Timothy Brahm will be giving pro-life training at Students for Life’s Leadership Summit in Omaha this spring. More details and a registration link will be announced in the future.
| Date: | March 18, 2017 |
|---|---|
| Event: | Students for Life Leadership Summit |
| Sponsor: |
Students for Life of America 540-834-4600 |
| Location: | Omaha, NE |
| Public: | Public |
Want us to speak to your group? Click here to check our availability!
Josh Brahm will be giving pro-life training at Students for Life’s Leadership Summit in Cambridge this spring. More details and a registration link will be announced in the future.
| Date: | March 18, 2017 |
|---|---|
| Event: | Students for Life Leadership Summit |
| Sponsor: |
Students for Life of America 540-834-4600 |
| Location: | Cambridge, MA |
| Public: | Public |
Want us to speak to your group? Click here to check our availability!
This month marks the two-year anniversary of the launch of Equal Rights Institute. I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve accomplished.
We spoke to 1,455 people in 18 speeches and seven all-day seminars. We published 35 new articles to our blog, which were ready by 38,269 people, mainly visiting our site from America, Russia, Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia!
Here are a few of my favorite memories from the last year:
Successfully shooting 31 videos for our online course in three days.
I want to share one more dialogue story from our outreach last month at Aquinas College. Two fantastic students from the Students for Life club at University of Michigan, Rachel Crawford and Chloe Alberta, spoke to several pro-choice girls. This is what happened.
Rachel (left) and Chloe (right) talking to students at Aquinas College.
Chloe begins the story this way:
Towards the end of our day of outreach, Rachel and I had a conversation with two girls, who I’ll call Amber and Linda. Initially they were very hesitant to participate in the poll, because, as Amber informed us, they didn’t really like to think about the issue of abortion and didn’t really have an opinion on it.
Grabbing my handy fetal development chart from the ERI outreach brochure, I asked: “Would you mind if I tell you why it is extremely important to me that people think about abortion?” I showed them the fetal development chart and told them that I believe that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, and that that human life deserves to be protected.
I asked them in the name of having ALL the information possible, in order to make the MOST informed decision, would they be willing to look at a picture that shows what an abortion looks like? They declined because, “It’s probably really disturbing.” “You’re right,” I said. “It’s extremely disturbing and I really have trouble looking at them too.” I explained to them that I see that horrible image of the death of an unborn child, and I see one of the biggest human rights violations of our time. And I cannot be silent about that, and I think that is why it is so important to have an opinion about abortion and not let those human lives be looked over.
This article is an expanded version of a piece I wrote for Life Matters Journal, in which I answered a question from one of LMJ’s readers. This reader asked for help responding to the question of rape:
One of the most common questions I get about being pro-life is “But what if the mother was raped?” I stand for all life, even life that was created through rape or any other difficult situation. How can I explain that to a pro-choicer in such a way that I don’t come across as callous or uncaring about the mother’s situation?
~ Troubled in Tuscaloosa
I love the way this question is worded. You clearly care about showing that you don’t only care about the child, but that you rightly care for the survivor of rape as well. Many pro-life people don’t communicate that very well when they talk about rape. They come across as if they have something we call “Fetus Tunnel Vision.” I think the question of rape is the most common example of this. Immediately we say, “The child’s right to life shouldn’t be dependent on how it was conceived!” I agree with that, but who does this skip? The mother.
My friend Steve Wagner at Justice For All has made a huge impact on the way I think about how pro-life people should respond to rape. He says:
When a pro-choice person brings up the issue of rape, they’re not terribly concerned at that point if the unborn is human. They want to find out whether you’re human.
Can you see how horrible rape is? If not, please don’t tell people you’re pro-life. I’ve trained people before who understood the definition of rape, but they didn’t understand what rape is. There are other pro-lifers who cannot hear the word “rape” and let themselves acknowledge how horrible rape is because they feel like they’re losing debate points or time. There’s too much of that out there and it’s hurting our movement.
So, here’s what we should do instead. We should first acknowledge the horror of rape.