JOCABED TORRES
Jocabed Torres is a pro-life activist whose journey to the front lines of the battle for preborn life began at age thirteen as a left-wing immigrant-rights organizer. Through years of grassroots campaigning, she mastered effective activism long before she understood abortion to be the preeminent human rights crisis of our era.
In high school, early conversations about abortion stirred her conscience, but it was not until an apologetics conference at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa during her freshman year of college that the full scope and brutality of abortion confronted her. Recognizing it as a modern genocide comparable to slavery in its moral weight, she committed herself completely to the defense of the preborn. She left behind former ideological allies who demanded she abandon the cause, and instead brought her hard-earned organizing experience into the pro-life movement, determined to raise its effectiveness and urgency.
Transferring to the University of California, Berkeley—one of the most ideologically hostile campuses in America—she became president of Berkeley Students for Life, leading public witness and debate in an environment often openly antagonistic to the pro-life message. While still a student, Jocabed faced her convictions in the most personal way: an unplanned pregnancy. A professor pressured her to abort, warning that motherhood would ruin her future. Rooted in her Christian faith, she chose life. Tragically, at 24 weeks she delivered her stillborn daughter, Isabel, whom she buried beside her own mother.
In spring 2022, only months after Isabel’s burial, photographs of 115 aborted children—including five late-term babies—recovered from the Washington Surgi-Clinic reached Jocabed. Seeing their tiny, perfectly formed bodies reminded her unmistakably of Isabel. She immediately flew to Washington, D.C., joined the protest demanding justice, and while she was there she connected with AJ Hurley the Outreach Director of Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust at the time. What began as volunteering soon became her full-time calling.
Three years after losing Isabel, and in the midst of intense full-time activism with Survivors, God blessed Jocabed with new life again: her son, Josue Nicolas. His birth became a living fulfillment of Psalm 126:5—“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy.” Holding her living son while continuing to confront the daily reality of abortion only intensified her resolve, giving her an even deeper passion to fight for every child labeled “unwanted.”
Today, Jocabed continues to be a bold voice for abolition, training the next generation of activists, exposing the horrors of the abortion industry, and offering gospel hope to women in crisis. She, her husband Francisco, and their son Josue Nicolas live in Southern California and are active members of the Reformed Church of Los Angeles.
“We must not mind insulting men, if by respecting them we offend God. ” - St. John Chrysostom