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NRL News
Year-Round Education Program on Fetal Development Is Just as babies take 40 weeks to develop and grow before they face the outside world, for many people it takes a long period of repeated exposure to the images of unborn children in the womb to face and embrace the humanity of children before birth. Fortunately, children often see the world more clearly and instantly recognize unborn children as very small babies. Reinforcing this perception is critical because as they mature, these children will encounter people and situations that push the opposite viewpoint. Several pro-life groups have found creative ways to adapt the basic idea to the behaviors of their audience. Practically speaking, each of the ideas below requires little effort and spreads the work of the chapter over the entire year, making for much smaller demands on your time, funds, and energy. Use this summer to approach churches and schools about ways you can educate their members throughout the year. Louisiana Right to Life Federation, an NRLC affiliate, has printed and sold pro-life calendars for many years. Its calendars feature adorable pictures of children accompanied by life-affirming quotes. Printing and selling pro-life calendars can be an informative and fun-loving way to promote the right to life and raise some money for your chapter. In the same vein you can use images of a baby’s first months after conception, along with text describing each stage of human development from fertilization to birth, to create a 12-month calendar. Each month could highlight the development of a baby during that stage of gestation. Since gestation is nine months, the final months of the calendar can showcase cute baby pictures and information on life-affirming alternatives to abortion. Simply by displaying the calendar, its owners receive a daily reminder of the wonder of unborn life and a good education on fetal development. Perhaps a school or church would be interested in offering a calendar personalized to their schedule for parishioners or students’ families. The ease and affordability of using online programs to develop calendars make it easy to print specialized calendars. One example could be a school that lists their vacation dates, holidays, and other important information while also including fetal development facts. Families would order these, or the school might order in bulk to hand out. Either way, you can use the image side of the calendar to display beautiful pictures of the unborn. On college campuses, students educate their peers on the humanity of the unborn by hanging large posters on bulletin boards with photographs of human development each month. Campuses have long been hostile places for pro-life advocacy, so the silent witness of beautiful posters depicting life before birth is an effective way to get a message across without being silenced by pro-abortion professors. Using the nine-month school schedule, the end of the school year corresponds nicely with the due date for a baby conceived at the beginning of the year. Campus right-to-life group often take this opportunity to host a baby shower to collect baby gifts to donate to a local pro-life pregnancy center. A “Spiritual Adoption” project is a wonderful program to coordinate with private Christian and parochial schools or Sunday schools and CCD classes. Encourage students and their families to “spiritually adopt” one unborn baby who is in danger of being aborted. The family then prays daily for this unknown baby and that her parents will choose life. Once a month, someone from your chapter should go to these classes and explain the child’s development over the course of the past month to help the children understand the humanity of the unborn child. Nine months later, teachers can hold baby showers for the spiritual adoptees in their classrooms and students can bring baby clothes and toys to donate to your pro-life pregnancy center. Each of these unique programs magnificently highlights the humanity of the unborn child while educating its targeted audience on the facts regarding human development. In addition to turning public sentiment towards the pro-life position, we know from experience and research that it is the images of the unborn and fetal development facts that turn many abortion-minded women towards life. Using posters and calendars, prominently displayed but quietly educating, we can strengthen respect for unborn life and prevent many from considering abortion in the first place. Take advantage of the length of time it takes a baby to prepare for birth by slowly and delicately, but deliberately, educating your community on fetal development on a month-by-month basis. By using the calendar, you have an opportunity to educate in more detail in each instance, but also have an excuse to return to the same audience repeatedly to share the truth of the sanctity of life. |