Why I’m running.

I am running for President of the United States to be a voice for people who are overlooked.

1 in 4 Democrats opposes abortion, yet the Democratic Party continues to ignore and erase millions of its constituency. During the last Presidential election, I took to the road, following the Democratic Party through more than a dozen cities, and standing outside the so-called “Big Tent” asking for representation for myself and millions of fellow Democrats. The Party elites simply ignored us and continued parroting the abortion industry’s tired talking points about their extremist party platform on abortion.

I realized I can’t keep hoping someone else will step up to represent us, so I’m taking the stand myself. I’m running to ensure the pro-life Democrats have a future in politics.

Additionally, in 2022, I was standing outside a late-term abortion facility in Washington DC when a medical waste truck was leaving. The truck driver gave a box of “medical waste” to myself and my co-activist, and when we opened it we found the remains of over 100 unborn children, including five very developed babies. Pulling their broken bodies out of that box was one of the worst moments of my life. Since then we have demanded DC Metro Police, DC City Council, DC Medical Examiner’s Office, and the United States Congress investigate the Washington Surgi Clinic for potentially violating federal abortion laws. So far, they have declined to respond.

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. Federal law requires any TV station with an FCC license runs the ads of a federal candidate. I will be a voice for Democrats who reject abortion extremism, and the children that extremism has victimized, with every interview I have and every ad I purchase.

Here’s my story.

I used to be “pro-choice”. But in 2002 a friend asked how I could care so deeply about the injustice of dolphins being hunted and killed when I didn’t seem to care about unborn children being killed in the womb. I thought, “What unborn children? They’re just clumps of cells!” But then I saw the images of babies in utero and victims of abortion procedures. I was stunned. I realized abortion is problematic.

It wasn’t until 2011 that I found a group called Secular Pro-Life. I’m a secular person myself, and their representation gave me the confidence to openly express my opposition to abortion.

In the summer of 2015 - three years after I began volunteering for Secular Pro-Life, a group called the Center for Medical Progress released a series of videos depicting high level abortion industry workers haggling over the cost of aborted baby body parts. They discussed at length the techniques they might use to “crush above” or “crush below” different key organs in a baby’s body to keep the organs intact for sale. I was horrified.

At the time, I was working as a corporate trainer for Louis Vuitton North America. I was on break, staring at my phone watching the video. Something changed in me. All of a sudden, the buying and selling of luxury goods seemed grotesque in a nation where buying and selling the body parts of aborted children was a common practice.

“I knew I would no longer be able to lead a ‘normal’ life. I needed to do something for these victims and act as soon as possible.”

— Terrisa Bukovinac

I was scared. I knew publicly acknowledging that I was pro-life, especially as a secular Democrat would come with a cost. I had also spent my life working in the private sector and wasn’t sure where to start transitioning into activism.

Donald Trump - a deeply unpopular figure in politics within my San Francisco community - had recently announced his bid for the Presidency and was platforming off of the abortion issue. This made me increasingly uncomfortable. How could this man who shows such little respect for communities in the margins not only claim to care about the unborn but also ever reach the hearts and minds of the people who most needed to hear about this issue?

During these years, I lived with and became part of an Indigenous family from Mexico who told me stories of losing their 6 year old son while they attempted to cross the US/Mexico Border, and of encountering dead bodies along the way. I learned how they’d comforted and made promises to each other when they thought they might die too.

These heartbreaking stories and intimate daily knowledge of what it means to be undocumented in America tugged at my desire for justice. I began tracking the issue in congress and soon became a fan of a Senator named Bernie Sanders who made impassioned speeches in support of undocumented people. I came to believe that Democratic socialism was the answer to many of the problems faced by America’s working class.

I knew that Trump would not respect the struggle of immigrants, nor would he work to address the systemic racism and classism which fuel the abortion industry. And although I was thrilled when Sanders announced his own bid for President because of his mostly progressive platform, I knew ultimately that because of his support for abortion without any limits, I couldn't support him either.

So in 2016, out of this desire for representation, I launched my first nonprofit: Pro-Life San Francisco. Through this organization, I gathered volunteers from across the political spectrum to counsel pregnant people outside abortion centers, connect people with resources, and resist the status quo of unrestricted abortion in one of the most pro-abortion cities on the planet.

By 2019 I had become acutely aware that the Democratic Party was misrepresenting their constituents on abortion.

According to national polling…

A third of Democratic voters identify as pro-life.

Most Democrats don’t support elective third-trimester abortion access.

Despite these numbers, the Party platform calls for unrestricted abortion access on taxpayer dollars and every single Democratic Presidential candidate supported elective abortion through all trimesters. I knew something had to change.

I became involved with Democrats for Life of America (DFLA), and traveled to every Democratic debate demanding that the Party platform add back previously removed inclusion language about pro-life Democrats and Democrats who support any restrictions or regulations. I caucused outside the Democratic National Convention in 2020 and later assumed the role of President of DFLA.

After the election I knew that I needed to take my activism to the next level. I had read Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the teachings of Gene Sharp, and Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I had become and remain convinced that confronting an oppressor as massive as the Abortion Industrial Complex could only be successful if many people are willing to take direct action on behalf of the oppressed.

In 2021 I moved from San Francisco to Washington D.C. and launched a brand new project called Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAAU), a group of pro-life leftists committed to engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience in defense of the unborn and their parents.

PAAU quickly became a leader in pro-life activism working to revive the spirit of the Rescue movement of the 1980’s and 90’s. Since then PAAU has mobilized hundreds of progressive leaders across America. I have been arrested 10 times and served a jail sentence for nonviolent peaceful direct action in and around abortion centers.

Then in March of 2022 something horrible happened. Something that totally transformed my focus and advocacy.

“We wept. Nothing could have possibly prepared me for that moment. I have held the victims of an exploitative capitalist system and a billion dollar killing industry. There’s no coming back.”

— Terrisa Bukovinac

In March 2022, Lauren Handy and I discovered the remains of 115 aborted pre-born children outside the Washington Surgi-Center, an abortion center in downtown Washington, DC. Of the victims, 110 were first-trimester babies, killed through the usual brutal methods of early-pregnancy abortion. Five of the babies appeared to be either killed in partial-birth abortions, or left to die after birth. Their deaths are illegal under both federal and local law. The only affection these children received was after their horrible deaths, in our shaking hands. We held these babies. We wept for them.

Read the full story about the DC Five and the ongoing pursuit of justice on their behalf.

We ensured these 115 precious babies were each named and given a funeral Mass. The first-trimester babies were given a proper burial. In the meantime, we pursued an investigation into the death of the five third-trimester babies. The bodies of the “DC Five” - as the third-trimester babies were referred to - remain in the office of the DC Chief Medical Examiner, who refuses to investigate their deaths or their murderer: Cesare Santangelo, the notoriously inhumane abortionist of the Washington Surgi-Center.

I am running for President because I held these victims in my hands, and I refuse to accept a society that treats the systematic destruction of our children as a solution to widespread injustice.

I am running because it is unacceptable that an industry conceived from literal white supremacy, Nazi ideology, and eugenics is praised by our Party as a social good.

Every generation has an obligation to nonviolence and nondiscrimination. Abortion is a tool of exploitation and capitalistic greed that keeps the wealthy in power and those it exploits powerless.

We cannot outspend Big Abortion but we can - like any other successful movement for social change - garner enough people power to topple this oppressive institution once and for all.

Together, we can RESIST.

We can provide for families and their children and we can begin right now. Together we can liberate each other from the shackles of injustice.

Help us tell the nation we want a pro-life revolution.