Never underestimate pro-life young people. They will prove you wrong every time. You can take that to the bank.

Case in point: euthanasia.

It's easy to motivate youth to fight abortion. Babies are small, cuddly, and cute. To young men and women, it's obviously wrong to kill them. Most everyone gets that, and teens with the "activist" gene get behind stopping the killing 100%. They work with everything they've got to end abortion, and we love them for it.

But what about the other end of life? Back when I was a teenager, we didn't give the subject much thought. (For a while there, I thought my mentors were saying "youth in Asia" and couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what in the world kids from Japan had to do with abortion in America.)

Eventually I figured it out, and although I realized that it's abhorrent to kill anyone, old or young, I just couldn't rev up the passion to fight euthanasia the way I was fighting abortion. For me, it was all about the babies.

And that may have been how it was for the current generation of pro-life teens. Until Terri, that is.

She changed everything for all of us--especially the adults who educate those teens. With sudden clarity, we realized that we need to fight euthanasia with the same passion and conviction and sheer determination that we fight abortion.

And it became clear that it was our sacred duty to communicate that to the upcoming generation of pro-lifers. But how in the world were we going to get young, vibrant kids who think they are invincible to throw themselves into fighting for life on the other end of the spectrum? We attacked the problem with a ton of passion and more than a little apprehension. We underestimated pro-life young people. This was a mistake, and they proved us wrong.

Because guess what? They get it. They don't just get it with lip service the way some of us did before Terri's struggle became a national nightmare. They get it--with their hearts, with their minds, and with their lives. And, oh, do we love them for it!

In the year since Terri's tragic death, we've been giving euthanasia equal time at every youth event we've done. We've spoken to church youth groups, we've educated on college campuses, and we have been amazed.

Sure, we had to modify a few things to make it something that grabs a younger audience. On the surface, it may seem odd, but, trust me, it works.

Instead of merely explaining voluntary, nonvoluntary, and involuntary euthanasia, we came up with a demonstration using pies.

"Voluntary" pie in the face is when the recipient wants a pie in the face. "Nonvoluntary" pie in the face is when you don't know the person's wishes and have to ask a friend or family member what the person would want. And an "involuntary" pie in the face happens when someone emphatically states that they DO NOT WANT A PIE IN THEIR FACE and you smack them with one, anyway.

Young person after young person has approached us after the whipped cream is cleaned up and the session is over to say, "Wow--I never got that before, but now I understand!"

We also turned to technology to aid us in our quest. After an extensive Internet search, we found pictures of the people behind the history of euthanasia. Today's youth are visual--you can talk until you're blue in the face, but what's the point when you can instantly humanize an issue by putting a face on it? (This, we are convinced, is why God made PowerPoint.)  However, when they can see the person in question, suddenly a court case becomes more about humanity and less about sterile decisions citing medical technology and legal precedent. We have been amazed as we watch their reactions--from the anger in their eyes as we talk about the Nazi T-4 euthanasia program-- to the tears streaking down their faces as they watch video clips of Terri before she died.

And we've learned not to gloss over little details. You want to make a room of pro-life teenagers angry? Show them the Time magazine cover photo of Christine Busalacchi (one of the most famous early cases where a brain-injured patient was starved to death). Her feeding tube is front and center, the media's attempt to reduce her from a human being to nothing more than a passive recipient of nutrition and hydration.

And if you want to motivate young people, show them a picture of Terri Schiavo's grave marker. On it we read that Terri "departed this earth" at the time of her injuries--15 years before she actually died--and that she was finally "at peace" when her last rapid breath ended--nearly two weeks after she received her last crumb of food and drop of liquid.

Finally, we challenge them to take a stand.

Young people realize that if we don't speak out about what happened to Terri, about what is happening to innocent disabled Americans every day behind the closed doors of nursing homes and hospices, if we don't fight it with everything we've got, it will happen here.

But guess what? They're not going to let that happen--not here and not on their watch. And ... oh, how we love them for it!