Sister Dede Byrne spoke on the third night of the Republican National Convention on Aug. 26, 2020. She retired as a colonel from the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 2009 and is the superior of the D.C. Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts. Byrne spoke of her opposition to abortion, saying, "As a physician, I can say unequivocally life begins at conception." State-level debates on abortion have centered around when the heartbeat of a fetus can be detected, and some legislatures have passed laws that ban the procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Byrne called Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris “the most anti-life presidential ticket ever,” adding that they “support the horrors of late-term abortion and infanticide.” Biden’s stance on abortion has evolved throughout his political career -- in 1973 he said that the Supreme Court went “too far” in deciding Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide, but he now supports codifying it into federal law. Harris has called for eliminating the Hyde Amendment -- which bans federal funding from being used for most abortions.

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