CHARLOTTE — Familiar Catholic faces were present for the first Proudly Pro-Life Gala, hosted by the National Right to Life Committee in conjunction with North Carolina Right to Life.
The event, which took place Sept. 17 in Charlotte, had many local priests, deacons and religious sisters in attendance. Yet it was the father of a local priest – Father Matthew Harrison, campus minister for High Point University – who took center stage among the crowd of 200 guests.
Dr. Matthew Harrison, a local physician and father of seven, was the recipient of the 2026 Proudly Pro-Life Award – one of National Right to Life’s highest honors.
Harrison, a parishioner of St. Mark Church in Huntersville, is known for his medical breakthrough – the abortion reversal pill – which is credited with saving 8,000 babies and is available in all 50 states and more than 86 countries.
“Dr. Matthew Harrison represents the very best of the pro-life movement – courage in the face of uncertainty, compassion for a mother in crisis, and an unwavering determination to save a child’s life,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life.
“His willingness to act when a mother turned to him for assistance helped launch an effort that has given thousands of women a second chance to choose life for their babies,” she said.
Harrison discovered the reversal method in 2007, when he received an emergency call. A frantic mother had ingested a dose of the abortion pill and regretted her decision. He worked quickly, preparing a progesterone hormone that was readily available in his office.
“The abortion pill blocks the progesterone receptor,” Harrison said. “I just knew that if I gave some progesterone, it would outcompete the abortion pill and reverse the effects.”
It worked, and now that child is a living, breathing testimony at 19 years old.
The progesterone-based reversal pill can in many cases nullify the effects of the abortion pill if taken within 72 hours of the first dose.
Demand for the reversal pill is surging due to easy access to the abortion pill through clinics and by mail order, making it responsible for 75 percent of the nation’s abortions. To combat it, pro-life organizations, clinics and centers have adopted the use of the reversal pill.
“We can start right outside the abortion clinic,” Harrison said. “They can get right in the mobile unit and get them an ultrasound. We can start the reversal process immediately.”
Harrison took the award and adoringly gifted it to his 91-year-old mother, the woman responsible for stirring the courageous fight within her son.
In 1973, right after the Roe v. Wade decision, his mother lost her sixth child in her womb.
“I remember I was there in the chapel at the hospital where we were having the baby’s funeral,” he recalled. “I saw all these doctors crying and upset, and it seemed strange to me, even at 8 years old, that they were all crying for our baby, but at the same time they supported the right for a mother to end the life of another child. That planted the seed.”
The child she lost that day has now saved so many through her son, but as Tobias points out, the war continues.
“What we do matters,” Tobias told the crowd. “And National Right to Life cannot do this work from Washington alone. Our strength has always come from the partnership between the national organization and strong state affiliates.”
Elisabeth Laskowski, director of North Carolina Right to Life and a parishioner of St. Mark Church, agrees. As she commended the efforts of those praying on the frontlines at abortion clinics and thanked God for the recent closing of “A Woman’s Choice” in Greensboro, she said there is more work to be done.
“Since Roe was overturned four years ago, North Carolina is now the No. 2 most popular abortion destination in the country, unfortunately,” she said. “Plus, there has been a surge in monthly abortion pills mailed into our state. We went from 250 monthly shipments in 2023 to 750 in 2025.”
At the gala, the organization announced a campaign to combat abortion tourism and chemical abortions called “Don’t Swallow the Lie.”
Harrison’s wife, Kathleen, stood by his side. She is a fighter, too, and not only in front of abortion clinics or volunteering at pregnancy centers.
She had four priests celebrate 81 Masses as she intently prayed for her then-Protestant husband’s conversion. In 2015, following the “nine-times novena,” Harrison came fully into the faith on Pentecost Sunday.
The following year their son Matthew went to seminary. Now, Brian, their younger son, is in his second year as a seminarian in Rome. The power couple has become a great Catholic example to pro-life supporters and families around the world.
— Lisa M. Geraci