When I first met my husband Neil many moons ago on AOL, I knew there was something special about the family he came from. They were and still are very passionately vocal about religion and politics, and particularly both when they meet at the crossroads of defending life, especially the littlest among us in the womb. I saw immediately what a tight knit family entrenched in the pro-life movement looked like when Catholicism was leading the charge. His family didn’t just talk the talk, they literally walked the walk. Each year in the bitter DC winters {at least by my wimpy Texas standards!}, because Neil grew up in Northern Virginia, his family joined the March and became the voice for the voiceless. Each evening before meals, the family prayed to spiritually adopt unborn babies who were in danger of abortion, and so comfortable was he with this worldview, that he brashly let pro-abortion candidates and their supporters know exactly what he thought of them, teenager style.
And that was just scratching the surface. His mom and dad taught NFP classes, welcomed unwed mothers into their home, and the big doozy – his momma bravely side-walk counseled in a time when it was not fashionable to be pro-life; it was just work that needed doing and with the support of her husband, she made it her life’s work to witness the culture of life to young and scared pregnant women who needed more than the false compassion of abortion. So much did her desire to save the unborn press upon her heart that it led to her being thrown 
in jail for defending life and even strapping herself to an abortion table in the 70s to save a baby; a baby Neil would later hold as a young boy in his arms.
This was normal for the Kreitzer household.
I never knew how necessary it was to have a man in my life who would be so passionately pro-life as he was and still is. I see how important it is for the men of our culture to be not just culturally pro-life, but deeply steeped in it as well. While the circumstances in his family can be portrayed as extreme by some, anyone can do something to defend life. We can start by walking in the annual march for life, but how much better would it be that we adopt a culture of walking the march year round and being a firm, but compassionate supporter of both mother and child. Not once in all the years I have known my husband has he ever backed down on the defense for human life, 
and for that, I am deeply grateful. It’s a steadfastness and foundational piece of our relationship that makes me so proud to be his wife. I could not have envisioned how much I loved that about him until the summer of 2013 when the special session was called in Texas after Cecile Richard’s political stunt. I went down to the Capitol several times with friends and with the children to show our support of pro-life legislation, but it wasn’t until a 15-passenger van filled with church friends who mobilized to the Capitol – after we were prayed over for protection from evil by two of our favorite priests – that I saw how disturbed Neil was after witnessing the vitriolic behavior of the pro-abortion crowd that had dominated the rotunda of the Capitol. He then understood how chilling the previous trips had been for me when I, along with a group of friends, was encircled by the infamous “hail Satan” woman and her crew. The March for Life experience over the years was nothing like what we witnessed, he would later share.
The evil present was palpable.
It wasn’t until we shared that evening together, unsure how friends were faring in different parts of the Capitol and wondering about each other’s safety as a fire weapon was discovered and were on lockdown as a result, that I began to understand what it really meant to be pro-life.
It meant being comfortable with the uncomfortable, facing danger, facing taunts and accusations, being told that if you in any way disagree with a choice to abort, that your opinion is no longer valid. It means dealing with the head-swirling semantics gymnastics of the pro-abortion movement, where in one moment, they would spew derogatory comments toward people who happened to be white men because of their position on life and then in the same dizzying sentence show support for the men who supported abortion.
I now see how deeply important it is for more men to hold this view and role in our families alongside their wives – unapologetic, vocal, and most importantly, true compassion.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I love you very much. I beg you to spare the life of [baby’s name] the unborn baby that I have spiritually adopted who is in danger of abortion.”