Toronto March for LifeCome join us in Florida this winter for a week to learn how to make a compassionate and compelling case for pre-born children. The most vulnerable human beings in our society are killed every day, and you can make a difference.
I’ll never forget the day I was told, “You shouldn’t call yourself pro-life.”
I asked a young lady—I’ll call her Julia—what she thought about abortion. She had been sitting on a park bench next to our display which had been up all day at her university campus, watching her friends and classmates have conversations with us or join the protest that set up opposite us.
I sat down beside her and she shared her opinion with me. Julia was pro-choice, but supported our right to express ourselves. She didn’t think I understood the difficult situations that people experience, because if I did, I would obviously support a “woman’s right to choose.”
Most often in conversations like this, I have to make a difficult choice – to not defend myself.
My goal is to make a compassionate and compelling case against abortion, and to speak on behalf of little boys and girls who can’t speak for themselves. I try to empathetically address the difficult circumstances that people often face alongside pregnancy, and show that women deserve better than abortion.
Most of the time, I only have a few minutes. I might be out for an hour and the student might have 5-20 minutes to talk, so I’m going to spend my time focused as much as I can on the injustice done to the child. I’m going to make the case that while we must seek to eliminate suffering, we can’t do that by eliminating the sufferer. While I attempt to speak on behalf of pre-born children, I am often stereotyped and accused.
“You don’t care about born children. How many children have you adopted?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you ever been pregnant?”
“You’re not really pro-life. Do you support gun control?”
“You don’t care about vulnerable people. Do you support contraception?”
“You are privileged. Do you have any idea what suffering is like?”
My goal is not to speak on behalf of myself. The conscious choice I make – in the few minutes I have – is not to defend myself.
I meet a lot of really cool people on the streets, and I find myself often wishing that we’d met in different circumstances. I spoke with another young lady—I’ll call her Sarah—recently who is in Midwifery school. That’s so cool. I wish I could be her friend.
I told Sarah that she has an awesome major, but we spent the rest of the conversation talking about what we disagree on. I tried to address her concerns and turn her attention to the broken body of the child, visible on my sign. I tried to connect with her love of humanity that drew her into midwifery, and inspire her to treat all human beings equally. I don’t know how much it resonated with her. We parted as two people on opposite sides of a contentious issue.
I have an innately human desire to be liked and understood, and it hurt a little. It often does.
I feel no shame in being pro-life, or even being the odd stranger on a street corner speaking on behalf of the most vulnerable human beings in our society, but I do feel frustrated that I am so often stereotyped and don’t get a chance to share my heart.
This time though, sitting next to Julia on the park bench, we had the time to dive deeper into both of our perspectives. She told me about growing up in Africa, and she asked me what I thought about trans rights, about racism, and about poverty.
I told her that I believe that every human being ought to have human rights, and if 1 in every 5 trans people were being killed in Canada, I would be speaking on their behalf the same way that I was for pre-born children. I would show the evidence and I would plead with our culture to respect the rights of the vulnerable.
I shared that, although I have faced difficulty and discrimination in my life, I have no idea what it would be like to grow up in Africa, and I can’t relate to the struggles of black Canadians. I think that every human being – regardless of skin colour or ethnicity – should be treated with the utmost respect.
We brainstormed together about the problem of poverty and the best ways to address it, especially as it pertains to pregnancy. I shared my thoughts and told her about the document Building a Post-Roe Future that was published by a collective of pro-lifers in 2022.
By the time we wrapped up our conversation, she looked at me quizzically and said, “You shouldn’t call yourself pro-life.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that. “What do you mean? I am completely against abortion.”
“Yeah,” she said, and I was relieved that she understood me, but then she said something that confirmed that she understood me even better than I realized. “You’re not pro-life. You’re… anti-abortion. But pro-life isn’t just about abortion, it’s about so much more than that. And you’re not that.”
Cathartic. That’s the only word I can think of to describe how I felt. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the depth of my conviction – she told me as we parted that I was making her seriously reconsider her own position. It was that in the past 40 minutes, she was able to see past an inaccurate stereotype. To her, “pro-life” was a label that described an uncompassionate, rigid, religious person who held to every belief that was opposite her own, and I wasn’t that person.
Nor have I ever met that person, in all of my years in the pro-life movement.
I hope that after seeing me, she might be willing to see other pro-lifers differently now. I didn’t have time to try to convince her that her perception of “pro-life” is worlds away from accurately representing the many pro-life men and women whom I have stood alongside in the pro-life movement… but maybe her perception has been shaken just enough to be able to see the next one she meets.
I smiled, we hugged before we parted ways, and I took a moment to enjoy feeling seen. Then I turned around and saw a young man walking by our display with his head down.
I wanted him to see me in the way that she had, but I assumed he wouldn’t – and he didn’t. The reason I approached him was not because I wanted to be seen. I approached him because, otherwise, he wouldn’t see the victims of abortion. He would have walked by without looking at them, but he would look at me. Mine was the voice he could hear, my hand was the hand that could offer him a pamphlet, and if I didn’t use my voice, the victims of abortion would stay invisible.
It can be difficult to not make a case for yourself on the streets. Sometimes you will be stereotyped, misunderstood, and accused. But nothing that happens to me for holding a sign and having conversations will be as difficult – as horrific – as what nearly 300 pre-born children face every day in Canada as their bodies are shredded, torn, and discarded. I will never be as invisible as a child who was never known, named, or loved by anyone in his/her short life.
I enjoy the moments when the person in front of me seems to see me, and when I am able to make a friend, even if only for a conversation. But those moments are not why I do this work, in fact, they are almost the opposite of the reason I do this work.
I am not invisible. If stereotypes make me invisible, it’s because no one wants to see the victims of “choice.” I am not a victim, but I can be a face for the faceless. I can use my visibility to allow theirs.
My friend, if you are afraid of sharing the pro-life message because of how people might perceive you or the negative assumptions they might make, let me remind you of two things. First, that the reason for that reaction is because you are communicating an unpopular truth, and second, that you are not alone.
If anyone would look down on you because you are speaking on behalf of children who can’t speak for themselves, let that be a conviction that you are proud to hold, not one to be ashamed of.
And as the author of the classic Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe once observed:
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” –C.S. Lewis
You might find that it’s way easier than you think, or you might find it difficult to talk to people who disagree with you, but the road less travelled is not uninhabited. I think you will find when you look around at the courageous men and women that stand shoulder to shoulder with you, that you are in good company.
And once you realize that the pro-life movement is full of unpopular heroes, I hope you will find the courage to join them.
Come join us in Florida this winter for a week to learn how to make a compassionate and compelling case for pre-born children. The most vulnerable human beings in our society are killed every day, and you can make a difference.
No one joins the pro-life movement because they want to be popular, because it’s not about being seen. The pro-life movement is about bringing attention to those who are most invisible, and we do it alongside the best and bravest people I’ve ever known – people who didn’t ask themselves “Is this the right fit for me?” but rather, “If I don’t… who will?”
