By the time he was 18, Seth Gruber was already an outspoken opponent of abortion. When his California high school told him he couldn’t choose abortion as the topic of his senior project, he didn’t back down. He went straight to the Constitution and then to the superintendent.
Keynote speaker Seth Gruber challenges Christians to turn their pro-life convictions into action during Pro-Life Wisconsin’s annual gala. (Photo by JuEun Kang)
Gruber, a longtime pro-life advocate, served as the keynote speaker at the annual Pro-Life Wisconsin Love for Life Gala on Oct. 16 at the Brookfield Conference Center, where he addressed more than 650 people. He credited his mother with shaping his convictions and challenged Christians to speak more openly in defense of unborn life.
His convictions began long before he entered a classroom. His mother directed a pregnancy resource center in the late 1980s and early 1990s, caring for women facing unexpected pregnancies even while pregnant with him.
“I’ve been a pro-life activist and been saving babies since I was a fetus,” he joked. “I guess that’s a really long time, because, you know, I have no opinion, because it is her body. I guess I was my mother’s body because, apparently, babies in the womb aren’t babies. They don’t have their own body.”
Raised in Los Angeles, Gruber was homeschooled through 8th grade before entering public high school. His education gave him a strong grounding in the nation’s founding documents and little hesitation about challenging authority when he believed his rights were being denied.
“My teacher said I couldn’t pick abortion for my senior project, but I was homeschooled, and by the time I was 11, my mother had me memorize the entire Preamble to the Constitution and the entire Declaration of Independence,” he said. “So, I threatened to sue them for viewpoint discrimination and told them they couldn’t prevent me from choosing the topic of abortion. I mean, go read the founding documents.”
After emailing the district superintendent, Gruber said school officials backed down, allowing him to complete his project on abortion.
“There is power in minorities who are willing to just speak the truth relentlessly,” he said.
While working on his senior project, Gruber encountered graphic images of aborted children that he later shared with his audience, arguing that the realities of abortion should not be hidden from public view.
“If others have a problem with that, I don’t care, because no one has a problem with images of slavery, the Holocaust, or the Rwandan Genocide, or with photos of what has happened to Christians in Nigeria,” he said. He cited Ephesians 5:11: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
Gruber attended Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, expecting a Christian campus to reflect his beliefs. Instead, he said, his first semester brought disappointment.
“I was thinking this would be great; I would go to college, be a surfer, and figured that since it was a Christian college, it would be aligned with my values,” he said. “I was so naïve. I got there, and in my first semester I found out that there were multiple pro-abortion professors on the faculty payroll.”
His experience at Westmont deepened his criticism of what he sees as a growing disconnect between Christian beliefs and support for abortion.
Gruber argued that Christians cannot consistently affirm both the right to abortion and the sanctity of Christ’s life before birth. He invoked the Virgin Mary to illustrate what he sees as the implications of applying an unrestricted right to abortion to every pregnant woman, including the Blessed Mother.
“You don’t get to exempt Mary from a woman’s right to slaughter her children just so you can maintain the allure of orthodoxy and sprinkle a little Christian cheese on your paganism. If women have a right to abortion, then so did Mary,” he said. “If Mary had a right to abortion, then Christ was not fully human in the womb, and you just violated the doctrine of the incarnation. Of course, I am banned from my alma mater.”
Gruber also pointed to the early Church’s concern for abandoned infants, citing St. Callistus of Rome as an example of Christians who protected vulnerable children.
“He saved babies from death, from prostitution and also from incest, as often the father or brother of an infant girl would unknowingly have relations with them when they were older,” Gruber said. “St. Callistus was pro-life back in the third century.”
Today, Gruber hosts “The Seth Gruber Show” and leads two initiatives to mobilize Christians around the pro-life cause. He founded The White Rose Resistance in 2022, which he describes as a national voice for life seeking to awaken the Church. In 2024, he launched “The 1916 Project,” a book and documentary intended to challenge the Church to examine its role in contemporary cultural debates.
Throughout his talk, Gruber returned to a central appeal: Christians must move beyond private beliefs and be willing to speak and act on them.
“Over 700,000 babies are being aborted each year,” he said. “We need to fight against these baby sacrifices and protect the unborn.”
For Gruber, that call to action reflects a conviction he says has defined his life since before birth and was tested as a teenager: When deeply held beliefs are at stake, silence is not an option.
A Chance Encounter Changed Two Lives
Mareza Landeros joked that she accepted Pro-Life Wisconsin literature from State Director Dan Miller outside a Milwaukee abortion clinic because she thought he was homeless and felt sorry for him. Little did she know that Miller would play a pivotal role in persuading her to carry her baby to term. Her son is now 15.
Landeros shared her story at the Love for Life Gala, thanking Miller for stepping in when she needed it most.
“He had suggested I have an ultrasound, but I already got one at the clinic,” Landeros explained. “He told me theirs were better quality, so I agreed. I could not believe that I saw arms, legs, his little heart; he was a baby. There was no way I could abort him.”
After her son was born, Landeros named Miller his godfather.
Despite becoming a young mother, Landeros continued her education and became a registered nurse. Today, she and her husband are raising five children.
Mareza Landeros and Dan Miller reunite at the Love for Life Gala. Miller helped Landeros choose life for her son, now 15, and later became his godfather. (Photo by JuEun Kang)
