The Investment of a Lifetime!
Joleigh Little

We can’t win without them!

The role of youth in the pro-life movement is as simple as that. The time to train and equip the next generation of pro-life leaders is right now. Not two or ten or twenty years from now, but today, tomorrow, and in the weeks and months to come.

Fortunately, our task is not a difficult one. A 2003 Gallup poll showed us that 72% of American teenagers think abortion is morally wrong. This is nothing short of amazing! A majority of Generation Y is pro-life.

Apparently we have already reached many of their minds. Now it’s time to engage their hearts.

Our game plan is simple: recruit, educate, motivate, organize, and encourage.

Let’s start with recruiting. Every team wants to have the best and brightest on their roster. We are no different, except that we’re fighting for more than a trophy or medal: we’re fighting for the very lives of the unborn and vulnerable. We need to reach pro-life teens, turning them from spectators into active team members.

They’re out there in your churches, schools, and communities. Some may be as close as your dinner table! Go find them!!

Education—always the key to winning for life—is especially critical in working with pro-life youth. The more they know, the better equipped they are to reach their peers, teachers, professors, and the world with the message of life. Let us not forget that today’s teenagers are tomorrow’s doctors, lawyers, journalists, judges, teachers, and clergy.

The more they know, the more lives they will save today, tomorrow, and beyond.

Are there opportunities around every corner to educate pro-life teens? There are—many more than you may realize.

Many state affiliates have teen tracks at their conventions, National Teens for Life has an annual convention which runs concurrent with the National Right to Life Convention, several states have pro-life training camps, and every state affiliate and local chapter has the ability to set up educational opportunities for pro-life teens.

Motivating them isn’t difficult, either. In fact, it goes hand in hand with educating them. It can be as easy as telling them the truth about the Terri Schiavo case or showing them the BBC documentary The Dying Rooms, an exposé of death and suffering in Chinese state orphanages.A display of the number of babies killed by abortion in a single day or a speech about abortion can also open their eyes. These teens and college students are ready and willing to make a difference. Trust me, all we need to do is give them a good reason to get involved.

Probably the most time-consuming task is organizing. It’s pretty easy to get a bunch of pro-life teens together and excited about making a difference. It takes more time and effort to get them organized and moving in a productive direction.

But it can be done! Often the most critical step is finding a teenager who has the skills and is willing to take on the task of starting a Teens for Life or college pro-life group.

Finally, once you have them trained and organized, all that is left is to keep encouraging them and giving them guidance. Anyone who has been in this movement for more than two weeks realizes that there are times that try pro-lifer’s souls.

While we are winning in a number of arenas, the setbacks, when they happen, can be devastating. And, let’s be honest, sometimes the work can be a little daunting. But we know that it’s always worth it. Our responsibility is to communicate that sense of urgency to the young people with whom we work.

The bottom line is this—those of us who have been here for 20, 30, and even 40 years will not be here forever. The good news is that our work is paying off—we are winning this fight on many fronts.

We have a pro-life President, a pro-life majority in the House of Representatives and pro-life leadership in both houses of Congress. Many state legislatures are enacting protective legislation, and there is even a good chance that we may someday have a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that understands that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

Pregnancy help centers continue to save lives, more and more churches are waking up, and pastors are proclaiming the truth from their pulpits.

But even as we celebrate these victories, the tragic death of Terri Schindler Schiavo reminds us that we have a long way to go on euthanasia. And the battle over abortion will only grow more intense the closer we come to overturning Roe. We can’t afford to rest, we can’t give up any ground, and we certainly can’t assume that all will be won in a year or two, or even ten!

The long-term key to winning this battle is harnessing the boundless altruism, energy, and moral conviction of the upcoming generation of pro-life leaders. We need to remember that while they are the leaders of tomorrow, they are also a vital and active part of our fight today.

We need to bring them into the fold, train them with the truth, and teach them what it will take to win for life in the long run. We need to give them our time, our energy, our resources, our hearts, and our passion.
We cannot afford to do any less.

For more information about starting a Teens for Life group, contact djones@nrlc.org or jlittle@wrtl.org.