(LifeSiteNews) — Self-described “progressive atheist” and avid pro-life activist Terrisa Bukovinac announced Thursday that she is running as a Democrat for president of the United States in the 2024 election.
BREAKING! I’m running for President in the 2024 Democratic Primary! 🇺🇸
— Terrisa Bukovinac (@Terrisalin) September 14, 2023
Bukovinac, founder of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), explained on her campaign website that she wants to use her platform as a presidential candidate to be a voice for “victimized” children as well as pro-life Democrats.
“I will not be silenced. I won’t let these children be forgotten, and I won’t let pro-life Democrats like myself be ignored. As a federal presidential candidate, I can amplify our message,” wrote Bukovinac, adding that she will take advantage of “every interview” and “every ad” to do so.
She told National Review on Thursday that, in fact, her campaign’s main purpose is to run “explicit” ads showing the horrific reality of abortion in any state where she is able to get her name on the ballot. Federal law requires that television stations “shall have no power of censorship” over the ad content of federal political candidates.
Bukovinac has seen the horror of abortion “up close and personal,” in her own words.
Together with PAAU director Lauren Handy, Bukovinac discovered the remains of over 100 aborted children, including five very late-term babies, in boxes of “medical waste” from the abortion mill of notorious abortionist Cesare Santangelo in 2022. The boxes of babies had been handed to them by a truck driver who was to deliver them to a medical waste facility.
PAAU had shared at the time that the women “privately arranged for the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Police homicide unit to pick up” the remains of the five late-term aborted babies “for forensic examination.” Despite evidence that the babies may have been killed in violation of federal law, which prohibits abortionists from murdering babies born alive after failed abortions, D.C. authorities stated they would not launch any investigations or conduct autopsies on the infants since they say the babies were “aborted in accordance with D.C. law.”
Shortly after the duo’s discovery, instead of investigating Santangelo, the DOJ had Handy and other pro-lifers – not including Bukovinac – arrested by the FBI for a 2020 rescue effort at Santangelo’s mill. Some pro-lifers have suggested that the arrest and charges are at least in part an attempt to obscure potential federal law violations by Santangelo.
Five of the pro-life activists, including Handy, have since been found guilty of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and conspiracy against rights, and face up to more than a decade in prison.
“I literally held the victims of late-term abortion in my hands,” she told National Review. “I’ve seen abortion extremism that comes from the Democratic Party up close and personal. And there’s just no going back from that for me.”
“I absolutely am committed to bringing about justice for these children because the Democratic Party is… to blame,” she said.
She laments that the modern-day Democratic party has become “extreme” in its pro-abortion stance, with President Joe Biden and other mainstream Democratic candidates essentially advocating abortion on demand. For example, Biden has supported a bill that would legalize abortions after viability if determined “necessary” by a physician to protect the “mental health” of a mother.
In a campaign launch video, Bukovinac compared the dehumanization of the unborn with that of the Jews and other classes of people murdered by the Nazis, arguing, “The concept of a human ‘non-person’ is a legal and social construct, one that has been used throughout history to discriminate against groups of human beings.”
While her campaign is focused on abortion, Bukovinac is otherwise a typical “progressive” liberal and believes that abortion, along with other societal ills, should be addressed through a “democratic socialist framework.”
She advocates “expanding LGBTQ adoption and foster programs,” “comprehensive sex education,” “healthcare equity,” environmental regulations, “criminal justice reform,” including the abolition of the death penalty, and “economic justice,” as noted on her campaign website.
“I believe there cannot be justice for these babies until I can break the toxic relationship between the Democratic Party and the abortion industry,” she told National Review. “So, do I think that this campaign is going to accomplish that? Probably not. But is this campaign going to create space for that to happen in the future? I believe it will.”