Toronto March for LifeI began university the same way a lot of pro-life students do: quietly.
During my first year, I did nothing. Naturally reserved to begin with, and at a small university with no pro-life club to speak of, I kept my head down. In second year, I transferred to a larger school and did join the pro-life club, but my involvement capped out at attending meetings and half-heartedly handing out some event flyers.
During both of those years, I walked among my peers, the age group most likely to consider and seek out abortions—and I did nothing to reach them. Abortion was something I could ignore for the most part, but I’ll never know how many women at my school dealt with the reality of abortion in a deeply personal way. Women that, perhaps, I could have reached in time.
Thankfully, this changed when I took part in CCBR’s Summer Internship program in 2014. That summer opened my eyes to the horrific reality of abortion and gave me the tools I needed to effectively fight against it.
The tools are simple, and though an internship is an incredibly formative experience I’d recommend to every student, one needn’t wait to complete an internship before doing effective outreach on campus. One needs only to be willing to stand up for the pre-born with the truth of who they are and what abortion does to them.
I’ll never regret becoming actively pro-life and standing up for pre-born children on my campus. As only one example, I spoke student called herself pro-choice. After discussing human rights, and after showing her the truth of abortion, she became completely pro-life and signed up for the club.
As a student at university, you have a unique opportunity to reach your fellow students. Not only are they a particularly abortion-vulnerable group, but they are also the people who will grow up to be our nation’s lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, and politicians. University is the place we go to form our ideas about the world, and most especially, to have our ideas rigorously examined and challenged. What better place, then, to challenge Canada’s abortion free-for-all?
Be a voice for the voiceless. Sophie Scholl, a twenty-one-year-old university student at the University of Munich, chose to speak out when faced with the reality of injustice. She distributed pamphlets at her university which exposed the injustice of her time—the Holocaust. For her brave actions, Sophie was beheaded by the Nazis.
While Canadian universities are certainly not welcoming to pro-life students, you have very little to risk by speaking out on behalf of the pre-born. Your life is not at stake—only theirs, those three hundred lives snuffed out every single day in our country.
Whether you’re confident or not, whether you’re experienced or not, consider this: you cannot change minds, save lives, and end abortion by being quiet. Join your university pro-life club, and help make your university campus a little safer for pre-born children. I never regretted doing so, and neither will you.
