As the 2023-2024 academic year ends, Students for Life of America (SFLA) will be awarding groups with Best New Group, Best High School Group, Best College Group, and Best Standing With You Group distinctions – and you get to help us choose which groups deserve these awards! Nominated for Best New Group of the Year is Abundant Life at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri. Learn more about this group below and decide whether they’ll receive your vote:    

Abundant Life at Southwest Baptist University has been around for less than a year but has already accomplished much. They hosted a Cemetery of the Innocents display to kick off their first year as an official group. This display showcases the thousands of lives lost to abortion each day and has a particular way of striking the hearts of passersby. After this impactful event, the group tabled at their club fair to recruit new members, and their passion was magnetic. They have since built their group up to 40 active members!  

Later in the semester, Abundant Life volunteered at their local pro-life banquet, raising money for local pregnancy resource centers and pro-life organizations. They also hosted a tabling event where they displayed Standing With You resources to inform students about Title IX and the rights afforded to pregnant and parenting students on college campuses. To finish off the fall semester, the group held a screening of the movie Unplanned and attended SFLA President Kristan Hawkins’s Emergency Leaders Call.   

Abundant Life began the second semester with a diaper drive benefiting their local pregnancy center, Alpha House. They collected and donated 1,223 diapers and 3,112 wipes for mothers in need. Events like these show their commitment to serving mothers in their community not only during pregnancy but throughout the following stages of motherhood.   

To get involved in the legislative side of the pro-life movement, Abundant Life attended a meeting to learn about Missouri’s proposed ballot initiative with Missouri Right to Life and Students for Life of America. The group also chose to participate in Missouri Pro-Life Lobby Day, where they had the opportunity to speak with their legislators and encourage them to protect life in law. Activities like these are essential to enshrine the rights of the preborn into law and ensure that abortion eventually becomes unthinkable.  

Finally, Abundant Life hosted SFLA’s Stop Abortion Extremism training and ended the year by hosting the SFLA spring tabling tour at their school. This on-fire group has completed events in all five pillars of pro-life activism and has about 40 active members, making it one of the most vital new groups in the nation! They look forward to continuing to grow in numbers and impact in the 2024-2025 school year.