From the SFLA Blog

Notre Dame’s Pro-Life Students Have Been Busy Helping Women and Protecting the Preborn

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Caroline Wharton - 11 Jan 2023

Merlot Fogarty, President Notre Dame Right to Life, Class of 2024

GUEST POST: In a Post-Roe America, Notre Dame’s Right to Life group that’s supported by Students for Life of America (SFLA) has been hard at work fighting for the sanctity and dignity of all human life on our campus. As the semester comes to an end, we wish to share the educational, service, and prayer initiatives that we held on campus this semester.

First, we raised more than $4,000 for our adopted mom through Let Them Live. Our mother chose life for her child, and we are filled with joy as we await the coming of her baby this February. We have walked with her, prayed for her, made baby blankets and hats, provided Christmas presents for her other three children, and written countless letters to her affirming our support for her and her family.

In September, we kicked off the year with LifeFest, our annual celebration held on campus, with the joy and dignity of each and every life in the Notre Dame community.

We also hosted our first-ever Right to Life retreat, Serve One Another Humbly in Love, bringing in a counselor from the local pregnancy resource center, the Director of Culture of Life initiatives in the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture, and world-renowned theologian Father Kevin Groves for talks and reflections. We also offered mass, adoration, and confession for students, as well as made baby blankets, rosary bracelets, and wrote letters to our adopted mom!

We brought Alexandra DeSanctis Marr, Notre Dame 2016 Alumnus, for a talk on her new book Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Our Politics & Disadvantages Women. Click here to watch the live-streamed event! Our group also hosted a Fertility Care™ Practitioner for a training on the scientific, natural method of fertility charting cycles.

We held our annual Respect Life Week with the theme ‘Be Not Afraid: You Are Not Alone.’ This week was packed full of events, including a 24-hour Rosary Rally, volunteer work at the Women’s Care Center, a memorial garden display for the preborn, and we hosted Robin Sertell, a woman who survived three abortion attempts while in her mother’s womb.

We also hosted Hadley Arkes, the facilitator of the 2002 Born Alive Infants Protection Act for a talk entitled Roe Changed the Culture: Was Dobbs the Antidote? View the lecture here.

In addition, we held a lecture with Father Bill Miscamble on Fatherlessness in the Wake of the Sexual Revolution. Click here for the event’s transcript, and here to read the coverage of our event in the Irish Rover.

Our group also pushed back against the administration over their support of Dr. Tamara Kay and Dr. Susan Osterman, professors in the Keough School of Global Affairs, who had not only been supported in their pro-abortion editorials, but Professor Kay was also found to be offering students assistance in obtaining access to abortion procedures and Chemical Abortion Pills. Read coverage of what happened here, and our response here.

We also packed an auditorium for Saint Gianna Beretta Molla’s Daughter, who came all the way from Italy to speak to us about her mother’s witness to life! A transcript of her talk can be found here, and coverage of the event can be found here.

We brought Trent Horn of Catholic Answers for an Advanced Pro-Life Apologetics training, held a baby shower at the local Women’s Care Center, spoke with John Bursch of the Alliance Defending Freedom on Humanae Vitae and the Catholic Church’s teaching on sex, contraception, and abortion, and finally ended the semester hosting a series for Respect for Marriage Week, including a panel of three married couples who met at Notre Dame!

This semester has been busy, to say the least, and we are hard at work promoting a culture of life on campus in a Post-Roe America, but we can’t do it without the pro-life movement’s support.

We thank you for your prayers and support as we are fighting for life at Notre Dame. And we are doing so with fervor, with passion, and with abundant love. We do it because of the love we receive from our Lord – we do it because we know every life matters.

Go Irish. Save Babies.

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