The pro-life movement mourns the loss of one of its foremost champions, Senator Lindsey Graham, this past weekend. To me, he was also a friend.

Many will recall Graham’s fiery 2018 Senate speech that crystallized the sense that now–Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was an innocent man greatly wronged. But there’s much more about his pro-life legacy that deserves to be known and celebrated.

Graham approached every pro-life battle with the tenacity of the Air Force JAG colonel he was. He spent years working to pass the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, first in the House and then the Senate. Enacted after the heartbreaking murder of Laci Peterson and her unborn son Conner, the Act defines “unborn child” as a child in utero at any stage of development and ensures that, when unborn children are injured or killed in a federal crime committed against a pregnant woman, they are recognized as individual victims. At the time, 21 states had no laws like it.

Who would object to such a thing? Well, the abortion lobby and more than a few Democrats did. Planned Parenthood fumed that it was “part of a deceptive anti-choice strategy to make women’s bodies mere vessels by creating legal personhood for the fetus.” Future presidential nominee Senator John Kerry observed that recognizing the unborn child as a human being in the law and a “right” to abortion on demand under Roe v. Wade were incompatible (how ironically correct he was).

Knowing Senator Graham, the nature of the opposition only confirmed he was on target. He persisted until the law was signed by President George W. Bush five years later.

And he still didn’t stop there, frequently stepping up where fear held others back. When SBA’s leadership approached Senator Graham about sponsoring a bill to protect unborn children from late-term abortions at a point when science indicates they feel excruciating pain, he didn’t hesitate. He immediately grasped the strategic aim of this “new legal theory,” in his words, to challenge the Roe regime and save lives, all while putting pro-abortion Democrats on the defensive.

What’s more, he was an eloquent spokesman who never missed a chance to highlight the incongruity of aborting children at the same stage when daring surgeries can be carried out on babies in the womb, using anesthesia to prevent the baby from feeling pain, or when doctors ordinarily advise parents to sing to the unborn baby because he or she could recognize their voices.

“When do you become you? . . . Is that something worth talking about? If you know, share it with me,” was his rallying cry and response to those who contend abortion is none of the government’s business. He was appalled to find America in the company of Communist China on basic human rights when it came to our nation’s abortion laws. “I am dying to talk about who we are in America, what makes us special as a country. I am dying to hear from the other side how this makes America a better place.” He knew from experience it would be an uphill fight — but he was in it, joyfully, however long it took.

Senator Graham’s political instincts on the life issue were second to none. With the Dobbs decision in 2022, the pro-life movement had just won the victory of a lifetime. Polling found more than 7 in 10 Americans, including three quarters of women, favored limits on late-term abortion that closely resembled Graham’s bill, and most of Europe, but were unenforceable under Roe. Yet the GOP seemed lost in the wilderness. To some, it was either “mission accomplished, case closed,” or, to a certain type of risk-averse consultant, a liability to avoid discussing at all costs.

Instead of retreating, Graham ran directly toward the battle. In reintroducing late-term abortion limits, he threw Republicans a lifeline with which to expose and contrast their opponents’ extremism. He took significant flak for it. In return, he advocated fiercely yet always reasonably, because he knew where the people stood. Far from being a liability, every Republican governor who had signed a strong pro-life state law was re-elected decisively, and federal candidates who embraced protecting babies from painful late-term abortions — namely, JD Vance, Ted Budd, and Marco Rubio — prevailed.

Graham was and will continue to be vindicated. “Until my last breath, I will be fighting for this cause,” he said, and it was true. He understood mail-order abortion drugs have redrawn battle lines, nullifying state laws and progress since Dobbs, and the pro-life movement must confront this crisis effectively or become irrelevant.

The Senate and the world won’t be the same without my friend’s wit, energy, and dedication. Keynoting SBA’s 2015 Gala, he joked about living to at least 100 and quipped, “I’m going to miss a lot of y’all.” There is no replacing him, but we must elect a worthy successor to continue the fight and raise up a generation of true servant leaders and statesmen who have learned from the best.

I can think of no more fitting tribute to a life so well lived than the words of the late Congressman Henry Hyde, author of the lifesaving amendment that bears his name to this day:

When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates; you will be alone standing before God, and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next, and they will plead for everyone who fought to defend them. They will say to God, “Spare him because he loved us”; and God will say not “Did you succeed?,” but “Did you try?”