Those who follow so-con news sources are probably familiar with a fairly stereotypical pro-life experience: Pro-lifers engage in outreach, one or more of those reached get angry at the subject matter, and censorship, verbal abuse or (occasionally) physical violence follow. Pro-lifers constantly have tales of the absurdities emerging from the pro-abortion rabbit hole, from pub owners becoming enraged over sidewalk chalk to feminists dressed up in giant female genitalia costumes. However, to ensure that these bizarre outliers do not dominate the narrative of the culture wars (as much and mysteriously as our opponents seem to desire it), I have decided to share another narrative, one that people do not hear often enough—four of the best things about being a pro-life activist.
1.The saved lives.
Predictable, I know. Trite, perhaps. But it’s the entire point of the job, so putting anything else at number one would merely indicate a loss of focus. Honestly—I get asked all the time how I can handle seeing so many pictures of dead babies and so much video footage of abortions taking place—and that’s a valid question. Just seeing them gets exhausting sometimes (we’ve delivered almost a quarter of a million postcards with pictures of dead babies on them in five ridings since May.) But it’s all worth it when we hear about a baby that would have looked like that—that would have had his or her arms and legs cut off and skull crushed—but did not, because his or her mother saw an image of what abortion actually is. When we get a message on our answering machine that someone considering an abortion just saw our truck billboards and is now reconsidering, it’s all worth it. When a couple with an abortion scheduled for their pre-born child sees graphic signs on the street and cancel that appointment, it’s all worth it. And when day in and day out, high school students come out of their schools to speak to us and tell us that our pictures and our conversations have changed their lives (and saved future ones), it’s all worth it. How many other “jobs” can say that a few hours of activism have resulted in the preservation of human life, with its infinite potential?
2.The people.
Joining the pro-life movement will introduce you to some of the best friends you will ever have. I have met and made friends doing all types of pro-life activism that I never otherwise would have met, from Miami, Florida to Washington, DC, to Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto. I met many of my now-colleagues doing the Genocide Awareness Project in 2010 in Gainesville, Florida—there is something about facing hostility and fighting in unity that creates special bonds. With pro-life friends, I have faced crowds of hundreds of angry protestors, driven all the way across Canada presenting the pro-life message, and braved all types of weather to engage in conversation about abortion. We’ve driven thousands of kilometres through hundreds of small towns, slept on church floors and in lurching vans and beat-up Crown Vics, faced irate overzealous police officers and unstable, flailing feminists. And still, at the end of the day, whether we were all staying in a semi-occupied retreat centre (Sudbury, Ontario), camping in a backyard (Ottawa, Ontario), bunking at a deserted summer camp (Miami, Florida) or staying in host homes (anywhere across Canada or the Southern United States), we could stay up until the late hours of the night, talking in little groups, or playing games like “Mafia.”
C.S. Lewis has noted that, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” As pockets of pro-lifers accustomed to marginalization on campuses across the country met each other, that is what happened. And that is why, regardless of whether your background is Dutch Reformed, Catholic, Baptist, or Evangelical—if you care passionately about our culture and fighting ideologies that promote killing the innocents—you will find friends in the pro-life movement, and they will change your life for the better.
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3.The host homes.
Many people think that one of the downsides of being a pro-life activist is that we often have to stay in host homes—after all, the pro-life movement is not exactly flush with money and thus we generally prefer not to blow it on expensive hotel rooms if at all possible. However, staying in host homes, for me, has proven to be one of the upsides of being a pro-life activist. From an enormous old house in Vancouver (with so many randomly placed rooms and hallways that it seemed the type of house a Narnia wardrobe could be found in), to staying with a wonderful French Canadian family in the backwoods of Manitoba, host homes have provided us with unforgettable experiences.
In Sault Ste. Marie last summer, as we were travelling across Canada on the New Abortion Caravan, my colleague Nicholas and I stayed with an elderly retired dentist and his wife. As his wife watched carefully to ensure that we stuffed ourselves with the mountain of food she had conjured up, her husband began rifling through a folder he had brought to the table. It was full of newspaper clippings and old photos—all describing the “Rescues” of the late 1980’s and early ‘90’s, of which he and his family had been participants. When pro-lifers started receiving lengthier jail sentences in Canada and Canadian leaders decided that the Rescues should be shut down, he took his wife and teenage daughter across the border to Wichita, Kansas and joined the Rescues there. One of the old photographs showed his face contorted as a police officer’s arm curled cruelly around his windpipe, dragging him away from the abortion clinic. Nich and I listened with awed respect as the old man said in a quiet voice, “All we were trying to do was put ourselves between the babies and the killers.” The next day, in spite of a sleep deficit in its fourth week, Nich and I had no problem hitting the streets.
4.The purpose.
I remember distinctly that one of the things that irritated me the most growing up was when older people talked constantly about social decline in tones of fatalistic doom and gloom as if there were no hope for the upcoming generation (incidentally, my generation.) This seemed to be rarely coupled with any decisive action to reverse, subvert, or even slow the march towards cultural doom, which I found a bit unfair. Upon arriving at university, however, I discovered that there were pro-life clubs run by other people who felt the same way—people who were doing things! I joined the pro-life club during my first month in university, met other activists my age from across the country at a Toronto symposium, and never looked back. When I graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2011, I joined the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. There are many, many things about our culture that are fundamentally broken. But at least now we’re doing everything we can to halt the slide and mitigate the fallout.
So, the pro-life movement may not look like the most lucrative career option out there. It may not look glamorous—and it certainly isn’t. But there are many reasons to join, to stay, and to sacrifice—and the four listed above are just a few. For as Tennyson wrote:
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Reprinted with permission from Unmasking Choice