Updates on what is going on at Equal Rights Institute.
Sometimes when I hear people ask for prayer, it seems kind of cliche. Whether it’s praying for someone else or them praying for you, it’s easy to take prayer for granted. But we firmly believe that prayer does matter, that we worship a God who cares for us personally and answers prayer.
We have a new staff member! We’re so delighted to introduce Kim Bagato to you, although if you’re in the Central California area, you may have already been blessed by Kim’s work at KRDU or Salt Magazine. Today is her first day at taking administrative tasks off of Josh Brahm’s plate so that he can focus on what he does best: growing the organization, leading the staff, speaking, writing and raising the funds we need to accomplish our goals.
Yup, it’s that time of year where every blog does “top X posts of 2014,” so without further ado, here are the most visited articles I’ve published this year.
I created this list using the Google Analytics for my own site, instead of complicating the process by incorporating stats from LifeNews.com, where many of my articles are later republished.
My blog received over 71,000 unique pageviews from more than 28,000 unique people this year. That’s a 400% increase from last year, albeit the blog was only live since June, 2013.
I think I would have done even better if I had managed to stay consistent in the last half of this year, but successfully launching a national pro-life training organization and maintaining a consistent blog presence became mutually exclusive. Thanks for your patience with me as I temporarily slowed down my writing to make my dream organization become a reality.
On to the list!
#5: What to Say to Someone Who Says “I Wish I Had Been Aborted”
This was a response to a question from a reader and includes a story about a dialogue I had in front of Planned Parenthood. The thing I like most about this piece is the distinction between the suicidal-sounding version of this pro-choice statement, “I wish I had been aborted,” and the consistent version, “I wish my mom had had the right to abort me.” I believe the latter is what most pro-choice people mean when they say this, and clarifying what they actually mean will make a world of difference in whether you respond effectively or not.
#4: What Should You Say to a Woman Who is Happy That She Had an Abortion?
This one is a response to one of the most challenging things a pro-choice person can say to a pro-life advocate. I offer what I would say, as well as explain the right/wrong vs. wise/foolish distinction that may be helpful in that conversation.
#3: The Biology Professor Who Hated Our Outreach Exhibit
I was very surprised at how well this post did. I wasn’t very excited to write it. It was just another story from campus, and I wrote it at a time where I was more interested in making substantive points and not just telling stories. I didn’t do anything that unique or interesting (to me) in response to the hostile biology professor in the story, but a ton of people who don’t frequent my blog read this post. I suspect that some people who don’t frequent my blog clicked on it because they thought it would be a “pro-life smart guy makes a pro-choice guy look like an idiot” post, which it really wasn’t. They seem to have gotten sucked into it though because I saw a lot of comments online from people saying that want to learn how to talk about abortion this way, which was very gratifying.
#2: 4 Reasons Pro-Lifers Need to Stop Doing This
Ah, the infamous Fetus Tunnel Vision piece. This may be my favorite blog post I’ve ever written, because the content is very unique to something my brother Tim and I have talked about, and I think it’s very needed if our movement is going to show the world that we care about all people, and not just unborn babies. That gives you the credibility to talk to people who wouldn’t listen to certain other pro-life people.
There was a lot of debate regarding this topic, so I wrote two followup pieces answering the most common challenges.
I credit part of the success of this post to my friends at Students for Life of America who frequently tweet it to their followers and even discuss the topic in their trainings with college students across the country!
#1: Understanding What Richard Dawkins Actually Believes About Abortion and Down Syndrome
It was almost a tie for first place but my commentary on Richard Dawkins’ tweet about Down Syndrome was the most visited article from 2014. Tim and I worked really hard on this piece and watching the results the following day made for one of the most fulfilling days I’ve had since I launched Equal Rights Institute. I blogged about what happened here, including Richard Dawkins himself retweeting the article and several pro-choice people commenting that this was the most careful and rational piece they had seen from either side of the abortion debate regarding Dawkins’ tweet.
That’s the list! Thanks again for following my blog during the most exciting and most terrifying year of my life, and I’m truly humbled by the gracious feedback I’ve received from most of you.
For the rest of you, I’m looking forward to more open-minded dialogue about the philosophical issues surrounding abortion in the months to come. :)
Merry Christmas!
My brother Tim and I just got back from Washington DC after spending two amazing days with the staff of Students for Life of America (SFLA).
Our objective was to bring their new Regional Coordinators through the brand new Equal Rights Institute seminar and follow that up with an outreach on the streets of D.C. This was a daunting task because Tim only got to Fresno a few weeks ago which didn’t give us very much time to create a seminar! We temporarily put our fundraising on hold and spent those two weeks brainstorming with a marker board and then separating to write out our material. We created more original content than I thought possible. Much of it will show up on this blog in future posts.
SFLA’s Daniel DeFonce, Missy Martinez & Tina Whittington during our outreach. Photo courtesy of SFLA.
Seeing my friends from SFLA again was wonderful. I seriously love these people, and they’re making an incredible contribution to the pro-life cause. We also got to meet their newest Regional Coordinators (RC’s). These are the staff who are paid full-time to drive in loops in various states to provide training, coaching and logistical support to SFLA college campus and high school clubs across various regions in the country. I’ve said before that I believe SFLA’s Regional Coordinators are some of the most strategically placed pro-life activists in the country, and working with them to reach the 8,000 actively pro-life college students in America has been a big part of Equal Rights Institute’s strategy from the beginning.
SFLA’s R.J. McVeigh & Rebekah Chiew during our outreach. Photo courtesy of SFLA.
The new R.C.’s are fantastic. They are passionate about learning what they need to effectively dialogue with pro-choice students, and to train their students to do the same. They did so well in our mentor groups during the seminar that we often had time for more advanced Q&A! After speaking to them about responding relationally to the question of rape before giving a philosophical response, we went to our groups to put the R.C.’s to the test. We got in their faces and yelled at them about being horrible human beings who want to force rape survivors to be pregnant. Every single one of them responded with love and concern for both rape survivors and the pro-choice person we were pretending to be.
SFLA’s Missy Martinez and Casey Tesauro during our outreach. Photo courtesy of SFLA.
SFLA’s Michele Hendrickson and Angela Erickson during our outreach. Photo courtesy of SFLA.
The following morning we went to the Ballston Metro to talk to pro-choice people. Our goal was to get every R.C. into at least one conversation, and most of them had at least three before we were done!
More incredibly, while using the dialogue techniques we taught them the day before, they talked to four pro-choice people who became pro-life, and ten more who had major shifts in their thinking! It was a more successful outreach than I had even hoped for, especially for only having two hours to talk to people on the street!
It was wonderful to debrief with the staff afterwards and listen to their stories of the people they talked to. I also informed them that SFLA has agreed to have us mentor each of the RC’s on a one-to-one basis to continue their training. They were thrilled. As you can see from the picture below, we had a very lively debrief meeting!
Debriefing after our outreach. Photo courtesy of SFLA.
We are so excited to be getting our pro-life dialogue techniques into the hands of the pro-life people that need them most: college students. Would you consider partnering with us to make that possible?
I am launching a pro-life non-profit organization this fall. Here’s what I plan to do and why I needed to launch my own organization to do it.
I turned 30 last September. I didn’t think that would be a big deal, but I suddenly started thinking a lot more about how I was spending my time. It was becoming more important to me that I spend as much time as possible working on things that could have a great impact for the pro-life movement.
Before I get any farther into this story, I want to make something clear: There is no secret rift between me and the organization that employed me for the last six years. Right to Life of Central California (RLCC) remains one of the most effective local pro-life organizations I know of. But that’s exactly what it is: a local organization. RLCC had been very gracious to me, letting me spend some of my time on work that would make an impact outside of Fresno. They let me create Life Report, which had both a local and national impact. They also let me occasionally accept speaking opportunities in other states, as long as it didn’t conflict with any of RLCC”s events. But because I was working for a local organization, I was spending the majority of my time on local work: speaking at confirmation classes, marketing events, etc. I did 34 speeches last year, and 30 of them were in the Fresno area. I knew that if I wanted to spend all of my time trying to have a national impact, I would need to work at a national organization, regardless of how much I love RLCC, its board and its staff.
My brother Timothy
I spent a week in January with my brother Timothy. I’ve referenced his work a lot on this blog. Timothy graduated from Biola’s philosophy program several years ago and went to work with Justice For All. The plan in January was for Tim and me to work on a book we’ve been writing on conversation stoppers, things that people on both sides of the abortion debate do that mess up dialogues. I rented an office where we would have privacy and we spent the week there.