Toronto March for LifeIn the summer of 2016, as I was preparing to start my fourth and final year at Western University, my good friend and talented advocate on behalf of the pre-born reached out to me with a proposition.
Over the past year and a half, we had both become heavily active in our university’s pro-life club, Western Lifeline, but often found ourselves thinking: how can we do more? Limited due to strict club policies, we tried to find creative ways to bring the pro-life message to WesternU students without compromising effectiveness or spending months in legal battles with the university. Since messages such as “Choose Life” and “Pregnant? Need Help?” chalked onto campus sidewalks were promptly washed off by Facilities Management, we knew the chances of getting approval to show abortion victim photography on campus would be a challenge to say the least.
The question became: how do we effectively reach the most students in the limited time we have?
In September of 2016, we co-founded London Against Abortion (LAA), a community activism group seeking to educate the public about abortion by showing visual evidence of what abortion does to pre-born children—starting with London’s student population near WesternU.
Through LAA, we began delivering educational literature about abortion door-to-door in student housing areas, immediately garnering attention from WesternU’s newspaper. We started doing weekly “Choice” Chain in the busy intersections near campus to catch the rush of students coming to and from class. Eventually, we started hosting monthly apologetics workshops to train the growing number of recruits wanting to join us in activism.
This type of community activism reaches many, as measured by the countless testimonies received of people changing their minds on abortion after having seen abortion victim photography. One man told a LAA volunteer during “Choice” Chain that his granddaughter had driven by our display earlier in the year on her way to the abortion clinic, but because she had seen the images of what abortion was about to do to her baby, she cancelled her abortion appointment.
Currently, LAA has grown beyond WesternU to other neighborhoods and the downtown core, and groups similar to LAA exist across the country. Windsor Against Abortion, London Against Abortion, Oxford Against Abortion, Hamilton Against Abortion, Niagara Against Abortion, Toronto Against Abortion, EndTheKilling Ottawa, Valley Against Abortion— these are just a few examples of community activism groups working to expose the violent reality of abortion and change public opinion.
Faced with a national emergency in which 300 tiny humans are daily being dismembered, disemboweled, and decapitated inside neighbourhood abortion clinics minutes from our doorsteps, working together as communities to end the killing is not only necessary, but crucial.
Not all pro-lifers are students, and those who are won’t remain students on campus forever, but we all belong to communities. Let us apply a multi-faceted approach to educating and shifting public opinion by reaching further out into our communities to ultimately end the killing in Canada.
After all, if we’re not willing to change our own communities, how can we expect to ever change our entire country?
If you are interested in connecting with or starting a local community activism group, please apply to volunteer or contact us.
