever your chief title is, for Pulse Life Advocates. So, Maggie, welcome to the show.

Maggie DeWitte: Thank you. I’m very excited about being here and having this opportunity to talk with you today.

Bob Vander Plaats: You know, we talk to a lot of special people in this room and on this podcast, but really looking forward to today’s conversation. One is I want to know a little bit more about you, because DeWitte sounds Dutch to me. Is it Dutch?

Maggie DeWitte: No, the D-E DeWitte. You should claim it.

Bob Vander Plaats: The Tulip Festival, do you claim it?

Maggie DeWitte: I should. So I can get some Dutch letters and all the good stuff. Right.

Bob Vander Plaats: So where does Maggie hail from? Where’s your roots?

Maggie DeWitte: Well, I grew up in Okoboji and Spirit Lake area, so not too far from you, kind of.

Bob Vander Plaats: A suburb of Sheldon over there, right?

Maggie DeWitte: Yeah. So that’s where I grew up, went to school at UNI, and have lived in Iowa most of my time. Right after my husband and I got married, we lived in Illinois for a few years, and I know, I know it, and then back to Iowa. So Iowa’s always been my home, but…

Bob Vander Plaats: So are you a Spirit Lake Indian, or are you—are they still the Indians?

Maggie DeWitte: Miraculously, yes.

Bob Vander Plaats: Are they really?

Maggie DeWitte: Yes.

Bob Vander Plaats: See, my high school was Hull Western Christian, and we were the Hull Western Christian Indians, and we played Spirit Lake.

Maggie DeWitte: Yes.

Bob Vander Plaats: But Hull Western Christian, they changed their name from Indians to now Wolfpack.

Maggie DeWitte: Oh, wow.

Bob Vander Plaats: And it’s just not the same.

Maggie DeWitte: I know there was a—there was a little incident where that all came up, and I think there was some controversy with it, but as far as I know, they’ve stuck with it. They weathered the storm.

Bob Vander Plaats: So you and your husband, children?

Maggie DeWitte: Yes, so Quint and I have been married for 30 years. We have 4 kids, yes, ranging from 23 to—our youngest is 12. So, but we’ve been in Des Moines for about, well, since about 2000; we moved here. So that’s been my main pro-life work here, is been since 2000. But other things leading up to that, and I, you know, I think about when people ask about how I got to where I’m at, you know, it’s always in hindsight, right, when you think about how God orchestrated your path. And He definitely did that for me.

Bob Vander Plaats: Yeah. Well, what’s the adage? We make plans, and God laughs.

Maggie DeWitte: That’s exactly true. Yeah.

Bob Vander Plaats: I look at the circuitous journey that I took to be here, too, and I’m like, you know, that had to be God, because it wasn’t—it wasn’t me. I could not have put that on a whiteboard: “So this is how I chart it.” We’re talking a lot about the life issue. How’d you get involved in this deal? What—what—what’s your motivation? What was your Popeye moment—”That’s all I can stand, and I can stand no more”? The younger generation won’t get that, but the older people will.

Maggie DeWitte: Yeah, I mean, I—I think about that a lot, and I get asked that a lot. I think it was a series of things that happened growing up. I mean, certainly give credit to my parents, because it was never a situation where, you know, we had this big discussion, and it was like, “Aha! I’m pro-life.” It was always just that. If there was nothing else but that. And that’s how they raised me.

But I will say that when I was in high school, they did take me to a Planned Parenthood to pray.

Bob Vander Plaats: Your parents did.

Maggie DeWitte: My parents did.

Bob Vander Plaats: OK. Awesome.

Maggie DeWitte: And now here I am doing that on a pretty regular basis with 40 Days for Life and sidewalk advocacy. So I think about that moment, and at the time, I really didn’t think too much of it. It was like, “Yeah, this is what we do. You know what they’re doing there is wrong.” So, yeah, we got to—we got to stand up. But that really led me to where I’m at today.

And then I think about all the jobs that I had. You know, when you said God laughs at your plans? Because originally when I graduated, I thought I was going to do something in criminology and criminal justice, you know, kind of help in that area, social work. Didn’t find any jobs in that. And so I started with being in a group home in Cedar Rapids. Then we moved to Illinois, and I worked in foster care. Came back, was in Cedar Falls, worked more in foster care with kids aging out of the foster care system. Moved to Des Moines, was the adoption coordinator for Catholic Charities for about 10 years, and now at Pulse for 16.

And so every one of those jobs, there is really not one situation that I have had that isn’t presented to me on a regular basis as to why women need abortion. I’ve dealt with that. I’ve dealt with families who have experienced rape, incest, poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, no support—you name it, I’ve dealt with that in one of my jobs. And so I think about that now, I think there’s nothing that you could tell me that could convince me. As I look at all of those families, I never once did I say, “Yeah, they would have definitely been better off having ended the life of their child.” Never.

Bob Vander Plaats: God prepared you well.

Maggie DeWitte: Yes, I—I honestly think that because, as you well know, this is hard work.

Bob Vander Plaats: Yeah. Hard work. Spiritual…

Maggie DeWitte: It’s filled with spiritual warfare.

Bob Vander Plaats: Warfare, absolutely.

Maggie DeWitte: And if I hadn’t had all of that prep before, I don’t know that I could have withstood some of the difficulties going into what we’re going into with this battle for life. Because it really is, it’s life and death.

Bob Vander Plaats: It is a battle. It is life and death. You know, since you bring up your parents, I always tell people, you know, how did I become pro-life? My parents didn’t give me a choice. I was going to be pro-life. You know, that’s the way I was raised. But I remember when Darla and I were in a church service, and we were dating then, there was going to be some sort of a thing in Sioux City. And I think we were just holding up signs. It wasn’t anything—it was along Hamilton Blvd., and we went as young kids. And I really [didn’t] know what we were doing, but we were standing in the gap for the sanctity of life. And then how God orchestrated plans and paths, and our son Lucas, and things of that nature, to basically, “You’re going to be a champion for the sanctity of life.”

So while we’re on the same team—The FAMiLY Leader, Pulse Life Advocates—and we’re all in for the sanctity of human life, because, you know, God ordained every day before one came to be, and we believe that. But there’s times in the pro-life movement where we were kind of our own worst enemy. We fought each other—not necessarily us fighting each other, but the pro-life movement fighting each other. And then back in 2017, there’s this thing called—an idea called the Coalition of Pro-Life Leaders. Let me bring people together, major on the majors. I remember being at the Capitol. I remember signing the document. I remember you being at the Capitol signing the document.

But I tell you what, for now, 9, 10 years almost, this coalition has stayed together, and it has stayed firm. And you have been a leader in that, and the pro-life victories in Iowa that God has favored and honored because of that. Tell me about that, about the Coalition.

Maggie DeWitte: I mean, it is such a testament. And I think—I think about how things were before the Coalition.

Bob Vander Plaats: I never want to go back.

Maggie DeWitte: Oh, absolutely not. Never want to go back to that, because I think about how much worry and fret I had about internal things, you know, not to mention dealing with the pro-abortion side, right, which was our mission.

Bob Vander Plaats: Yeah, dealing with all the internal struggles in there. These are our friends.

Maggie DeWitte: And our friends, and we’re all doing the same thing. And we are dividing, dividing, dividing. And it was such a mess. And I had such heartache, such heartache with—with all kinds of different people, because I thought, “What in the heck are we doing here?”

Bob Vander Plaats: You know, I ran—you know that, but you know, I ran for governor, and running for governor can be a tough thing, especially with people that you think are your friends and they’re not your friends. But I tell you what, when I got into some of that in the pro-life stuff, I thought, “Are you kidding me? How could God honor such a thing with that?” So the Coalition—and now there’s a lot of other states taking notice about what we did with the Coalition, what you’ve done with the Coalition, what Chuck Hurley’s done with the Coalition, and how God’s blessed it. So thank you for doing that.

And I know one of the things that was one of our focuses for so many years was the overturn of Roe v. Wade. So where were you at, what was your reaction, when you finally saw Roe v. Wade overturned?

Maggie DeWitte: Well, I remember I was sitting on my couch with my computer, constantly refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. Like I didn’t want to miss the moment. And instantly when I saw it, I thought, “Am I reading this right? You know, do I—do I see this as—are my eyes deceiving me?” And then it was just like—just instant tears, just sobbing. And I remember my kids were coming down, and they had—you know, I kind of prepped them, “This is going to be a big time.” And so immediately they knew, you know, “This is the thing.”

And that was the moment. I, you know, I just didn’t know. I mean, I guess it was just lack of trust, I guess, but I just never thought this is going to happen. I knew at some point it would. You just had to think that at some point in our history, people get to the point where they would say, “Wow, this isn’t right. Like, what we’re doing is wrong.” Maybe when we’ve, you know, completely decimated ourselves—we already know we’re not at replacement level—like when we get to that point where, you know, “Where are we as a society?”, people would realize maybe we shouldn’t be killing our young.

But to have this happen now, while I’m working in this movement? How cool is that? There is nothing that can compare.

Bob Vander Plaats: There’s two times. One was in 2009, April 2009—I think it was April 3rd—when the Supreme Court ruled that Iowa would be a same-sex marriage state. And I was at the Supreme Court steps when that happened, and I remember the feeling was more of a void. It wasn’t—it was just almost like darkness, and it was a feeling I just hadn’t felt really before. But it was like a feeling of just being void.

And then I go to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and the overturn of Roe v. Wade was like a pinch-myself moment. And to think of all the prayers and all the stuff that went into overturning Roe v. Wade, and God using an unlikely vessel in President Trump to appoint justices to deliver the overturn of Roe v. Wade. And I thought, “We get to live in such a time as this.” We get to see this overturned, with so many prayer warriors—they didn’t get to see the fruit of their prayers, we got to see the fruit of their prayers.

So we overturned Roe v. Wade. But I look at the statistics now around the country, and abortions are going up. Talk to us about this abortion pill.

Maggie DeWitte: Yeah, it breaks my heart. You know, in this movement, it is like Whac-A-Mole, you know? Overturn Roe v. Wade—oh, wait a second, now we got the abortion pill. Oh, wait a second, now they’re mailing them. Oh, wait a second… And that’s—you wouldn’t have expected that we would get to this level where anyone could get on their phone, get on their computer, get the abortion pill—give them no information. Because many of us have—have done this, and we—we know for a fact, they’re not requiring ID for age, they’re not requiring ultrasound, they’re not even asking medical history—nothing. You just put the info in, you get your credit card, and bada bing, there, you’ve got it. It’s like Amazon.

And you don’t know where they’ve come from, you don’t know if they’re the right dosage, if you yourself as a woman haven’t seen a doctor, which many have not. They don’t know the gestation. And so it—it’s just the Wild West right now, and women are being harmed in such alarming ways. The side effects—the side effects alone, you know, the Ethics and Public Policy Center in 2025 came out with their groundbreaking…

Bob Vander Plaats: Ryan Anderson’s groundbreaking study.

Maggie DeWitte: Groundbreaking study. One in 10 women—severe, severe adverse…

Bob Vander Plaats: And they’re alone.

Maggie DeWitte: And they’re alone. Sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging—which is 22 times higher than what was originally reported. The FDA, the abortion industry, is not preparing these women for the physical or the emotional. These women are, like you said, alone. Oftentimes in their bathroom. They think they’re going to bleed to death, and then they’re not prepared for the fact that they are actually seeing the remains of their dead child. No one is preparing them for that.

And when they call into Planned Parenthood, they say, “Well, don’t come back here. Go to your ER. But—but also don’t tell them—you don’t need to tell them that, you know, you took the abortion pill. Just tell them you’re having a miscarriage.” So they’re actively encouraging their patients to lie, which then also, you know, really inflames the whole medical situation, because we know from AAPLOG, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, that doctors will—will look at patients and treat patients differently when it’s a miscarriage versus the abortion pill. And so we’re just—we’re just leading women into just all kinds of physical and emotional trauma.

Bob Vander Plaats: I remember early on I said to Chuck Hurley—we were, I forget even what the issue was, wasn’t the abortion pill, but I was just kind of flabbergasted. “They’re lying. They are flat-out lying.” And Chuck said to me, “Bob, Bob, Bob, wait a minute. If they are willing to kill babies, do not be surprised that they’re willing to lie.” You’ll kind of like take a look at what’s happening here.

So I want to go back to some of this stuff. But it’s—it’s not just the women, but it’s also you’re violating state rights, because the state of Iowa is a pro-life state. Very much so, thanks to Pulse Pro-Life Advocates, you know, all the coalition of pro-life leaders who played a part in it. But we are way more for the sanctity of human life today than we were 10 years ago, 15 years ago. But with the abortion pill, it doesn’t matter.

Maggie DeWitte: Right.

Bob Vander Plaats: So what—what do we do about this? What—what’s the—what’s the answer to this?

Maggie DeWitte: Well, I mean, and that’s the problem that we’re in, because it’s beyond our state borders. And so I—I have a lot of—I do have a lot of hope. I mean, I think there’s a variety of things that are happening right now. So number one, we’ve got the Louisiana case. And so the state of Louisiana has outlawed abortion, but they know that over 1,000 women a month were getting pills. And so they sued to try and eliminate the rule that was under the Biden administration to, you know, the enforcement of the in-person requirement, which happened in COVID, but then they made it permanent in 2023. And saying, “OK, for COVID, we had this, you know, kind of national situation here, so you don’t have to be in person to get this dangerous pill.” But then in 2023, “Well, let’s go ahead and make that permanent.” And Louisiana said no. So they are suing, and it’s going through the process. So there is hope that maybe through the resolution of that case, we could see something happen with that.

And then just this week, the attorneys general in—I think it was Louisiana, and Arkansas, and Alabama—have filed a suit against states like, I think it was New York and Massachusetts, for the shield laws. Because that’s the other issue, is that these states who have liberal laws and are some of the states that are dispensing these dangerous drugs into states like Iowa, and Louisiana, and Texas. And then they have a shield law that says, “Well, we don’t care what your laws are, because we have a shield law that says we don’t have to adhere to your regulations.”

Bob Vander Plaats: Right. And that’s against the U.S. Constitution, right? And we could bring Chuck Hurley in here, but I think that’s pretty much against the Constitution. But—but instead of getting into the weeds for the people here, the common sense of this is: this pill has dangerous side effects, and we know it kills a baby. And we as a society do not believe it deserves an in-person consultation to lay out: What is this pill going to do? What are the side effects that you might experience when you’re at home? What to do if you do experience those side effects? How do we get back to an in-person visit? I mean, I know the lawsuit, but I think there’s just leadership, too, that you need to require in-person visits.

Maggie DeWitte: Right. I mean, we also have the FDA, who’s supposed to be doing an abortion study right now, court-ordered, I believe. And their deadline is coming up, because the—the FDA, when they first approved this abortion drug in 2000, they ran that through, they fast-tracked the clinical studies. They even had a black box warning on the pills because they knew how dangerous it was. But at the beginning, in 2000 at least, there were—there were actually three required visits. You had to take it in person, it had to be a licensed physician, you had to have follow-up care, there had to be reporting. So there were some foundational things in 2000…

Bob Vander Plaats: All that makes common sense to me.

Maggie DeWitte: Exactly. But now you go under the Obama administration, it got pushed further, further down to the Biden administration, where there’s virtually nothing. There’s no requirements, and women can take it at a later gestation, which originally was only 7 weeks gestation when you could take these abortion pills. Now they’ve bumped it to 10. No follow-up care, nothing.

And so we have to get back. I mean, obviously, our position, The FAMiLY Leader’s position: no more abortion pill, FDA, take it off the market. It’s dangerous. But if they’re not going to do that, then what I’ve worked hard, and all of us in the pro-life movement have worked hard, is to say that the pro-life movement is a pro-woman movement.

Bob Vander Plaats: You bet.

Maggie DeWitte: We care about the women. We do not want them to be exposed to this dangerous drug with no medical oversight. So if we’re going to have to have this, please have these women go in, be seen by a doctor, be examined, make sure they know the gestational age of their unborn child, make sure they know the side effects, make sure they also know that it can be reversed—which is a major part of our bill that we passed last session that got taken out, unfortunately. But the abortion pill can be reversed.

Bob Vander Plaats: The abortion—or the abortion reversal pill. Dr. Bill Lile, who you’ve heard at our summits, I believe he’s also—has he been at a Pulse Life?

Maggie DeWitte: He hasn’t. He’s been at InnerVisions, OK, one of the pregnancy centers. But he’s…

Bob Vander Plaats: Huge on that.

Maggie DeWitte: Very much.

Bob Vander Plaats: So when I take a look at it, an in-person visit makes a lot of sense. Matter of fact, the reason I put out a tweet about “Slow the roll on Heidi Overton’s confirmation to FDA” had nothing to do with Heidi Overton. I actually believe she’s on our team. She’s on our side, but it’s to force the administration’s hand to say, “Require an in-person visit.”

And the good news is that the Senate then did hold up her confirmation. They have not confirmed her yet. They’ve delayed it. But the whole idea is we need to get leadership that requires an in-person visit. I sat down with JD Vance, and I sat down with Ashley Hinson, who’s our U.S. Senate candidate here in Iowa. And they’ve asked me about the pro—”What—what can we do for a victory in pro-life?”

So 1 is in-person visits on the abortion pill. 2 is when that pill is dispensed by a licensed doctor with oversight, that the abortion reversal pill accompanies it. So when that woman wakes up in the morning, has buyer’s remorse, she has another pill she can take. That to me is common sense. That’s pro-choice, it’s pro-woman, it’s pro-whatever you want to be, but it’s pro-life as well. So if you’re going to do something like this, let’s put some common sense parameters on it, right?

And so that’s why the Heidi thing I texted about or tweeted, you know, “Let’s—let’s not confirm her quite yet. There’s some things we can do, and then let me confirm her.”

Maggie DeWitte: So we have a booth at the State Fair every year, and we always have a question that we ask. And the question this year was: “Can the chemical abortion pill be reversed—yes or no?” And it was 50/50 at the end of the 11 days. So that was more affirmation to us about the work that we need to do, because people are not aware yet.

We have, according to the Abortion Pill Reversal Network, which is operated by Heartbeat International—which is the largest organization for pregnancy resource centers—they’re saying there’s over 7,000 success stories from the APR.

Bob Vander Plaats: So we have 7,000 children walking the earth.

Maggie DeWitte: Exactly, because of this. And it’s not fake. And every time we’ve gone to the Capitol, the pro-abortion side says, “Oh, it’s fake. It’s not really medical,” all of those things. And all it is is progesterone. We…

Bob Vander Plaats: We have testimonies out there.

Maggie DeWitte: Testimonies right here in Iowa. Women who have taken this and they have children today. And this is just a high dose of progesterone. Progesterone has been used for reproductive healthcare for women since the ’50s. It’s very safe, effective. And if we can get that into the hands of these women, and they can be shown that this is a possibility, we can see more and more lives saved by that. So we could do so much.

I love that—that idea. You get the abortion pill, and here’s the reversal. If you’re really about choice, here you go.

Bob Vander Plaats: It’s so common sense, you’d think somebody’d latch onto it as a campaign and like, “You know, I’m going to make this happen.” Talk about the upcoming midterms, because we can talk about this other stuff about “elections matter.” I tell people all the time, you may say, “I’m tired of elections. I don’t want to be involved in elections.” All that—elections matter, because it impacts the policy that we’re going to get.

Tell me about the midterms. Do we have champions out there on the life issue, especially on what we’re talking about right now?

Maggie DeWitte: We do. We definitely have champions. And it is—I, you know, God has it figured out, and that’s what I keep saying. “I surrender, Jesus, take over. You take care of everything.” You know, that’s—that’s what my mom says, you know, when I call her. She says, “Just surrender.” I say—I say this every night: “Jesus, I trust in You. I surrender. Take care of everything.” And that’s what I keep—have to keep reminding myself when I start to get fearful about the elections, because we do have so much at stake.

We have—we have made such great strides in Iowa. And I think about what’s happening in Minnesota and Illinois and our neighboring states, and I—I just think, “Jesus…”

Bob Vander Plaats: One state away, guys.

Maggie DeWitte: “…please don’t let this happen here. Please, Jesus. Amen.” Because they are so important. And I think of, you know, it just—it makes me teary-eyed. And I know you’re very, very close to Governor Reynolds, and she’s done so much.

Bob Vander Plaats: So much. And she—she’s ahead of us on issues, on the pro-life issue. So it’s easier to raise up her arms, and so you want somebody to champion it, to carry it on.

Maggie DeWitte: And so to me—and of course, my dad served in World War II, so I know what those guys went through so that we can have the freedom that we have today. And when we’re living in the lap of luxury and then go, “Yeah, I just don’t care about this election,” really? There are lives literally depending on you caring about this election. And so to get motivated, to get involved, to get engaged, to stand in the gap—all it does is take you to go to a voting booth and to choose, and choose well. If Iowans choose and choose well, I think we’re going to get the pro-life leaders we—we want and hopefully that we deserve. If we don’t, we’re going to get the candidates that we don’t want, and we’re going to go back in time.

We can’t stand on the sidelines. I mean, the—the idea that, “Well, I don’t—I don’t like this particular candidate as much, so I’m just not going to—I’m not going to…” I can’t—can’t imagine having that attitude. It is our duty. It’s our responsibility as Christians. We are called. This is our civil, civic responsibility: to show up and to be a part of the political system.

And also for our churches. There’s no reason our churches can’t be standing up. No, maybe they shouldn’t stand up and say who to vote for, but they can certainly stand up and say, “This is what this candidate stands for, and this is what this candidate stands for. And this is what we believe as Christians, so you anoint and form your conscience. Now go forth and do the right thing.”

Bob Vander Plaats: And Deuteronomy 30 says choose life, you know, which means choose well. Be a timeless, be a prophetic voice to a culture.

Maggie, it’s been a blessing to have you on this program today. How can people find out more about you or Pulse Life Advocates if they want to research more?

Maggie DeWitte: Yeah. So our website’s pulseforlife.org, and we are involved in so much throughout the entire year. I mean, we’re in front of Planned Parenthood, we’re taking Iowans to the March for Life in Washington, D.C., we have our Iowa March, we’re tabling all over at different events. So, you know, there’s always something that we’re involved in, and we would love for people to get more involved. We can’t do it alone. We need everybody doing their part.

Bob Vander Plaats: I tell you what, you guys have been such a great partner. Thank you so much for being on this show.

And if you liked this conversation with me and Maggie, make sure you leave a five-star review, share it with your friends, tweet it out, whatever you need to do. Think before you tweet, but then tweet—tweet it out! And go to thefamilyleader.com as well, as well as pulseforlife.org. Be part of the movement. If you’re wondering what I can do, you’ll find out what you can do.

Thanks so much for joining us, and until next time, make sure you choose life and choose life.