UPPER MARLBORO, MD, January 24, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As busloads of young people from across America descended upon Washington, D.C., this week for the March for Life, many of them took a daylong detour to suburban Upper Marlboro, Marland, where Students for Life of America held its national conference on Tuesday.
Inside the sprawling First Baptist Church of Glenarden, more than 2,500 students from 150 high schools and universities packed the large auditorium and surrounding hallways and classrooms to hear from a host of pro-life speakers on the day before the March.
One of those students was Lauren Janca, 20, who traveled to attend the conference and the March from the University of Lafayette in Louisiana. Janca, a slim girl whose long hair was dyed pale blue, told LifeSiteNews.com that she decided to attend the conference because she wanted to learn how to “do something” about abortion. Janca attended Catholic high school and told LifeSiteNews, “I always believed in pro-life, and I really wanted to do something about it, but it was hard to know what to do when I was just a high school kid.”
In college, she joined the campus pro-life group, but felt she still didn’t have the skills she needed to make a difference for life. She said she was hoping the conference would teach her what she needed to know.
After only a few hours at the 12-hour-long event, Janca said, “I’ve already learned a lot.”
SFLA President Kristan Hawkins told LifeSiteNews the conference was started as a way to take the enthusiasm and energy young people feel for the pro-life cause after marching on Washington with thousands of like-minded people and direct it toward effective efforts back home.
“I really like that it’s paired with the March for Life,” Hawkins said. “Even though you have the snow, you know, and you have the cold, what’s really great is these kids come to the March for Life and they get fired up.” While she says the enthusiasm is commendable, she poses a simple question: “What did you learn? You spent all this money and time to get to Washington, D.C. Now, what are you going to go home and do to actually abolish abortion?”
“If you come to this conference, you’re going to know how to go home and abolish abortion,” Hawkins said. “We’re giving them the tools.”
The “tools” offered by SFLA’s speakers were myriad and specific. Stephanie Gray of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform gave a presentation on how to challenge some of the most ubiquitous arguments in favor of legalized abortion, such as: “I’m personally pro-life, but I won’t tell others what to do.”
Speaking in stark terms about the ethical considerations surrounding abortion, Gray insisted that students must keep their focus on the victims of abortion: the babies.
She defended the using photographs of abortion victims to show the horrors of abortion, asking the crowd, “Would we ever tell a survivor of the Rwandan genocide that her story cannot be told because her machete wounds are too horrifying to show on TV? Or the victims of a drunk driver that their burns are too upsetting? Of course not,” she said. “The victims’ stories deserve to be told.”
Another presentation by Alliance Defending Freedom gave the students a primer on their free speech rights and let them know that ADF provides free legal defense to pro-life students whose rights are being violated on campus. As he introduced the group, the emcee challenged the students, “If an attorney isn’t in your contact list, you really need to reevaluate what you’re doing with your campus group.”
Other topics covered by the conference speakers included campus tactics, leadership, social media activism, and how to debunk myths about sex and abortion.
But the biggest theme, repeated often by speakers throughout the day, was the idea that the Millenials are the generation that will end abortion.
“This really is the pro-life generation,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of SFLA. “These kids really are pro-life. They’re eager to figure out, ‘How can I take this revolution, and do that back at my school?’”
“The kids who come, they’re extremely excited about being here, because there’s nothing quite like this in the pro-life movement,” she said. “It’s educational, but it’s also activism-oriented, and the goal is to give you tangible things that you can do when you go home to end abortion.”