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Pro-Life on Campus Lori Brannigan Kelly There is an active and vibrant pro-life student group at Wellesley College. Don’t those twelve words just knock your socks off? But wait—it gets better. Brown. Cornell. Harvard. University of New Hampshire. Berkeley. Stanford. All of these schools have students committed to the protection and support of life at every stage of its existence. Members of their pro-life organizations have attended the annual March for Life and the American Collegians for Life1 conferences. They have held candlelight vigils on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, organized baby showers, coordinated seminars on stem-cell research, and invited speakers to address the topic of post-abortion healing. They have volunteered time to baby-sit for student-parents, pressed for providing more baby-changing tables on university grounds, and written letters to the editors of their college newspapers to defend the defenseless unborn. Some of these students have faced abuse and discrimination, and they have come out on the other side of this discrimination all the more committed to challenging the culture of death and proclaiming the sanctity of life. What has sparked this pro-life movement on college campuses? What challenges have these student activists faced? What are their goals, and what is their direction and hope for the future? Sparking the Fire For the past three decades, most students arriving on college campuses discovered very active pro-choice groups, but not a single pro-life voice to challenge them. At the University of New Hampshire, Elizabeth Andrew decided to change that. A Music Education major, class of 2004, Andrew reflects on how it all began: “During the winter of my freshman year, I picked up the school newspaper and read an article that stated that since Bush had been elected to office, all of the rights that women had fought for would be overturned. The article was very specific about ‘reproductive rights’ and was extremely biased. Seeing the one-sidedness of the article really shook me up. It is not that I was naïve and didn’t know that such bias existed; I was more devastated that it was happening at a research university as opposed to some other, more worldly venues. Perhaps that does make me naïve. Yet in later issues of the newspaper, there were never any responses by students to the article. Over time, the feeling that I was the only student who was pro-life on the entire campus seemed to be affirmed. I began making phone calls—the local crisis pregnancy center, the campus ministries office, the Catholic Student Organization. None of these leads developed into much. “It was not until the beginning of my sophomore year, namely after September 11, that I made a final resolve. Personally, I knew that I would face crumbling friendships, less time to put into my own academics, as well as inevitable frustrations that would come with dealing with this issue. I am not proud that it took something like September 11 to force me to see that I had a personal responsibility as a human being to forgo some social comforts in order to promote a culture of life at UNH.” Things still took time. Then in early April of 2002, a woman from the surrounding community called, from out of the blue, informing Andrew that Bryan Kemper of the organization Rock for Life would be visiting Durham, N.H. as part of a local high-school program, and suggesting that Andrew reserve a room in the UNH student union building so that Kemper could also speak with university students. Andrew followed through on the suggestion, and the event turned out to be precisely the catalyst that she needed: “Logistics clicked, and the room was packed,” she reports. Kemper would not leave that evening until Andrew had enough signatures to start a pro-life student organization. Fifty students signed up. Andrew was willing to be, as another co-ed puts it, the “lone pro-lifer on campus,” if that had proved to be the case. But in fact Andrew is not alone. The great calamity that abortion presents to society in general, and to college women in particular (it is estimated that one in five abortions is performed on a college student), has triggered outrage and sadness among this generation of co-eds, and this distress has led many of them directly to the pro-life front lines. Through their own personal experience and education, and through the tireless and committed college outreach programs of groups like Feminists for Life, more and more students are recognizing that America’s culture of death is a grave civil injustice. And that recognition has spurred them into action. Laura Openshaw is a case in point. Openshaw, a linguistics major at Harvard College, class of 2005, will serve as Harvard Right to Life’s vice-president next semester. “I joined HRL,” Openshaw writes, “because I am deeply distressed by how women are victimized and innocent human lives are taken by the greed of the abortion industry, which is supported by what has been called the ‘culture of choice.’ Were I, a young unmarried college student, to become pregnant, this culture would exert a frightening amount of pressure on me to abort, not because it would be the best option for me, but because abortion is a ‘right,’ and who would I be to renounce a right that my feminist forebears fought so hard to secure? A lot of women abort for this reason: because they feel obligated to and because they aren’t aware of alternatives, not because they want to.” Feminists for Life president Serrin Foster corroborates Openshaw’s argument, using one Ivy League college as an example: “Yale covers three abortions in health care in three years, but they provide no housing for families or child care. They simply say, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and offer women a ride to a clinic.Other campuses have given women money or loans for abortions, but they don’t offer financial assistance for a live birth. No housing, no child care, no maternity coverage.” And, says Foster, if pregnant women are seen on campus, “they are stared at like exotic creatures.” For pro-life campus advocates, this hostile and uncaring environment demands change. Many of them were initially brought into the pro-life cause by one person, be it a parent, a teacher, a counselor, or a friend. They increasingly realize that each of them is now called to be, for others, that one person. Service: Spreading the truth, extending a hand For the college pro-life activist, service means three things: education, outreach, and pregnancy support. It is through these three vehicles that campus activists expose their peers, as well as the surrounding community, to the scientific facts on fetal development and embryonic stem-cell research; the truth about partial-birth abortion, the horrors of cloning and euthanasia, and the possibilities of adoption; and, finally, the real and pressing needs of the many unwed, pregnant students—and student single parents—whom they meet every day. All the students interviewed for this article have participated in and organized seminars, conferences, marches, and vigils, but the service they seem most passionate about is pregnancy outreach, and the clear-cut goal of this outreach is to provide direct and meaningful support to pregnant students and student parents. For the pro-life college activist, pro-life advocacy is women’s advocacy. The students leading this effort recognize that they must provide a sustained base of support for the women they help once their children are born. Anything short of this complete circle of care is seen as dropping the ball.2 As one activist puts it: “Giving birth to a child must be a reasonable option for all students. . . . Support must be had in terms of medical care, housing, professional emotional aid, and opportunities for pregnant students to continue their education.” Feminists for Life’s College Outreach Program has hosted pregnancy resource forums at Stanford, Harvard, Notre Dame, and Georgetown. These programs had dramatic results. Through FFL’s efforts at Georgetown, for example, endowed housing was set aside for student parents, the Hoya Kids Learning Center was established to provide child care, and eligible co-eds obtained both private and government pregnancy and parenting assistance. One student-inspired program at the University of California, Berkeley, provides another good example of practical service. According to Berkeley graduate Elizabeth Maier, between 1,000 to 1,500 student parents use the Berkeley campus daily. In 2001, when the Berkeley Student Parent Project took on the task of assessing these parents’ needs, it was easily determined that the two baby-changing tables that were available at that time just did not suffice. Berkeley Students for Life joined forces with the Berkeley student government, the Student Parent Project, and the Chancellor’s office to obtain funding to increase the number of changing tables by twenty. Indeed, pro-life college outreach programs often unite opposing camps. Christina Wang, President of Wellesley Alliance for Life, gives one example of this. WAL teamed up with Wellesley Women for Choice to launch the Initiative for Student Mothers, a program intended to obtain on-campus housing for student mothers. The Alliance was not limited just to members of WAL or WWFC; everyone on campus was invited to participate. Unfortunately, the project failed. According to Wang, Wellesley President Diana Chapman Walsh and others let the Alliance know that this was not a high priority for the administration.But the project built bridges and planted seeds: “It wasn’t that hard to work and dialogue with pro-choice students, because we work and dialogue with Wellesley students in general every day,” Wang remarked. Although housing units were not obtained, the Initiative did shed light on the needs of Wellesley student mothers, reminding the campus at large that these women are accomplished and significant participants of the student body and, as Wang says, “success stories themselves.” Personal Challenges American colleges may be the single most challenging environment for the pro-life activist. Not only do college and university pro-lifers encounter student adversaries, but they often also face opposition from faculty and administrators who have spent their entire professional and academic careers promoting philosophical and scientific discourse that condones moral relativism, buttresses abortion rights, and, in one medical student’s words, denounces any prudent federal or societal limitation on human biological experimentation as a “criminalization of research.” At first, the challenges and criticisms are personal. Roger Severino, former President of the Harvard Law School Society for Law, Life and Religion, recalls the abuse that he and members of his group received: “Our posters would routinely and almost exclusively be torn down,”3 says Severino. Fellow students whom he considered friends turned on him once they learned of his pro-life activities. Members of Severino’s group were “called almost every name in the book, from ‘morons’ (through anonymous counter-postering of our pro-life campaign), to ‘homophobe,’ ‘religious zealot,’ ‘bigot,’ and ‘oppressors of women.’” Tom Reuland, President of Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design Students for Life, tells a similar story. Although Reuland’s organization has hosted lectures, sponsored seminars, and worked with campus health services in support of compassionate service to the infirm, the vulnerable, and women in need, it cannot escape the usual falsehoods. Reuland sums it up this way: “Sometimes people do jump to conclusions. . . . I’m in charge of a ‘pro-life’ group. . . well that must mean that (a) I’m a white, rich, male, who votes Republican, (b) I hate women, art, music, poetry, and anything associated with university ‘culture’ (in the positive sense of the word) and (c) I hate all people who have had abortions. These judgments really frustrate me at times. It’s hard to argue on uneven ground.” This ground is often made all the more impassable by faculty and administrators who, when offered compelling arguments in favor of the defense of life, are either passive or hostile. Frequently, students express frustration with faculty members who are reluctant to support the pro-life movement. This reluctance is especially perplexing to students at Catholic institutions. One Boston College student notes that “many faculty members seem scared to say anything against [abortion]. . . . We have a hard time finding faculty advisors; everyone says that they are too busy to help us out.”4 Says another activist, from Berkeley: “[Our] professors are very liberal, somewhere between Marx and Lenin, to be exact. . . . Sixties radicals are not too happy about the new pro-life radicals holding the rallies.” Institutional Challenges Beyond the personal attacks by peers and faculty lie other, more formidable challenges: monolithic academic environments that demand ideological orthodoxy, suppress factual instruction and honest debate, and, in the pursuit of medical discovery, routinely and consistently advance the culture of death. Consider Stanford and the University of California at San Francisco. Both institutions are currently in the midst of major stem-cell research initiatives, with Stanford recently launching the Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine,5 and UCSF establishing a Developmental and Stem Cell Biology program. UCSF officials hope their Stem Cell Discovery Fund, made possible by a $5-million matching-grant donation from Intel Corporation chairman Andy Grove, will raise $20 million by the year 2005.6 As the specter of stem-cell research grows, and the obfuscation over what stem-cell experimentation actually entails spreads, articulate and dedicated students must step forward to fight the battles that need to be fought. And these students, like Suzana Glavas, must be supported. Glavas is a Ph.D. candidate in pharmacology at UCSF. She has firsthand experience of what UCSF faculty and researchers are actually up to: UCSF is a graduate school which focuses on the medical sciences. The main programs of study include medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing and graduate programs in health sciences related research. . . . .UCSF has a very strong pro-choice voice, and is in fact the university at which Medical Students for Choice first started. Many of the schools strongly support a pro-abortion agenda. The medical school, in particular the Ob/Gyn department, aggressively promotes educating medical students in abortion procedures. The pharmacy school has a number of faculty members who were instrumental in lobbying for the approval of mifepristone. Furthermore, UCSF is one of the few research institutions with approval to distribute human embryonic stem cells. As a result, the pro-abortion agenda is strongly promoted to the students, who often only hear one side of the issue. Glavas continues: UCSF is training the next generation of medical health professionals. Unfortunately, it is also training them to disregard ethical concerns that may arise during the course of their practice. It is doing this by misinforming students about the medical and scientific facts about abortion, abortifacients, contraception, stem cells, etc. Glavas lists some specific examples of what is being taught at UCSF: 1) Partial birth abortion is necessary for the health of the mother. Never is it mentioned that at the late stages at which such abortions are performed, if there is in fact a health risk to the mother, the baby can be delivered and the two patients can be treated separately. 2) Abortifacients are not harmful and can be administered with a minimum of supervision by a pharmacist. 3) Contraceptives can never act as abortifacients (i.e., prevent implantation of a fertilized egg). 4) There are no scientific problems related to the therapeutic use of human embryonic stem cells (i.e., immunogenic responses, tumorigenic effects, etc.). Glavas insists that these falsehoods present a colossal problem for society. Research institutions like UCSF, she contends, which are supposed to be training future health professionals to make life-or-death decisions, are actually “skewing the truth to protect their perceived understanding of what is right.” Because of this, she concludes: Students are coming out of medical schools, nursing schools and pharmacy schools with a very poor understanding of the medical facts surrounding abortion and other right-to-life issues. These future doctors, nurses and pharmacists will then misinform their patients, who often look to their health professional for facts about issues which they do not fully understand themselves. These health practitioners fail to do what is in the best interests, both morally and medically, for their patients. We face a significant challenge in training future health professionals to respect the right-to-life, especially when the majority of faculty members at universities such as UCSF are not pro-life. Officials at UCSF refused to comment on Glavas’s assertions. Legal Challenges When pro-life college activists are not fighting for the rights of women, the infirm, and the unborn, they are busy doing something else. They are fighting for their own rights. In September 2002, members of Law Students Pro-Life at the Washington University School of Law appeared before the Student Bar Association to request approval from the school as a new student organization. Twice, they were turned down. The SBA made the absurd objection that Law Students Pro-Life’s constitution did not include a denunciation of the death penalty, and suggested to the group that it broaden its scope to include pro-abortion advocacy that would actively “facilitate discussion of the issues (sic) as a whole, and not simply the pro-life side . . .”7 “Of course,” noted Shane Intihar, Law Students Pro-Life’s Director of Public Relations, “we knew that the SBA didn’t demand other student organizations to advocate positions that they didn’t hold, much less support positions diametrically opposed to their very purposes.”8 Without SBA approval, Law Students Pro-Life would lack all the amenities that other campus organizations enjoyed: funding, usable campus office space, and a tax-exempt status. Essentially, without SBA approval, Law Students Pro-Life would cease to exist. So the organization contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a watchdog group that has assisted hundreds of students across the United States who have found themselves in similar circumstances, facing attacks on their basic civil liberties. According to FIRE’s Executive Director, Thor L. Halvorssen, the law school’s actions against Law Students Pro-Life amounted to “an intolerable restriction on freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom of speech.” Halvorssen sent a letter to Washington University’s Chancellor Mark Stephen Wrighton, requesting an immediate reversal of the SBA’s decision, and declaring that “[e]ach hour that this decision remains the decision of your university is a violation of fundamental human rights.”9 Victory was swift and sweet. In October 2002, in a dramatic reversal, the Student Bar Association at Washington University School of Law voted 27-6, with 4 abstentions, to recognize Law Students Pro-Life.10 FIRE is careful to point out that it takes no position on the issue of abortion. So why did they intercede? The organization’s co-director, Harvey L. Silverglate, responds that “FIRE was simply concerned with the freedom of a student group to advocate its cause without having to follow the school’s ideological dictates, period.” Adds Halvorssen: “It was the decent thing to do.” Direction: A Road Map for the Miles Ahead The college pro-life movement, says Cornell University graduate student Sean Breheney, “needs to decide what its priorities are, what methods and goals are effective and important, and follow them with a level of dedication that befits the emergency situation that we are in.” So, in this state of emergency, what are the priorities? And what methods should we use? The ten points that follow, all offered as goals by student activists themselves, provide a good starting point. • Unity, Unity, Unity: No one captures the urgent need for unity better than Berkeley graduate (and former newsletter editor for American Collegians for Life) Elizabeth Maier: “Too often, we spend so much of our time arguing with other pro-life groups on the correct approach. Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and NOW definitely have this approach mastered. We must learn to mimic our opponents and attempt to unite ourselves in a more common rhetoric. We all must not only argue for the lives of the unborn children, but also against the damage that abortion causes on the woman.” • Image, Image, Image: Again, Maier hits the mark: “[T]he largest challenge is that many pro-lifers do not know how to present themselves to the public in the most effective manner. Showing a twenty-foot poster of an aborted fetus to a feminist from NOW is not going to persuade her. Pro-lifers need to tailor our arguments towards our audience. If speaking to a Christian group, you bring in God; if speaking to NOW, you argue against abortion from a feminist perspective. Too often, pro-lifers use the exact same speech for different groups, all because they think they have the truth behind them. We must realize that yes, truth is behind us, but effectiveness in publicity also needs to be there.”11 UNH’s Elizabeth Andrew echoes this argument when she observes that “an underlying premise of any pro-life group [is] to demonstrate that we are just normal, intelligent, compassionate students, who happen to find our culture of death completely unacceptable.” Finally, one male student observes that the media routinely portray pro-lifers as a “fringe, dying minority,” a group that forces its religious ethics on others, when, in actuality, it has strong secular and legal arguments behind it, and a “growing, young base of support.” • Present the abortion issue as a women’s issue: Feminists for Life’s revolutionary women-centered message has taken hold of the country, and the results have been tremendous. To give just one example, one student who had planned to become an abortion provider because she saw abortion as “a right and a necessity” told Serrin Foster that she changed her position “completely” after hearing Foster’s Women Deserve Better presentation at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The Women Deserve Better campaign, aimed at destroying the myth that abortion is empowering to women, is clearly influencing the way pro-life campus activists talk about life issues and helping them to recognize that, as one student puts it, “the availability of abortion has taken away society’s responsibility towards women who face difficult pregnancies.” • Spread the truth: Fact-based education concerning fetal development, embryonic stem-cell research, and the recent advances in the field of prenatal medicine all must become mainstream. Accurate, but life-affirming information must be provided to all members of society, especially young women. Currently, says one student, the vast majority of collegians receive their training and direction on life issues “via sex-education classes, the media, university health systems, and biased Women Studies programs.” This must change. • Demand the truth from college and university instructors: College and university students are confronting syllabuses, curricula, and training methods that routinely misrepresent medical and scientific facts. Demand that this be corrected. If serving on student/faculty advisory or hiring panels, work with the academic institution to hire more informed pro-life instructors. Remember, by their very nature and vocation, college and university instructors have the ability, the considerable resources, and the obligation to provide accurate information to the community of students that they serve. All pro-life activists—campus and otherwise—should demand this accuracy. • Use the law! Should your basic civil rights be attacked, remember that legal recourse is available. Use it. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and other advocacy groups are available. Contact them.12 • Network with other schools: The annual conferences that are sponsored by such groups as American Collegians for Life and California Students for Life (CASTL) make it possible for pro-life student activists to share information, exchange ideas, gain know-how, and find much-needed support and fellowship. These programs demand benefactor and student participation. Sign up now. • Dialogue with pro-abortion opponents: Remember, it is all about winning hearts and minds, one at a time. If efforts like the Berkeley baby-changing table drive and the Wellesley Initiative for Student Mothers can unite pro-life activists with their pro-choice opponents, other initiatives can, as well. Suggest projects. Build bridges. Plant seeds. • Plan ahead: Pro-life college groups can be kept alive only if they dedicate themselves to drawing in new recruits. Keep membership up. Most importantly, as one pro-life student officer puts it, “Make sure that you constantly expand your inner circle by having underclassmen replace you.” • Seize the moment: One recent survey indicated that “teenagers and college-age Americans are more conservative about abortion rights than their counterparts were a generation ago.”13 Additionally, a recent Alan Guttmacher Institute/Planned Parenthood report revealed a 33% decrease in abortion by college graduates since Feminists for Life began its College Outreach Program in 1994.14 These figures hold great promise for the expansion and success of college pro-life activism in the decade ahead. In Conclusion Thirty years to the day after the Roe v. Wade ruling, Stanford University’s Stanford Report remarked: “That issue about when personhood develops in an individual cannot at this time be settled scientifically, and so it will remain the subject of controversy and debate. For many physician-scientists, the blastocyst is a ball of cells and it would be a violation of their medical oaths not to use these cells to gain valuable medical knowledge that could translate to therapies.”15 Less than three months after the Report’s hubris-ridden proclamation was made, a tough and determined army of over one hundred pro-life students gathered together for workshops, lectures, fellowship, and planning at the second annual Celebrate Life Conference, presented by California Students for Life on the campus of, yes, Stanford University. If you’re looking for hope, it is here, on these campuses, with these young women and men. For them, the fight against all that Roe has done is not three decades old. For them, the fight is just beginning. CONTACT: American Collegians for Life – www.aclife.org Feminists for Life – www.feministsforlife.org The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) – www.thefire.org Another valuable resource, not mentioned in this article, is American University Women for Life. AUWL offers educational programs and forums for women, with special interest in issues related to the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death. AUWL also serves as a resource network and referral service for people working in areas such as crisis pregnancy counseling, the support and direction of homes for young mothers, and the identification of assistance for parents concerned with school curriculums. Contact President Mary Elizabeth DeWinter/24 Lois Lane/Needham, MA/02492/Telephone: 781-444-3226.
NOTES 1. American Collegians for Life was founded in 1987 by a small group of Georgetown University students who recognized the need to connect isolated pro-lifers with one another. Now, nearly two decades since its inception, ACL is going strong, hosting annual conferences and providing pro-life services, information, and instruction through its excellent website and its national directory of pro-life organizations. ACL’s efforts give strength and stability to campus pro-life activities, and its members, as president Kelly Kroll says, constantly learn from one another “how we can better serve each of our individual campuses.” 2. See also Serrin Foster as quoted in “Abortion: A Tool of Male Oppression?,” National Catholic Register, (April 16-22, 2000). “[W]omen go into college and they find that they have no resources for themselves or their friends to have a child even though the whole campus is highly sexually charged. Between that and some very hostile women’s study programs, you have a culture that is very much in support of abortion.” 3. Fortunately, the situation at Harvard is improving. As Harvard junior Laura Openshaw writes: “Harvard Right to Life has had major issues with our posters getting torn down across the campus. Even though Harvard may not respect our message, people do respect free speech: the student government passed a bill that officially condemned such censorship and provided funds to compensate groups whose posters had been defaced. Our very liberal campus newspaper even supported this bill. It was an important victory.” 4. See also Brian Caulfield, “Boston College Honors Abortion Supporters,” National Catholic Register web edition, May 26-June 1, 2002. The Cardinal Newman Society recently identified 16 Catholic colleges that have, at commencement ceremonies and otherwise, honored individuals who actively support abortion rights and/or publicly dissent from Catholic Church teaching. 5. “Stanford University Announces Human Embryonic Stem Cell Project,” The Economic Times, December 11, 2002. 6. University of California at San Francisco Campaign Insider, October, 2002. See also SFGate.com, August 8, 2002 and TheMiamiHerald.com, August 8, 2002. 7. Email from Elliott M. Friedman to Jordan Siverd, September 10, 2002. 8. Shane Intihar, “Washington University in St. Louis, Law Students Pro-Life,” www.aclife.org, Featured Group profile. 9. Letter of Thor L. Halvorssen to Mark Stephen Wrighton, September 30, 2002. 10. Joyce Howard Price, “Student Bar Group OK’s Pro-lifers,” Washington Times, October 17, 2002. 11. Feminists for Life’s Serrin Foster: “Abortion clinics set up shop right across from campus. Planned Parenthood puts up an enormous banner welcoming students back to school. They know how to market to students. So Feminists for Life created a striking ad campaign that students could download and post on campus. One donor helped us put ads on top campuses across the country, reaching campuses with 3.7 million students during a two-year campaign.” 12. Another legal point should be made here. When colleges and universities offer abortion coverage in their student health insurance plans, they are in effect forcing students who are philosophically opposed to abortion to subsidize it. Pro-life college groups that have not already taken steps to lobby for changes in pro-abortion student health policies should do so. 13. Elizabeth Hayt, “Surprise, Mom: I’m Against Abortion,” New York Times, March 30, 2003. 14. Rachel K. Jones, Jacqueline E. Darroch and Stanley K. Henshaw, “Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000-2001,” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, Volume 34, Number 5. September/October 2002. 15. Irving Weissman, M.D., with Amy Adams, “Understanding the Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine,” Stanford Report, January 22, 2003. Published by:
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