Each year, Ave Maria School of Law gathers for the Monsignor Laurence Higgins Respect for Life Celebration, an annual event honoring the life and legacy of a priest whose ministry was defined by compassion, moral clarity, and steadfast service to the dignity of every human person.

Ave Maria School of Law students, faculty, and guests gathered for the annual Monsignor Laurence Higgins Respect for Life Celebration, honoring a beloved friend of the law school and reflecting on the law’s responsibility to protect human dignity. The event included Mass, a lecture, discussion and finished with a pro-life march along Vineyards Blvd around the campus at Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida on Friday, February 6, 2026.

Monsignor Higgins, the longest-tenured priest in the Diocese of St. Petersburg, was a beloved friend of the law school and a tireless advocate for the poor and vulnerable. In recognition of his extraordinary faith and service, Ave Maria School of Law awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2013. Before his passing, he learned that the law school would name an annual event in his honor. Each year, the celebration invites the Ave Maria Law community to reflect on the moral responsibilities that accompany the practice of law.

This year’s celebration featured Scott Baier, Chief Executive Officer of Community Pregnancy Clinics, who offered a substantive and sobering examination of the legal history of abortion and the challenges that remain unresolved in American law.

Drawing on international data, Mr. Baier underscored the global scale of abortion. Reports from the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute estimate that approximately 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year, a figure that translates to roughly 150,000 to 200,000 abortions every day. To make the scale intelligible, he compared this number to filling multiple Super Bowl stadiums every single day — a comparison intended not to sensationalize, but to remind listeners that large numbers can obscure the human reality they represent.

Central to Mr. Baier’s remarks was the principle captured in the Latin phrase Lex est Magister — the law is a teacher. Law, he argued, does more than regulate conduct or resolve disputes. It shapes culture, forms conscience, and communicates what a society is prepared to recognize and protect. When the law withholds protection from a particular class of human beings, it does not merely permit injustice; it instructs the public about whose lives matter.

Mr. Baier traced the constitutional dimensions of this question, distinguishing between the Declaration of Independence, which articulates natural rights, and the Constitution, which governs their legal enforcement. He focused in particular on the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law, nor denied the equal protection of the laws, and on the enduring legal debate over who is recognized as a “person” within that constitutional framework.

To illustrate the tension embedded in current doctrine, Mr. Baier pointed to a striking example from Florida law. In 2002, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment prohibiting the confinement of pregnant pigs in a manner that prevents them from turning around freely — a provision grounded in the recognition that pregnancy creates heightened vulnerability and therefore warrants special legal protection.¹ This protection is enforceable and carries legal consequences. By contrast, unborn human life does not receive comparable categorical protection under existing constitutional jurisprudence, not because vulnerability is absent, but because of unresolved questions surrounding legal personhood. The contrast is not an argument against animal welfare laws, which serve legitimate moral and regulatory purposes. Rather, it exposes a deeper constitutional inconsistency and invites reflection on what the law teaches when protections are extended in some contexts but withheld in others.

Mr. Baier also addressed emerging legal strategies aimed at restoring equal protection for the unborn, including proposals such as the Lincoln Proposal, which seek to reengage courts with foundational constitutional principles rather than relying solely on legislative or cultural change.

These questions resonate deeply with Ave Maria School of Law’s mission and with the vision of its founder, Thomas Monaghan, who has often reminded students that “Next to priests and consecrated religious, attorneys are the most influential leaders in our society.” If law is indeed a teacher, then lawyers bear a profound responsibility — not only to understand doctrine, but to consider how their work forms the moral architecture of the culture itself.

The Monsignor Laurence Higgins Respect for Life Celebration is not merely commemorative. It is formative. In honoring Monsignor Higgins’ legacy, Ave Maria School of Law continues to challenge its students to think rigorously, engage faithfully, and practice law in service of truth, justice, and human dignity.

Footnote

¹ Florida Constitution, Article X, Section 21, adopted by voter initiative in 2002 (commonly known as the “Pregnant Pig Amendment”), prohibiting the confinement of pregnant pigs in a manner that prevents them from turning around freely.