GUEST POST: To celebrate National Pro-Life Chalk Day, my Students for Life of America (SFLA) group at the University of North Carolina Greensboro — called the Spartans for Life — recently chalked pro-life messages on our campus. We used positive messaging that wouldn’t come off as offensive. For example, we talked about how a heartbeat is a sign of life and how the Pro-Life Generation wants to “Love Them Both, Mom & Baby.” We were excited to exercise our right to the freedom of speech for the preborn. 

However, our hard work was vandalized about thirty minutes later as we noticed a couple of girls stomping on our chalk to erase the words. We asked them why they were doing this, and the very first words they used couldn’t have been more aggressive as they lobbed the F-word at us. We responded by explaining that this was our freedom of speech — but they told us that we could write it again, and they would just come back and erase it again. Apparently, they believed that most people on campus thought what we wrote was offensive. 

After speaking with them, we saw yet another girl trying to do the same thing. Like before, we went up to her and asked why she was destroying our work. Thankfully, this girl wasn’t as aggressive as the last two we had spoken with, but she believed we were spreading “false information.” This included our scientific facts about fetal heartbeats (which begin around three weeks or 21 days after conception). I explained that you could speak to doctors and they would tell you the same thing, but she continued to reassert her opinion.  

In fact, everything we would try to tell her was followed up by a “no;” she didn’t agree with us on any scientific fact. That’s when she tried to explain that a preborn baby (or a ‘fetus’ as she preferred to call it) has a tail which is what makes it non-human to her. It’s true that human fetuses do have a tail in the womb for some time — but their period of development doesn’t make them less human. That’s kind of like saying that a child is non-human or less human because they don’t have a fully developed brain like an adult yet.  

Our DNA proves that preborn children are of the human species – and that means we need to treat them with dignity and love.

While we did receive backlash, we are grateful for the conversations that were had and hopefully a seed was planted in some hearts. National Pro-Life Chalk Day was productive, and we hope to chalk on our campus again to spread the pro-life message.  

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