With the current increase in attacks on abortion access, growing income inequality, and a burgeoning national movement against state violence, the need for a national gathering that brings together grassroots and student activists with policy-makers, academics, and media-makers to strategize around these issues with a reproductive justice lens is greater than ever...

The conference, taking place Friday, April 10, through Sunday, April 12, 2015, invigorates, empowers and connects reproductive and social justice activists from across the globe.

"What makes the CLPP conference such a critical space is its ability to shine light on the connections between reproductive rights and other social justice movements," said Lucy Trainor, CLPP's conference and campus programs director.

"Reproductive justice is a complex landscape that extends beyond abortion," she said. "There's no doubt that there are still a growing number of legal barriers to abortion access; the conference also emphasizes that economic, racial, environmental, and LGBTQ justice are all tied into the reproductive justice movement, and conference attendees can expect to learn how."

This year's event will feature more than 150 speakers and 75 workshops.

I have been asked to do a broad overview in a short time about trends on the Right.  I will draw in part on this 2013 essay, in which I wrote:

Despite recent losses in the culture war, the Christian Right is forging a path forward by rallying around a few key issues: antichoice, opposition to marriage equality, and the defense of "religious liberty." These themes--set forth in the influential Manhattan Declaration in 2009--have proved powerful enough to unify conservative Catholics and Protestants against their common enemies...

Looking to move beyond deep historic divisions, key factions of conservative Christianity may have found a way forward.

The Christian Right is prepared for nothing but struggle for the foreseeable future. The fate of the nation, its leaders told us, would turn on the 2012 election: Either America would reconnect to its roots as a Christian nation or perhaps earn God's wrath. But the election produced little good news for them at the national level. President Obama won reelection. Marriage equality won in every state that it was on the ballot.

Since then, broad shifts in public opinion about same-sex marriage have continued to buffet religious conservatives. Nonetheless, a mere week before the Supreme Court's late-June decisions regarding marriage equality, a diverse group of 250 defiant Christian Right leaders swore resistance to the "redefinition" of marriage. "[M]ake no mistake about our resolve," they declared in a statement. "While there are many things we can endure, redefining marriage is so fundamental to the natural order and the true common good that this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross."

The statement was titled "We Stand in Solidarity to Defend Marriage and the Family and Society Founded Upon Them." Signers included Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life; Fox News personality Mike Huckabee; Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition; and such influential evangelical leaders as Revs. Franklin Graham, Harry Jackson Jr., and Samuel Rodriguez.

Given the Christian Right's recent defeats in the realm of marriage equality, it might seem that its power is diminishing and that the so-called culture wars are receding. But "We Stand in Solidarity" is one of many indications that its resolve has deepened rather than dissipated in the face of recent political setbacks. This dynamic, multifaceted movement--one of the most powerful in U.S. history--aims to become a renewed, vigorous force in American public life, and it continues to evolve even while maintaining its views on core issues.

Notably, the movement is being shaped and sustained by a political alliance between evangelicals and the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Though it was unthinkable as recently as a decade ago, this developing evangelical-Catholic alliance is key to understanding the Christian Right's plan for regrouping in the near term--and ultimately reclaiming the future.