Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey is completing his 23rd term as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, tying him with Rep. Hal Rogers (R) of Kentucky as the longest-serving member of Congress. That alone would be remarkable, but Smith’s story is even more so, since he not only is a long-time officeholder in the generally liberal state of New Jersey but has what some of his fellow Republicans deem a losing ideology: he is a staunch social conservative. In this new era where the policies of many national Republicans are leaving abortion on request in place, Smith’s story is worth a closer look.

Smith is a native New Jerseyan, born in Rahway, a city closer to Manhattan than the 4th Congressional District Smith represents. His district runs along the Jersey Shore and covers the bulk of two counties, Monmouth and Ocean County. Its voting patterns are strongly Republican today, but that was not always the case. In fact, Smith first ran for political office as a delegate to the 1976 Democratic National Convention. His passion for the right to life was firmly grounded, and he was part-time executive director for New Jersey Right to Life. This would be unusual for a Democrat today but not so in the 1970s, when power in both major parties was fairly evenly split between life and abortion advocates.

In 1978, however, Smith became a Republican and ran for the congressional seat held by Democrat Frank Thompson. Smith was thumped 61 to 37% in that race. In 1980, he ran against Thompson again. This time, he was aided by an external event, the Abscam scandal. Thompson was among the seven members of Congress (and others) indicted for taking bribes offered as part of an FBI sting operation. The crimes opened the way for Smith, while the GOP, welcoming the opportunity, initially tried to replace Smith, whom they regarded as a weaker candidate, with one of two better-known Republicans in the district. Both men, including Jeff Bell, declined, and Smith, borne in part by the Reagan wave against Jimmy Carter, swept to victory over Thompson, 57 to 41%.

Reagan’s victory over Carter brought in six new pro-life Republican senators and more than 30 House seats, though not enough to reverse the Democratic House majority. The 1980 GOP platform was clear on the sanctity of human life. It read: “While we recognize differing views on this question among Americans in general — and in our own Party — we affirm our support of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children. We also support the Congressional efforts to restrict the use of taxpayers’ dollars for abortion.” The mood in the pro-life movement was optimistic that federal action on the issue, a mere decades after Roe v. Wade, was possible. But the pro-life movement was split over different approaches, and both a human life statute and a constitutional amendment failed in 1982-83.

The defeats forced changes in the fight for life, leading to the proliferation of pregnancy help networks and a series of battles over a variety of abortion funding limitations modeled on the Hyde Amendment, first adopted in 1976. It would not be until the advent of the debate over the late-term Partial Birth Abortion Act in 1992 that the movement gained new momentum in Congress for substantive action.

In the meantime, pro-life leaders like the tireless Chris Smith pursued public policies designed to define abortion as a violation of the first human right and to limit public support for and promotion of the practice. In 1983, Smith offered his version of the Hyde Amendment covering the many private plans included in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). These and similar amendments affecting the Defense Department, the District of Columbia, and other spending bills established a firewall, a taxpayer’s right of conscience, circumscribing the practice.

Smith has done more than anyone in Congress to address the tragedy of abortion in international affairs, an area where the United States has played shifting roles in encouraging abortion or checking its spread. Here, over time, the bipartisan nature of the pro-life movement sank into polarization. Each change of administration from one party to the other meant first-day-in-office policy reversals on the issue wherever executive action could accomplish it. Generally, these reversals left the Hyde Amendment in place for lack of sufficient votes to repeal it, but in 2021, a landmark was reached when every Democrat in the House voted to repeal the measure.

Smith turned much of his energy to focusing public attention on the Chinese Communist Party and its draconian and violent one-child policy. It proved to be an issue too terrible for national voices to ignore. The toll of the policy, first adopted by the CCP in 1981, was immense. Calculations vary with the time period selected. One source states that some 336 million abortions were carried out over the 40-year period from 1973 to 2013. Many of these abortions were conducted by the state-sponsored family planning cadres by force. An estimated 516 million IUDs, which can prevent implantation of new life, were inserted in this period. These outcomes, which, among other effects, led to sex selection abortions and a huge gender imbalance in China, disfavoring women, constitute the worst human rights violation in modern history.

As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chair of subcommittees on Human Rights, the Western Hemisphere, Africa, and other bodies, he has been relentless in pursuit of U.S. policies that address forced abortion, human trafficking, and, most recently, the international sale of human organs harvested from political prisoners executed in China. Smith has worked consistently in these areas in a bipartisan manner, including as co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. In an era when human rights often get more lip service than action, Smith has steadily convened informative hearings, encouraged public testimony, and offered legislative measures and other actions that focus attention on the indifference that has allowed criminal practices to spread unchecked around the globe. He was integral to the freeing of the Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng.

Chen encountered the wrath of Chinese authorities over his legal advocacy for rural Chinese and against the one-child policy. He was arrested in 2005 and imprisoned despite international pleas for his release, including one notable effort by the actor Christian Bale, who attempted to visit Chen and was assaulted by guards outside Chen’s home in Shandong Province. Smith led efforts by the United States in 2013 to secure Chen’s freedom and passage to the United States. Smith continued to publicize Chen’s work and hosted him for his first public testimony in the United States before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Today, the one-child policy is in tatters, leaving China with a massive debris field. China’s population has declined for four straight years. In 2025, its death rate reached 8.04 people per 1,000 while its birth rate sank to 5.63. With family networks damaged or broken entirely, China’s efforts to rebuild its population have, so far, conspicuously failed. The demographic analysis agency Statista reports, “Although the [one-child] policy is no longer in place, the population gender difference throughout the country is still evident. In 2023, fifteen to nineteen-year-old children had the largest gender disparity of 115.3 males to every 100 females.”

As birth rates continue to decline nearly everywhere on the planet (including in the most recent data for the United States), alarm is growing faster than wisdom. Smith says, “The pro-abortion culture of denial — a modern-day flat earth society — denies, devalues, and disrespects unborn baby girls and boys and trivializes the harm suffered by women. The United States — and the world — must more fully recognize the breathtaking miracle of the newly created life of an unborn child and that women deserve better than abortion.” 

Those remarks were made in the last year of the Biden administration, but they hold true in all seasons, as Smith’s career affirms. Today, he continues to fight with officials in Washington for policies like a permanent, government-wide Hyde Amendment, introduced in tandem with Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah); for action to counter trafficking in persons and organs for transplant; for an end to the distribution of abortion pills; for an end to the Obama-era policy allowing the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to offer health insurance plans for congressional members and staff that cover elective abortions; and for more support for veterans and pregnancy help centers.

At a time when many GOP members cower for fear of the abortion lobby, Smith’s margins of victory in liberal New Jersey are impressive. He won with 59.9% of the vote in 2020, 66.9% in 2022, and 67.3% in 2024. The numbers demonstrate what character — and public service without self-interest or selective concern — can accomplish. These facts recall an incident at the dawn of Smith’s career. Considered an underdog by his GOP allies in his first re-election campaign in 1982, Smith’s Democratic opponent, New Jersey Senate President Joseph Merlino ran an ad, shot in black and white, comparing the young Smith to the character portrayed by Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The attack ad ends with the Smith character in the film being kicked down the Capitol steps. Merline urged the same fate for Chris Smith.

To make a 23-term story short, the real Jimmy Stewart caught wind of the Merlino ad based on the Frank Capra classic. He waded into the congressional race and said, “When I played Mr. Smith in that picture, I did not think he was a naive hick. I thought he believed in honesty and integrity in government, the right of the people, and the love of his country.” To the real-life Smith, Stewart said, “I hope you win.” Merlino pulled the ad, and Chris Smith won the first of his many re-elections, 53 to 47%.

The moral of the story is plain. Chris Smith went to Washington again and again, but Washington and its various distractions and corruptions have not gone to his head. He has written and won passage of more legislation than any other member of the House today, and we can only hope there is more to come.