College Pro-Lifers Visible On Campuses and In Print

By Holly Smith, Advisor, National College Students for Life

Gone are the days when "pro-life student" was considered a contradiction in terms. Students who believe in the sanctity of life have always been on campuses, but as their numbers grow, so does their visibility. No longer do pro-life college students feel intimidated to speak up. This year alone, dozens of schools feature new Students for Life groups. Further, campus newspapers are running stories about the activities of these groups, and students are routinely publishing op-eds and letters to the editor in their school papers.

Consistent with polls confirming the American public is becoming more pro-life, studies on college students reveal the same movement. According to a popular UCLA survey of incoming freshmen, by 1999, freshman support for keeping abortion legal declined for the sixth straight year to a record low of 50.9 percent. This compares with 53.5 percent in 1997 and a high of 64.9 percent in 1990.

These increasingly pro-life attitudes have fueled the growth in the college right-to-life movement. This growth has included an expanded range of activities by Students for Life groups.

Traditionally, groups have set up information tables around campus, hosted forums and debates, raised funds and volunteered for right-to-life organizations, participated in pro-life events, and written letters to their elected officials in favor of or opposition to legislation.

For the second year, Harvard Right to Life, a stalwart group in the college movement, is running a series of educational posters. Choose Life at Yale College (CLAY), a new group founded by junior Sarah Heiman, received considerable press attention for petitioning the university to allow students who oppose abortion to receive a rebate from the university health plan. It has also put out a pamphlet outlining the resources available to a pregnant woman in the local community and nationally, and are looking at developing a web site.

At Notre Dame, a love for football has not eclipsed respect for life. Students quietly witness to the pro-life cause by having club members wear a small piece of black electrical tape on their shirts to football games. When people inquire, they relate that they wear the tape "in memory of all the babies killed and women wounded by abortion."

This starts important conversations and oftentimes results in a request for a piece of tape. Even if the person who asks does not pursue the topic, the issue is brought to her attention in a respectful, but powerful, way.

The amount of support on the Notre Dame campus no doubt enhances the impact of the week of pro-life activities and memorial events Notre Dame Right to Life will host later this year on its South Bend campus.

Students for Life groups at northern California campuses have teamed up to organize a pro-life conference each of the past two springs. The conferences educate students through information tables and speeches by nationally recognized figures right on campus. Imagine walking through the University of California at Berkeley at lunch time and seeing students waving signs that read "Adoption: A Loving Option," "Pro-woman, Pro-family, Pro-life," and "Abortion Exploits Women." At Berkeley!

Elizabeth Andrew, a student at the University of New Hampshire and co-founder of UNH Students for Life, recently wrote a story for her school paper about the experiences she and a friend had at National Right to Life's Proudly Pro-Life Awards Dinner last April. Since then, she has received positive feedback from students and alumni and even a request for an interview by a professor researching alternative feminist thought on college campuses.

About the dinner, she wrote, "it provided social reprieve from the awkward, stammering conversations often held with peers and professionals back in our lives in New Hampshire. It was oddly liberating to be around others our age who shared a deep understanding of an issue that is all too often misunderstood. When Margaret Colin spoke she noted, 'The time in school and work won't be easy [defending life.]' That evening, Liz and I had to remind ourselves that we were in a safe environment, occupants in a space in time in which we could be pro-life without feeling like we must apologize."

The number of articles I've read, anecdotes I've heard, and inquiries I've received assure me that more college students than ever can relate to Elizabeth's experience. Thanks to the determination and courage of pro-life student leaders, right-to-life events aren't the only places students feel safe discussing abortion. Colleges are fast becoming places where students can be unapologetically and proudly pro-life.