GUEST POST: I recently had the opportunity to present a pro-life training to a church youth group, and I will never forget what happened afterwards. This story represents exactly why we in the pro-life movement do what we do — here’s what happened:  

In the midst of building the coalition for the Naples Campaign for Abortion Free Cities, I was at St. Agnes Church in Naples, Florida recently giving a Youth Ministry Training to their pro-life teen group. As a part of the training, I taught them how important it is to be pro-life and how their Catholic values are consistent with the pro-life position. I also taught them some basic pro-life apologetics so they know how to defend their position on abortion to their peers. The group had a lot of great questions about some of the newer arguments that been developing since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and I’m happy to say that we were well-prepared to give them the answers they needed. 

However, what was most impactful about this presentation actually came afterwards. Following the presentation, a few students came up to me. Several asked some more questions and thanked us for coming, but the last two students that came up to me were asking for help. 

They were young girls, and they told me about their friend who was 15 years old, seven weeks pregnant, and seriously considering abortion. They explained that they had tried talking to her about choosing life, but they just couldn’t seem to make much progress — and to make matters worse, her parents didn’t seem to mind if she got an abortion. 

I explained to the girls that while this preborn baby is obviously important, this young mother is in crisis mode, and that she means that she feels as though she needs to do desperate things to get out of it. I told them that we need to help her eliminate her crisis so that she doesn’t feel the need to eliminate her child. 

This mother would need to know that we are there for her too, as well as for her baby. 

I got the students’ contact information, and I put them in touch with some amazing local resources that could help their young friend. In this way, we connected her with a pregnancy help center, an after-school program/maternity home, and some free, confidential hotlines for her to call. With this opportunity, she could still go to school, have her child taken care of, and still be able to parent her child.  I told the students that even if their friend doesn’t take advantage of these resources, she will at the very least be aware of them, knowing that she could be taken care of if she so chooses.  

(Check out Students for Life of America’s (SFLA) supportive services initiative Standing With You.)  

Throughout the next week, I kept in touch with these students, and I received the best update just recently.  

Their young friend had gotten an ultrasound, and it turns out that she was not seven-weeks pregnant — in fact, she was three months along — and after seeing her baby on the ultrasound, she ended up choosing life! I was overjoyed to hear this, and I told them that we at SFLA are here for her friend with anything she needs,; during her pregnancy and afterwards.  

This is a perfect example of how a community can come together to help young mothers in need and how if mothers in unplanned pregnancies are met with love, truth, and support, they will choose life. This is what the pro-life movement is all about, and I am so happy I get to be a part of this lifesaving, life-affirming movement, telling women that they are not alone in our Post-Roe America.  

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