“How many children have you adopted today?”

It was a bright spring day at Santa Barbara City College, with hundreds of students strolling across campus between classes. Our small group of volunteers set up our signs and spread out along a main walkway to engage with students and distribute literature. Many students were willing to talk when we asked or wanted to stop and challenge us, so we had almost non-stop conversations over a couple hours. 

As I walked past different volunteers, I caught scraps of conversation: 

“What if a girl was raped?” 

“If you acknowledge that it’s a human life from conception, what can justify ending that life?” 

“But what is the soul?”

Late in the morning I saw three girls waiting on the side while I finished another conversation. When I was free, they marched up to me. One was the spokeswoman for the group. She started aggressively.

“How many children have you adopted today?” 

I paused before answering. “Today? None.”

Her momentum took a hit, but she continued.

“Well, not today. But have you adopted any children?”

I said that I had not. I explained how difficult it is to adopt a child since so few babies are placed for adoption and contrasted infant adoption with foster care, the goal of which is to reunite children with their parents, who retain parental rights. 

She then demanded to know if I had adopted from foster care and if I had a “problem” with fostering children. I answered “no” to both questions and there was another pause. I waited for her next attack, but she was apparently out of ammunition. It was my turn.

“What do you think about abortion?”

Unsurprisingly, she thought that if a 12-year-old was raped she should be able to have an abortion. Did I, she asked, think that the 12-year-old should be forced to carry the baby to term? 

“Yeah!” One of the girls almost cheered, excited to see me defeated by this apparently unanswerable argument. 

I called her out. “This isn’t just a rhetorical trick. Rape is something that happens to real people and we should give it the serious consideration it deserves without trivializing it.”

I pointed out that a woman or girl who is raped will live with it for the rest of her life. Nothing will undo what happened to her. Abortion won’t undo it. Why would we give the death penalty to one of the victims in the hope of easing the pain of the other victim? We don’t even give the death penalty to the rapist.

The girl who had cheered slipped away. The spokeswoman was quiet. 

“What about complications in pregnancy?” the other girl asked. “What if the mother’s life is in danger?”

The spokeswoman chimed in: “Yeah, what about in the third trimester?”

I explained the difference between an abortion, in which the goal is to end up with a dead baby, and a treatment for a pregnant mom that may result in the death of a baby simply because we don’t have the means to save him. 

I told the story of a friend who experienced life-threatening complications late in pregnancy. Her baby was delivered by emergency c-section and she and her baby had separate teams of doctors. Even if the baby had died, it wouldn’t have been an abortion, because a dead baby wasn’t the goal. 

Even early in pregnancy, in the case of ectopic pregnancy, for example, the fact that we don’t yet have the technology to treat young babies who are displaced when we treat the mother does not make the treatment an abortion. In a few years we may have the technology to reimplant the babies in the mom’s uterus or care for them in artificial wombs. No state prohibits treatment for ectopic pregnancy, or any life-threatening condition, even if it results in the tragic death of the baby. 

The third girl left for class, leaving the spokeswoman. She was trying to figure out her next line of attack when another student joined the conversation. 

He didn’t realize what we had been talking about and thought we were all pro-life. He was pro-life, too, and explained why. One of his reasons was that when his mom was pregnant with him, she was diagnosed with cancer and was advised to abort him. He explained that she didn’t actually need an abortion, she just needed an early delivery. “They wanted to kill me!” He was born early, his mom was treated, and they both survived. 

The remaining girl stalked away.

Conversations like this are commonplace during our campus outreach throughout the school year. Students will make complete 180 turns in their opinion on abortion. Some students go deeper and ask about God. Other students have their consciences pricked or a seed planted in their minds that takes time to grow.

One person at a time, we are changing the culture.

Let us know if you would like us to come to your campus in the fall!