Republican congressional candidate Jessica Taylor this week spoke with Yellowhammer News about the major pro-life endorsement she received last week.
Taylor garnered the coveted endorsement of the Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List, one of the country’s most important pro-life organizations.
The SBA List cited Taylor’s previous service on the board and as president of River Region Pregnancy Resource Center, just outside of Montgomery, as a factor in the endorsement. She strongly pledged to protect life in her viral campaign announcement video in the fall. Additionally, Taylor began her career in the governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, where she managed a high school dropout prevention program.
Speaking with Yellowhammer News, she emphasized how much the endorsement – and the greater issue – means to her.
“It means the world,” Taylor explained. “I was honored and really excited to get [the endorsement]. This has been a cause near and dear to my heart for some time.”
Speaking of her years of service on the River Region Pregnancy Resource Center, she added, “I have worked firsthand on that issue and seen the difference community organizations can have in really reversing a lot of folks who are abortion-minded and convincing them to choose life. So I think the more we can do to work on the local level to provide support and options for young women, the sooner we’ll see a decrease in the number of abortions — and then certainly anything we can do to overturn Roe v. Wade.”
Taylor also served on the board and currently serves as president of the Samaritan Counseling Center in Montgomery and Prattville, which provides mental health services and educational programming. The “faith-informed counseling center” serves those dealing with mental health issues, families struggling to heal broken relationships and locals battling substance abuse and addiction.
The examples of people in need when life is at stake occur “all the time,” she told Yellowhammer News.
Taylor highlighted how many of their clients rave about “the difference we have made in their life.”
“Mental health is extremely important to me,” she added. “You know, we talk about Second Amendment rights all the time and that we have ‘a gun problem in America.’ We don’t have a gun problem, we have a mental health problem. So definitely both of those issues, pro-life and mental health, are issues that are very important to me and things that I have been involved with for many years.”
Taylor continued, “I’ll throw mentoring into that mix, as well. I have been a big sister in Big Brothers Big Sisters for about 16 years, and I have had a very rewarding relationship from that experience.”
She explained that one of her little sisters recently had a child and made Taylor the godmother — the greatest reward and honor she could have imagined.
Taylor’s campaign has largely been themed around giving conservative women, especially those in her younger generation, representation on the national stage. While liberal women like “The Squad” in Congress get all of the national media attention and thus seemingly speak for their generation in general, Taylor recently founded “The Conservative Squad” to give a voice to what very well might be a generational silent majority. The abortion issue is a microcosm of the one-sidedness of liberal voices getting all of the attention — one that Taylor wants to change.
“We see liberal women all the time out front on this issue (abortion), but we need conservative women – young, conservative women – to combat that,” she told Yellowhammer News.
“That’s true with socialism as well, you know AOC and her ‘Squad’ are off espousing the virtues of socialism that have not worked anywhere that they’ve ever been tried,” Taylor continued. “Look at how quickly they brought down Venezuela. So we’ve got to have somebody who can combat that. And I do think that it needs to be a new generation of conservatives. Because if we don’t change hearts and minds of the millennials and younger generations, then I am scared for our future.”
If elected to Congress, she vowed to be a staunch champion of pro-life issues, just as retiring U.S. Rep. Martha Roby (AL-02) has been. Taylor is running in the competitive Republican primary to succeed Roby. The primary field also includes Wiregrass businessman Jeff Coleman, former Alabama Attorney General Troy King and former State Rep. Barry Moore (R-Enterprise).
Taylor has signed a term limits pledge this campaign cycle and has also been endorsed by State Rep. Will Dismukes (R-Prattville) and conservative groups such as VIEW PAC and Winning for Women.
She advised that national leaders in the pro-life SBA List are set to come down to Alabama’s Second Congressional District for a Taylor campaign event soon. The primary is March 3.
If elected, she wants to spearhead and grow a “coalition” of pro-life women in positions of national leadership.
“I hope that many other women and men around the state will join me in fighting for our conservative values,” Taylor concluded.
Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
