Steve Jobs, Tim Tebow, Celine Dion, and Pope John Paul II. Aside from their celebrity status, what did these luminaries have in common? The answer was that each one of them could have died in their mothers’ wombs through the tragedy of abortion.
This was just one of the insights from the young people who recently competed in a pro-life speech contest that I helped judge. The winner of the senior high school division will win an all-expense-paid trip to the National Right to Life Convention June 28-30 in Kansas (See https://nrlconvention.com/ for details about the convention’s fabulous agenda.). There, these bright young pro-life advocates will join students from around the country at National Right to Life’s impressive oratory contest.
The knowledge about current events and the life issues which these contestants demonstrated was truly incredible. It made me wonder, if a pro-abortion politician such as Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi spent ten minutes with these young scholars, would the politicos be left speechless? The arguments these students presented were so well-crafted, so compelling, that it would be difficult for anyone to effectively counter their presentations.
These are students who know that 60 million preborn children have been aborted in the U.S. since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. They have never known a time when abortion wasn’t legal, when euthanasia wasn’t a threat. And yet, rather than embrace the country’s culture of death, they want to defeat it with a peaceful, articulate response.
A young man named Gerard explained the poison in our current culture this way: “A few days ago, right here in Pennsylvania, a dog was strangled nearly to death. The man who committed the act was charged with cruelty to animals. He was put in jail and fined $15,000. Meanwhile, pre-born babies are being strangled and suffocated in the womb, and the world is turning a blind eye.”
A young woman known as Jessie eloquently stated, “There is no place to draw the line on the quality of life in a baby. There’s no room in the life cycle to declare when the baby is really alive. Not in the first trimester, not in the second, not in the third. Not in the passage through the canal, not when your baby has eyes, not when you watch it kick during an ultrasound. Life starts at conception. A simple truth that many reject. And no matter how many times they shut me down for saying such a truth, I will stand up and say it again.”
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I would like to see her in a debate with the next president of Planned Parenthood.
From statistics to scientific facts about fetal development, from personal stories of older relatives courageously living out their last days to powerful statements about the pain of women suffering from abortion, these young truth-tellers are ready to make the case for life with wisdom beyond their years.
If only the rest of the country will listen to them, a culture of life will be rebuilt in America sooner than we could have dared to hope.
LifeNews.com Note: Maria Gallagher is the Legislative Director and Political Action Committee Director for the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and she has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio.
