GUEST POST: It’s important to spread the pro-life message everywhere, and that’s why my Students for Life of America (SFLA) group continues to engage with our peers at Heritage Christian Academy in Kansas. While many students at our school hold pro-life values considering their religion, it’s still important to provide opportunities to discuss pro-life apologetics so students can defend their beliefs.  

One of our group’s most popular apologetics events is National Pro-Life Chalk Day, where we chalk pro-life art and sayings on the sidewalk in front of our school building. Here’s how we switched things up this year and the reaction it received:  

We wanted to hold something like a Cemetery of the Innocents display (where crosses or flags are put out to memorialize preborn children lost to abortion) to inform our student body of the widespread effects of abortion and to show them that, despite Roe v. Wade being reversed and the loss of the Value Them Both Amendment, abortion is a prevalent issue in our state and nation. 

That’s why for National Pro-Life Chalk Day this fall, our SFLA group, Heritage Students for Life, chalked 2,363 hearts on the sidewalk in front of our school to represent the 2,363 preborn children killed in the United States daily by abortion.  We had thirteen students come out to help, and it took us thirty minutes to chalk all of the hearts. We also created posters sharing what the hearts represented and directed students to Live Action’s website: 2363.org.  

Our display caused quite a bit of discussion among our school community (which is exactly what we had hoped for). We focused our conversations on the violence of abortion and the scale at which it occurs, especially in our community. Not many people who live in our city know that there are two abortion facilities nearby that perform abortions up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, or that the abortion industry in Kansas has been booming due to travelers from other states with more stringent abortion restrictions coming to Kansas.  

We challenged students to define their position on abortion, and we had four new students who were interested in joining us in our mission to make abortion inaccessible and unthinkable. They became members of our group, and we are excited to have them.  

At our school, we have lots of students who hold pro-life convictions, but many do not know how to put those beliefs into practice. Our display helped students get plugged into pro-life activism and supportive services, and the response that the student body had makes me hopeful for the pro-life movement in Kansas and throughout the nation. 

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