Typically, the pro-life lobby in the US attracts conservatives who back the death penalty and own a gun. But Holly Baxter discovers the movement has had a facelift, luring younger female activists who also support refugees and prisoners

Tuscaloosa is a small, picturesque college town in the centre of the state, home to the University of Alabama and their formidable football team the Crimson Tide. “When you come to Tuscaloosa, you say, ‘Roll tide’,” explains Georgia Gallagher, when we meet on a bench just outside campus at lunchtime. That’s the team’s chant, which you can find written on posters round the city and emblazoned on sweaters and T-shirts in local stores. People say it to each other as they pass on the street during big game days.

The university takes community seriously, which is why Gallagher chose to study here in the first place. She went to a close-knit school in her own state, she says, as we cross the campus and come to an air-conditioned Starbucks to shelter from the heat. She chose the University of Alabama because it had a reputation for being especially social and a selection of good sororities to join (the Greek life as it’s often referred to).

Gallagher lives in Alpha Delta Pi, where each student pays a certain amount to the organisation in exchange for room and board. They even have their own chef, she mentions proudly. Greek life sometimes gets a bad rep: not a year goes by without a “mean girls” story about rejection and bullying, and murky tales of hazing and “pledging” have led to criminal trials in the past. But Alpha Delta Pi is a relatively wholesome organisation, where young women are expected to keep up certain grades and to do a certain amount of charity work on top of that.

Until recently, Gallagher

was also president of the prolife college organisation, Bama Students for Life (BSL). The group describes itself as fostering “a culture for life on campus and beyond so that one day our world will respect the dignity of every human life”. Its members are prolific on social media, and the official Twitter account’s pinned tweet shows a group of fresh-faced college students marching against abortion in Washington DC, holding up signs that include “Killing a baby is no way to plan parenthood” and “Choose life — your mom did”.

Gallagher is keen to emphasise that the group doesn’t just oppose abortion (though that does seem to be its main remit). It also opposes the death penalty, and helps out young mothers who have “chosen life” by providing free babysitting and necessities like nappies and baby food in exchange for points accrued by mothers who attend parenting classes (which often have a religious slant). The group’s tweets also include signs that urge people to protect “the immigrant”, “the refugee” and “the imprisoned” alongside “the unborn”.

A university might seem an unusual place to find a group of anti-abortion protesters, but in America pro-life sentiment has been growing since the nineties. It is now, according to Gallup, more common for Americans to describe themselves as “pro-life” than “pro-choice” (in

Tweets also urge people to protect ‘the immigrant’, ‘refugee’ and ‘the imprisoned’