Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Some of our favorite articles are in this category, and they’re here because they didn’t fit into one of our main blog categories.

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Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement

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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

A couple weeks ago, we asked our awesome subscribers to email us and tell us how they’re feeling about the current state of the pro-life movement, and we were blown away by your responses. 77 of you replied, and it was so encouraging for our team to hear from you and connect with you. A bunch of you shared that you felt:

  • Excited that we have more access to great pro-life arguments 
  • Frustrated because good dialogue—the courage to speak up at all, and the calm to stay kind when you do—is really hard
  • Excited because Dobbs gave us the ability to pass state laws against abortion
  • Frustrated because the pro-choice side has a much bigger microphone and budget
  • Excited by the dedication, passion, and commitment they see in the pro-life movement, no matter the obstacles, no matter how laws change over time
  • Frustrated because some pro-life leaders talk in a way that makes it easy for pro-choicers to paint the whole pro-life movement as the pro-everything-Trump-does movement
  • …and many other excitements and frustrations
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It’s Important to End Your Outreach Well. Here’s How.

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Are you a student leader who wants your club to have better attendance at outreach events? As a former leader of a pro-life organization at my university, I faced a similar predicament until I learned to add a critical step to my club’s outreaches: create a space where students can debrief and process after the event. Investing time for this discussion can change the way your club thinks about abortion conversations.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

Picture: Josh and Timothy Brahm debriefing with the Students for Life staff after an outreach with them in 2014.

Josh and Timothy Brahm debriefing with the Students for Life staff after an outreach with them in 2014.

Consider whether the following sounds like one of your typical outreach events:

You reserve a table spot on campus. Then you tell your club about the upcoming event, but you end up getting a low response from members. You become frustrated by this, wishing your club was larger and that the current club members would step up and be more committed. You and the other club leaders must stay at the table for much longer than you’d like to because you don’t have enough volunteers to cover the table. This adds stress and takes away from your study time. Each time you want to have a tabling event, you feel even less enthusiastic and more desperate for help than before!

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. I’ve heard stories like this all too often from students I mentor, and it was my story as well until I learned about the power of debriefing after an outreach. Once I gave my fellow club members the opportunity to discuss and process their conversations after tabling events, their feelings about outreach changed. And when their feelings changed, their behavior changed, too. My club members began requesting more outreach events, and they even moved their schedules around so that we could fill all of the time slots. Outreach became a priority because we had a purpose at the table and we came to understand the benefits of the experience for ourselves and our campus.

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“Inconsistent” is Different Than “Wrong”

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Picture: An inconsistent red umbrella in a sea of black umbrellas.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Those of you who have spent any amount of time on social media lately know that political discourse has been particularly ugly in recent weeks. Ever since the controversy began over separating children from parents caught crossing the border illegally, there have been comments about what it means to be “pro-life.” My favorite tweet from the time of that controversy came from my colleague Rachel Crawford:

There are many worthwhile discussions to be had about immigration policy, but policing the term “pro-life” is not a prudent way to start one. [Tweet that!] There are good, compassionate, reasonable pro-life people of every political stripe. This is possible because being pro-life in regards to abortion is entirely consistent with all kinds of other positions all over the political spectrum.

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16 Tips for a Better Pro-Life Group Facebook Page

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All pro-life organizations ought to have some presence on social media, but there are some common mistakes that can drastically reduce the effectiveness of a Facebook page. Speaking as someone with experience as a Students for Life leader, running an effective Facebook page is not as difficult as it looks. This post will help you see actual results rather than just having your Facebook page sit there as another task on your long to-do list. It just takes some intentionality.

If you do not already have a public Facebook page for your group, then you need to create one right away. A Facebook group for your club members to privately chat in is not the same as a page because it does not allow you to develop either a public following or interest in your group. The Facebook page is a public platform that allows people to find you, follow what is happening with your group, and share your posts with their friends.

These 16 tips will help you to get measurable results from your Facebook page:

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes.
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On Virtue-Signaling

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I regularly hear people complain about Virtue-Signaling, but I haven’t yet found a balanced attempt to clarify what it is and what it isn’t. Mostly I’ve noticed that people are quick to accuse people outside of their own political tribes of doing it. Without any definitions, how is a fair-minded person to distinguish between appropriate critiques and partisan smears?

Another problem is that I’ve long felt that some virtue-signaling is not actually morally objectionable, but I never see people make distinctions to allow for that. It’s just an accusation, and an inherently irrefutable one at that. I’d like to offer some distinctions between types of Virtue-Signaling with the hope that people will be able to distinguish the objectionable types from the acceptable types. I’ll close with suggestions about how and when to accuse someone of Virtue-Signaling, all with the desired end of helping dialogue to be more productive between parties that disagree.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

What is Virtue-Signaling?

Virtue-Signaling is always referred to in a negative way, but given that the term itself is etymologically neutral, my recommended definition is intentionally neutral in order to minimize confusion:

virtue signal
noun

  1. to give an indication that you have a particular virtue (usually, though not necessarily, through a statement).