My name is Hazel Myles, and I am honored to serve as President of Mizzou Students for Life at the University of Missouri (Mizzou). To say that my introduction to pro-life advocacy was a wake-up call would be a grand understatement. An eager freshman, I began my involvement with Mizzou Students for Life in the politically fraught lead-up to the 2024 election. At that time, a radically pro-abortion amendment to the Missouri Constitution threatened to make our state one of the most progressive on the issue. In September, I joined our SFLA Regional Coordinator, Morgan Tiemeyer, at Mizzou for the “Vote No on 3” fall tour and my first tabling experience.

Ignorance was certainly bliss; in my naivety, I was convinced that the ruthless and uncivilized treatment of pro-life advocates was relegated to comments veiled behind a smartphone screen, immune to accountability. Raised middle fingers, slurs, and chastisement ripped away that notion in the span of a few hours. Unsurprisingly, the incivility was pervasive on social media as well. Before I even packed up to leave, my picture had been plastered to the Mizzou YikYak forum, along with a string of crude comments and threats of violence, many of which racked up hundreds of likes.

That day, one thing became absolutely clear: A massive population of MU students had subscribed to the narrative that parenthood is a burden, that birth defines personhood, and that any opposition to the pro-abortion agenda is a malicious threat to “bodily autonomy.” I resolved that this narrative needed to be rewritten, and joining Students for Life of America’s National Leader’s Collective as a William Wilberforce Fellow provided the resources I needed to work toward this goal.

It comes as no surprise that attempting to “rewrite” the narrative of pro-life hatred that is deeply ingrained in the minds of many pro-abortion activists is akin to revising a newspaper that has already been printed and distributed. We can’t control what is said about the motivations of the pro-life movement, but we can publish our own story that shows the heart of our perspective: love for struggling women, new mothers, and yes … innocent preborn babies. The story I am working to tell about the pro-life movement at Mizzou is one of service and charity, and the plot involves two initiatives: providing financial support to pregnant/parenting students on campus and educating the student body with humility.

For abortion to be unthinkable, expectant mothers need security, which includes financial stability. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 73% of post-abortive women cite financial concerns as a major contributing factor in their decision to terminate their pregnancy. At the beginning of the Fellowship year, I set out to establish a scholarship that would be awarded to a pregnant or parenting Mizzou student, with the hope that it might empower an expectant mother to choose life or offer encouragement to a young parent pursuing higher education.

After nearly a year of effort, I am thrilled to share that we will be awarding a $5,000 scholarship in August for the 2026–27 academic year. The Mizzou Students for Life Executive Committee was integral to the success of this project, and I am immensely grateful for their diligent work. To ensure that donations to our scholarship were tax-deductible, Mizzou Students for Life partnered with a residential ministry, the Mizzou Christian Campus House (CCH), to manage funds raised for the award. Not only did CCH generously offer to manage the financial logistics, but they also hosted an offering for the scholarship during a worship service.

When contemplating my projects for the William Wilberforce Fellowship, I knew that I wanted to lead Mizzou Students for Life in an initiative that could make a lasting impact and extend far beyond my tenure as President. With the hope that the Missouri Pregnant and Parenting Student Scholarship would become an annual award, I aimed to provide an avenue for future Mizzou Students for Life leadership to independently facilitate future scholarships. By establishing a new 501(c)(3), the Missouri Pregnant and Parenting Scholarship Inc., my Vice President, Cruz Bustamante, our organization’s university faculty advisor, and I achieved that goal. This nonprofit exists to house funds for any Mizzou Students for Life scholarship in years to come, profoundly improving feasibility.

To fulfill the effective education pillar of pro-life activism, I chose to complement our scholarship initiative with campus advocacy. Throughout the 2025–26 academic year, Mizzou Students for Life facilitated 115 conversations during tabling events. In a full-circle, déjà vu-inducing SFLA tour, we took to campus in support of the newly proposed Missouri constitutional amendment. Tragically, the aforementioned Amendment 3 was ratified in 2024, and it revoked Missouri’s abortion ban. But this fall, a new Amendment 3 will be voted on and, if passed, will roll back some of the progressive language passed in the previous election. Specifically, it will ensure that minors cannot obtain abortions without parental consent and limit abortions performed in circumstances of rape or incest to no later than 12 weeks’ gestation, among other changes. Our hosting of the SFLA “Vote Yes on 3” tour was a great success, leading to 50 conversations, 20 activations, and at least five minds changed.

Of course, we faced our share of opposition and hateful remarks. Far more frequently, though, our conversations were fruitful and uplifting. On multiple occasions, I was approached by students who seemed to anticipate a heated discussion, charged by political animosity. After taking control of the conversation in gentleness and truth, I often observed their tone and posture soften as the discussion progressed. It is one of the lesser-discussed joys of pro-life advocacy to see the walls of defensiveness fade when polite, face-to-face discourse works its humanizing magic.

If the current narrative misrepresents us, the answer is not silence — it is authorship. We cannot control every perception, but we can control our witness. Through service, charity, and meaningful dialogue, Mizzou Students for Life is writing a narrative rooted in compassion and truth. And when people encounter that story for themselves, it speaks louder than anything they’ve been told.