“Would you still be against abortion if it was just five weeks?”
“I’m against abortion when it’s formed, like a baby, but not when it’s early. When does it have a heartbeat?”
“What if a girl got raped?”
“You guys have all the science and facts and statistics, but where’s your emotion?”
On college campuses, on the sidewalks outside of high schools, and at malls, we are reaching teen-agers who have never before had a conversation with a pro-life advocate.
Teen-agers spend, on average, eight and a half hours online each day and their social media accounts are designed to be echo chambers, feeding them content they already agree with. We are often their first contact with a reasoned argument against abortion.
“I read your magazine,” a young woman told me at our mall table. “It’s very interesting. I’m glad you’re handing them out.”
Two teen-aged boys stopped and asked detailed questions about fetal development and whether it was wrong to have an abortion at five weeks. Or four weeks. It seemed to me that they had a particular pregnancy in mind. I pray that I gave them enough information in time to save that baby. A teen-age girl stopped and listened wide-eyed as I showed her the fetal models and explained the surgical abortion procedures. She looked scared and, when I offered her information about the local pregnancy center “in case she knew anyone who might be pregnant,” she took the flier and put it in her pocket without a moment’s hesitation.
A mother pushing a baby in a stroller and guiding a toddler told me that she was forced by her mother to have two abortions when she was in high school. An older woman touched the fetal models and kept repeating, “It gives you a new perspective when you see them like this.” Another woman pointed to the 9-week fetal model and told her teen-age daughters that that was the age of their sibling that she had miscarried.
Middle school and high-school students are being bombarded online with pro-abortion content. Propaganda masquerading as news gives them detailed instructions on how to purchase abortion drugs online and have them delivered by mail. A new California bill would add information about how to get an abortion to the already terrible sex-ed program for middle- and high-school students. Through our face-to-face outreach we are able to reach thousands of these students and give the truth a fighting chance against the culture of death.