The Pro-Life Message I Wish I’d Heard in High School

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I don’t know about you, but there was a time in my life when I was absolutely terrified to tell anyone that I was pro-life.

Let me back up.

I grew up Catholic, went to K-12 Catholic school, the whole nine-yards. I knew that I was supposed to be pro-life, and I was pro-life, but I had spent maybe five minutes of my entire life thinking deeply about abortion. So when I went off to college, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into.

I went to St. Olaf College, where in the fall of 2016, the students staged a massive protest against our local pro-life pregnancy center. The pregnancy center was hosting their annual fundraising banquet in the ballrooms of our student union, and when the students found out, they lined the hallways waving signs, trying to stop community members from entering and raising money to provide free resources to pregnant and parenting families.

Yeah, it took me about two seconds to realize that publicly identifying as pro-life was social suicide.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

And when I finally did identify myself and join the pro-life club (to be honest, mostly because I really wanted to be friends with this girl who asked me to go with her, definitely not because I had suddenly become passionate about abortion), I quickly realized that I was in over my head. I somehow wound up representing the club in an interview, and I was thrown multiple questions about abortion that I didn’t know how to answer. I remember frantically googling in the bathroom “What if a pregnant woman is dying? Is abortion necessary?” (answer: when you define abortion the medical way, then sometimes yes) and stumbling over my words as I tried to explain that a fetus has her own body separate from the mother’s body, so “not your body, not your choice!” (which I later learned is a horribly unpersuasive response because it completely straw mans the pro-choice view).

When I found Equal Rights Institute, my life and college pro-life club changed forever, and I’m now an internationally recognized pro-life advocate who teaches pro-lifers how to understand and respond to pro-choice people in order to actually change hearts and minds about abortion.

But I often wonder: what if I could have skipped all those steps in between? What if I could have entered college already passionate about abortion, confident in my pro-life views, and knowing how to respond to the hardest pro-choice questions? And on the other hand, I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t stumbled across strong pro-life arguments in college. What about all the pro-life youth who don’t? I believe there are hundreds of thousands of pro-life youth out there like me—youth who learned that they were supposed to be pro-life, but whose belief wavered and even died completely when they were bombarded by our pro-choice culture.

That’s why I pitched Equipped for Life Academy in my job interview for ERI. Using my degree in education and experience in the classroom, I wanted to develop a curriculum for pro-life high school students to not only learn that they should be pro-life, but to know how to confidently defend and live the pro-life position throughout their lives. In a post-Roe America, there is literally no hiding from the abortion debate. I believe that it’s time to engage students in discussing abortion directly by facing the hardest pro-choice questions head-on.

Equipped for Life Academy is a unique pro-life curriculum for religious high school students like I was. Designed as a unit for any Christian school course, church youth group, homeschool class, or confirmation class, the interactive lesson plans promote engagement with the most popular pro-choice talking points of our day, giving students the tools to understand today’s abortion landscape while responding thoughtfully and compassionately to pro-choice people.

Even when those pro-choice people are in your class, too.

I see so many schools and churches that are afraid of discussing abortion for fear of alienating pro-choice students, and so many others that don’t take the time to deeply discuss abortion because they don’t think they have any pro-choice students. Even in the most conservative settings, it is common for a student or two to be secretly conflicted about abortion or outright pro-choice—but they are afraid to speak up about their views because they fear judgment. I’ve met so many students like Maria. Before I spoke at her school, her administrators told me, “Our school is 100% pro-life! There isn’t a single pro-choice student here.” But after my speech, Maria discreetly approached to thank me for demonstrating respect to pro-choice people and engaging with pro-choice arguments intelligently. She revealed that she is secretly pro-choice, but since she knows that that viewpoint isn’t accepted at her conservative school, she’d never spoken up or asked questions. But she had so many questions! And she’s seriously considering the pro-life position now that she’s heard my answers!

If we avoid discussing abortion entirely or proclaim a culture of life without fostering conversation about the issue, we miss crucial opportunities to change hearts and minds and develop confident pro-life convictions in youth who will shape the future of abortion in our world. That’s why our team has carefully crafted Equipped for Life Academy to engage students regardless of their current stance on abortion: “pro-life,” “pro-choice,” “I don’t know,” or “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I’ve also been a high school teacher, which gave me tremendous empathy for how hard all the insane demands on teachers’ time and requirements on their curriculum could make it to incorporate the pro-life teaching teenage Emily needed into their classrooms. So I built Equipped For Life Academy to be as easy as possible to teach, and to fit state education standards. The lesson plans, activities, and assessments fit right into those requirements teachers are faced with today, and the Protestant edition of Equipped for Life Academy can be used across a variety of denominational contexts. Meanwhile, the Catholic edition of Equipped for Life Academy is written to fit the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools (NSBECS) and The Cardinal Newman Society Catholic Curriculum Standards (CNSCCS).

If I had learned the why behind my pro-life views—the tools to actually understand the issue and explain my beliefs with conviction—freshman Emily wouldn’t have walked onto that college campus with her head down. I believe that we can teach our youth to be pro-life and stay pro-life even when faced with the toughest questions and the pressures of our culture, all while passionately spreading the truth about the dignity of life to their peers.

I believe Equipped for Life Academy is a game-changer for the religious education of today’s high school students. See for yourself at EquippedforLifeAcademy.com

The post The Pro-Life Message I Wish I’d Heard in High School originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

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Director of Education & Outreach

Emily Geiger is Director of Education & Outreach at Equal Rights Institute. She is the former Co-President of Oles for Life at St. Olaf College, where she worked to transform campus culture using ERI’s apologetics to foster respectful and productive dialogues about abortion. At ERI, she is using her educational background to write, develop curriculum, and teach pro-life advocates how to change minds, save lives, and promote a culture of life in their communities. A sought-after speaker, Emily frequently presents lectures on college campuses, in high schools, and for churches and conferences, and she regularly appears in interviews and radio/TV/podcasts, including appearances on MSNBC, BBC Newsday, EWTN, Focus on the Family, Relevant Radio, Christianity Today, and Real Presence LIVE. 

Emily is particularly passionate about reaching the youth of the pro-life movement. As a recent college student, she understands what it feels like to walk unprepared into a culture that is overwhelmingly pro-choice. Until she found ERI, she was faced daily with challenges to the pro-life position that she didn’t know how to answer, and she was afraid to speak out. She wants to equip pro-life students with the tools to intimately understand and articulate their pro-life convictions in a productive and compassionate manner. 

“The future of our movement lies with our youth. It is pro-life students who sit in classrooms daily with the very women who are most likely to seek an abortion. It is pro-life students who study philosophy, biology, and social justice in their coursework. It is pro-life students who can foster a culture of dialogue, respect, understanding, and intellectual consistency in academia. I want to empower pro-life students to turn the caricature of the pro-life movement on its head, becoming known as the most loving, respectful, and logical students their campus has ever seen.” 

Emily is also on the Board of Directors for Cradle of Hope, an organization that provides financial and material assistance to families and pregnant women. Cradle of Hope partners with over 180 agencies throughout Minnesota, including 7 of the 11 Minnesota Tribes, to prevent evictions and homelessness while giving families education and resources that empower them to choose life and care for their young children.

Emily graduated summa cum laude from St. Olaf College in 2021 with a B.M. in Vocal Music Education.

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Categories: Pro-Life Philosophy, Relational Apologetics

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