Shawn Carney discusses pro-life movement's future after advocate's death
By Daily Caller News Foundation (/journals/dcnf)
The leader and co-founder of a group seeking to end abortions around the world reflected on the state of the pro-life movement after the death of one of its most steadfast advocates — who began his career on the other side of the issue.
Dr. Haywood Robinson — who had been an abortionist for 14 years before becoming a staunch campaigner for the practice’s abolition — died of heart failure the last weekend of July 2026 at the age of 74, 40 Days For Life (“40 Days”) announced in multiple social media posts Tuesday. Shawn Carney, the president, CEO, and co-founder of 40 Days, said Robinson, who had served as the organization’s director of medical affairs and education, “was one of those rare characters who forced people to sort of take a side” on the issue of abortion.
“One of Haywood’s legacies was that he forced the issue because he had done abortions,” Carney told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) in an interview.
Robinson always stressed that, while people blame politicians and the media for abortion, “for some reason, medicine got off the hook,” Carney said.
The doctor told the nonprofit political advocacy group CatholicVote in 2024 that, when he was performing abortions, he observed some hospitals conducted the procedure “no more than 50 yards” away from the labor and delivery suite.
“So you’re killing babies in one part, and right on the same floor, you’re delivering babies,” Robinson told the organization. “I recognize, retrospectively, that it almost makes you godlike — the power to kill on one hand, and the power of life on the other.”
We are deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend, Dr. Haywood Robinson, who died of heart failure this past weekend.
While our hearts are heavy with sorrow, they are also filled with joy. Haywood’s conversion is a testament to God’s mercy and one that brings hope to… pic.twitter.com/Q8fwPaBJrq
— 40 Days for Life (@40daysforlife) July 28, 2026
Carney told the DCNF that the group had taken Robinson on a trip to London during which he debated a female abortionist and cited embryology and the Hippocratic oath to make the pro-life argument.
“And she looked at him and said that was written by white men thousands of years ago, and he kind of laughed,” he said.
Robinson, a black man, was particularly outspoken on how the practice of abortion disproportionally affected his community. He was one of the founding board members of the Life Education And Resource Network (L.E.A.R.N.), which describes itself as “the largest, African-American, evangelical pro-life ministry in the United States,” according to its website.
“Haywood was very good at ringing the bell of ‘Look, blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population and nearly 40% of all abortions,'” the 40 Days president noted.
In 2019, 38.4% of black women accounted for 38.4% of U.S. abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared to only 33.4% for white women, Vox reported, citing CDC data.
The former abortionist, however, “never played the race card” and “just pointed out the facts and said, ‘This is a huge problem.'”
The Movement Now?
Four years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Carney stressed that the anti-abortion movement is in a much better place than it had been in years past.
He said the Court’s landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization returning the abortion issue to the states paved the way for an “America where we absolutely don’t have to live in a world where abortion is every around every corner.” Carney contrasted the post-ruling status quo — under which Generation Z is coming of age — to the previous presidency of Barack Obama, who he said “made pro-choice radical and cool.”
“And I think a lot of my our generation, the millennials, sort of fell for that” he told the DCNF. “Our kids are not because the playing field has changed significantly. Obama’s presidency has aged horribly.”
Carney said that many staunch opponents of abortion “enthusiastically” voted for President Donald Trump in 2024, including some who were more skeptical of him in past cycles. Trump, in his first term, appointed half of the six justices who comprised the Court’s majority in Dobbs [Editor’s note: Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, voted in Dobbs to uphold the Mississippi law at the heart of the case, but did not vote to overturn the precedent of Roe v. Wade].
Many prominent pro-life leaders have in recent weeks called on the president, his administration, and the Republican-controlled Congress to take more action on the issue ahead of the 2026 midterms, in which Democrats are looking to regain legislative power.
Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins specifically called for Trump, along with his Food and Dug Administration (FDA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to take action under current U.S. law to prevent the abortion pill mifepristone from being sold or disseminated through mail.
“The Trump FDA and EPA can act swiftly right now today to pull mifepristone from the shelves,” Hawkins said during her June 27 speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C. Later in her speech, she stressed that pro-life voters who backed Republicans in 2024 “have to see a return on our investments.”
Carney, however, told the DCNF that, so far, he is happy with what Trump has done for the movement.
He pointed to the president’s decision to bring back and expand the Reagan-era Mexico City Policy, which prevents U.S. taxpayer-funded global health aid from going to foreign groups that fund abortions, as well as his banning of “medical research on aborted babies.”
The 40 Days president also confidently said the Democrats are “not going to take the House” in November’s midterms, predicting that they “being married” to the issue of transgenderism will sink them with swing voters.
Specifically, he cited James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in his home state of Texas who made headlines after a 2023 podcast interview resurfaced in which he willingly admitted his “love” of transgender children. He eventually, however, came out against the practice of child sex changes during another podcast interview in June, three months after winning his party’s nomination.
Talarico “is going to get absolutely obliterated,” Carney said.
The pro-life leader pushed back on some Republicans warning that the upcoming midterm elections will be a good for Democrats.
Midterm cycles almost always favor the party out of the White House.
“I think Republicans do this because they need to take a class from Nick Saban on how to win,” he told the DCNF, referring to the legendary University of Alabama and Louisiana State University football coach. “But they [Republicans] get victories and then they just go dire. The pro-lifers do it too.”
“And I’m just— I’m not on that bandwagon,” he continued. “I think that, look — there there are definitely things that the Trump administration can do more for the unborn, just like any other administration. That’s for sure. But the average pro-life American in their living room thinks that Donald Trump is the most pro-life president ever. And they’re correct.”
40 Days describes itself as “an internationally coordinated 40-day campaign that aims to end abortion locally through prayer and fasting, community outreach, and a peaceful all-day vigil in front of abortion businesses,” according to its website. Its campaigns have reached 63 countries since the organization’s 2007 founding.
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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.