Tag Archives: whitworth university

11 Biggest Pro-Life Wins on Campus This Semester

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

We love writing out these lists about all the great things that our students accomplished during the semester. Because events happen so fast, sometimes good deeds and great wins don’t get the attention they deserve. So here are our picks for some of the best accomplishments this semester from pro-life students all over the country.

#11 Choose Life Wins in Nebraska
University of Nebraska Students for Life Vice President Paige Edwards testified in front of the state legislature in favor of the state allowing a “Choose Life” license plate. She had never testified before. But it paid off! The state passed the bill and she was asked to come to the Governor’s office when he signed it.

#10 Reached 500 students at a Planned Parenthood Event
Students for Life at Western Washington University quickly mobilized when they heard Planned Parenthood was holding a rally on campus, which **ahem** only four students participated in. They grabbed 500 Planned Parenthood Project postcards and handed them all out. They even recruited a new club member! After reading the postcard, a girl came back to the group and asked what club they were with. She told them that she was on the fence about abortion, but was rethinking her position, and would like to come to club meetings.

#9 First ‘Pregnant on Campus Week’ Happened at Arizona State University
Our Students for Life group at Arizona State University threw the first ever “Pregnant on Campus Week”, where they tabled for a week in a highly-trafficked area on campus and educated their peers about the rights of pregnant and parenting students. They also collected diapers and wipes, made students aware of resources available on campus, and directed students to a local pregnancy resource center.

#8 100+ Schools Screened “HUSH”
Over 100 colleges and universities screened the abortion health documentary “HUSH” in March. The film is made by a pro-choice producer and explores the links between mental health and abortion.

#7 Protesting Barbara Bush at a Planned Parenthood Fundraiser
The Pro-Life Generation showed up at a Fort Worth, Texas hotel to protest Barbara Bush, former First Daughter, who was giving the keynote address at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. We were all over the news and invited Ms. Bush to reconsider her support of the abortion giant.

#6 Students for Life Groups Collected Baby Socks Like Crazy
When our pro-life students heard we started the #Sockit2PP campaign and our goal was to collect nearly 324,000 baby socks (representing the number of abortions Planned Parenthood did in 2015), they got to work. They were so creative and while our campaign is on-going – until we defund Planned Parenthood OR we collect all 324K socks – our students deserve a lot of credit for their work in collecting socks and showing the destruction Planned Parenthood wrecks every single day.

#5 We Filed a Lawsuit Against Queens College and Helped Norvilia Get Her SFLA Group Started
When Queens College denied Norvilia Etienne the right to start a Students for Life group on her campus, we immediately went into action, contacting our attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom. They filed a lawsuit on her behalf and within three days, Queens College backed down and let Norvilia start her group, which has taken off on campus! Her SFL group even won the Group of the Month for March 2017.

#4 We Helped a Pregnant Student Get Her Financial Aid Reinstated
A pregnant student in Colorado contacted our Regional Coordinator in her state after she lost her financial aid because she gave birth to her child and had to miss class. That’s illegal for a school to do under Title IX and we helped her appeal her case and get her aid reinstated. Then our student group threw her a baby shower!

#3 We Demanded Universities to Stop Their Part in the Fetal Trafficking Industry
Our team held rallies at four universities who have been implicated in some way for their role in buying or selling of aborted baby body parts. Students for Life groups signed letters to their schools asking them to stop their participation in the fetal trafficking industry.

#2 We Took the We Don’t Need Planned Parenthood Campus Tour Everywhere
This semester we took our We Don’t Need Planned Parenthood campus tour to over 60 college campuses, explaining to students that there are thousands of other health centers that don’t do abortions, yet provide way more comprehensive healthcare services than Planned Parenthood does or ever could, that our federal funds should go towards. Our students had hundreds of conversations with their peers and even turned away a Planned Parenthood donor at one stop. We even took the display with us to the US Capitol and did a briefing for Congressional staff on how to talk about Planned Parenthood defunding.

#1 Whitworth Cut Ties with Planned Parenthood
In our biggest win on campus this semester, Whitworth University, a self-identified Christian school, officially cut ties with Planned Parenthood after the Students for Life group publicly called them out on the unsavory partnership late last year.

 

Win! Whitworth Cuts Ties with Planned Parenthood

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

In a huge win for the Students for Life group at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, the school has officially cut ties with the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

In an email to the campus today (full text below), Whitworth University president Beck Taylor wrote: ­­­­­“I recently instructed the Dornsife Center for Community Engagement not to renew that relationship. This is the only formal partnership the university currently has with Planned Parenthood. At the end of the current academic year, Whitworth will no longer offer credit-bearing service-learning placements or internships with the organization.”

Whitworth University bills itself as a Christian school of higher education.

“The school deserves credit for cutting Planned Parenthood from their campus community and providing an example of a Christian university making an attempt to educate and support students, rather than send them to the nation’s largest abortion provider,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America.

In October 2016, the Students for Life group at Whitworth University petitioned the school to sever their relationship with Planned Parenthood. The school offered for-credit internships and was listed as a ‘community partner’ on their website.

James Silberman, Whitworth SFL’s vice-president, even wrote a commentary piece in the school paper, about the detrimental relationship between the school and Planned Parenthood, which commits a third of the nation’s abortions, equal to 888 per day, 323,999 per year. He demanded the school renounce that partnership.

The email from the president of Whitworth University is obviously pained and while inaccurate (Planned Parenthood provides abortions, not “abortion-related services”), it is a big step in the right direction.

“The email reflects the current nature of the college campus environment, where abortion advocates don’t think twice about offending pro-life students, vandalizing their property, or threatening them on social media,” continued Hawkins. “But we are so proud of our pro-life students, who face adversity with courage and resolve every day and never back down from defending preborn lives and the women betrayed by Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry.”

Thank President Beck Taylor for his decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood by emailing his assistant at rpells@whitworth.edu.

Email from Beck Taylor, president of Whitworth University:

 

From: Office of the President <no-reply@whitworth.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 2:15:16 PM
To: EX; AM; FS; SS; PT; TP; Contractors; Volunteers; FA; AF; LE; emeritus; DayStudents; ContinuingStudiesGrp; GraduateStudentsGrp
Subject: Message from President Taylor: Planned Parenthood

 

Planned Parenthood

 

Dear campus community,

Whitworth’s commitment to be a community informed by ideas and faith is a difficult one to navigate at times. Faithful, thoughtful people will often disagree on how best to navigate the tensions embedded within the university’s mind-and-heart mission. That healthy disagreement is an important indicator of Whitworth’s commitment to diversity and to our enduring mission. Those are just some of the reasons why it has been difficult for me to make a decision regarding Whitworth’s very limited partnership with Planned Parenthood.

I recently instructed the Dornsife Center for Community Engagement not to renew that relationship. This is the only formal partnership the university currently has with Planned Parenthood. At the end of the current academic year, Whitworth will no longer offer credit-bearing service-learning placements or internships with the organization.

For some, this will be a welcome decision. The idea that a Christian university would partner with an organization that provides, among other things, abortion-related services is understandably difficult for some to reconcile. For others, this decision will be seen as a discouraging statement on Whitworth’s willingness to support an organization that provides important access to many health-related services to women and communities.

Given the prominent place that Planned Parenthood holds in our nation’s discourse on issues of freedom of choice and sanctity of life, I have decided that Whitworth’s relationship with the organization, even as limited and tangential as it currently is and has been, sends a confusing signal to many of our constituencies. My hope is that Whitworth will always support both women and gender-related issues and affirm God’s love for all life. Being connected to an organization like Planned Parenthood sends the unintended message to many that Whitworth has taken a side in this social and political debate.

Although the university is ending its relationship with Planned Parenthood, this move does not signal a departure from Whitworth’s commitment to promote gender equity and inclusion. This decision should not be seen as a referendum on Whitworth’s support for women. Nor is this decision meant to quash academic freedom or the desire to convene and engage diverse voices from multiple perspectives to address difficult and complex issues. Faculty members will continue to have the freedom to introduce ideas and perspectives in their courses that contribute to Whitworth’s commitment to open and faithful dialogue on issues concerning society and the church. Speakers and artists who hold differing opinions on this important issue will still be invited to campus. People on all sides of the debate will continue to be able to advocate for and discuss their perspectives and viewpoints.

For example, a group of students is currently working with ASWU and Rhosetta Rhodes, Whitworth’s vice president of student life, to form a club that will focus, among other things, on the pro-choice perspective. Although this new club won’t have an affiliation with Planned Parenthood, my hope is that it will contribute to the important campus conversations we are having about these issues. Another student organization was chartered several years ago to serve as an affinity group for students who support the pro-life perspective. The fact that both of these student organizations exist and contribute to intellectual discourse on Whitworth’s campus is an example of our university’s commitment to free expression.

This announcement also understandably raises issues of equity concerning how student clubs and organizations are chartered and sponsored, particularly among any existing relationships with other national organizations. Indeed, I think this decision highlights some potential inconsistencies with respect to how the university’s values are reflected in the chartering of organizations on campus. To this end, I’ve asked Rhosetta Rhodes to convene a representative task force to examine these concerns and to help the university and ASWU chart a better course forward, one that empowers students and also equitably administers the chartering of student clubs and organizations.

The fact that we might disagree on how best to live out Whitworth’s values has never discouraged us from promoting and serving our noble mission. May God grant us the wisdom, humility, and charity to support and nurture the community we’ve built together as we seek to honor God, follow Christ and serve humanity.

Blessings,

Beck A. Taylor

President

Christian University in WA Has Deep Ties to Planned Parenthood, Abortion Industry

Posted on by Kristan Hawkins

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis details a conversation between a senior demon Screwtape to his nephew and apprentice Wormwood on how to make sure the “patient” compromises his values and morals. It’s eerily close to our current world, where evil infiltrates the very institutions that are supposed to be churning out well-formed pro-life individuals. Instead, we see Christian colleges and universities partnering with Planned Parenthood, allowing the students in their care to be educated by the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Recently, we exposed an internship with Planned Parenthood that Texas Christian University was offering for school credit to their students. Their nonchalant response was that everyone isn’t pro-life and that the school “strives to provide diverse learning opportunities for students to effectively prepare them for the global community.” Yeah, the global community of baby killing.

The fact that Christian universities should claim to be Christian seems completely lost on them.

What happened to adhering to Christian values, to preparing students to be evangelists for Jesus himself and adept to persuasively give witness in word and deed to foundational Christian principles of love, mercy, grace, including the respect and protection of all life, especially the preborn?

But TCU isn’t the only one. Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, also has ties to Planned Parenthood, who, by the way, committed over 324,000 abortions last year alone and who has been caught in numerous scandals, including the selling of body parts of aborted babies.

Whitworth Students for Life vice president James Silberman demanded his school cut ties with Planned Parenthood in a recent commentary piece in the campus newspaper, citing the facts that:

  • There are flyer cards all over campus referring students to Planned Parenthood
    put up by the school’s Student Success Center (they list also the pregnancy resource center number but Planned Parenthood should not be listed ever, in James’ and our opinion).Whitworth1
  • Planned Parenthood is listed as one of the school’s “community partners.”
  • Whitworth sponsored a community fetal tissue research event, highlighting the ‘upside’ of abortion as donating baby body parts and discussing how the undercover videos were highly edited and therefore discredited (By the way, they were authentic, according to two forensic studies).
  • The school offered an accredited internship with Planned Parenthood, where students were Whitworth intern P“professionally trained” by the abortion Goliath’s staff. Planned Parenthood was so proud of this, they even mentioned it in their 2010 annual report.
  • Planned Parenthood was able to recruit students at the school Volunteer Fair in October, signing up Whitworth University students and training them at their abortion facility.

As you may imagine, our Students for Life group on Whitworth’s campus may be feeling alienated because their Christian school is supporting the abortion industry. They’ve demanded the following actions from the school:

  • Remove Planned Parenthood from Whitworth’s volunteer community partners list and not allow Planned Parenthood to recruit student volunteers and interns on campus.
  • Remove Planned Parenthood referrals from campus walls.
  • Review the textbooks being used in classrooms (They promote pro-abortion talking points).
  • Publicly condemn the bloodshed that goes on inside Planned Parenthood.
  • Be part of the solution. Develop a community partnership with I-Choice, a pro-life pregnancy center just a few miles away from the campus. The pregnancy center provides free pre- and post-natal care for pregnant moms, as well as emotional and relational support. They even provide free shelter and a loving family atmosphere for those mothers and/or fathers who have nowhere to go.