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NRL News
Face to
Face with Our Future They should be absolutely terrified! I am speaking, of course, of the media elite who are doing everything they can to paint our movement as old, tired, and pretty much dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. The rank and file of the right-to-life cause is getting younger and more diverse with each passing day. One has only to attend any of the many right-to-life youth events throughout the year to realize just how wrong the mainstream media is. Over the course of the summer—during which I spent most of my time surrounded by pro-life young people—I marveled at just how bright our future really is. And I wished that there were a way I could share them with all of you. Then I realized that I can. I can, as we all learned in kindergarten, “show and tell.” Of course it’s not quite as fabulous as actually being there, but it will give you an idea of just how secure our future really is. Among the ranks, for example, of our Wisconsin Right to Life summer campers this year we had 55 young women and 10 young men (many of whom stayed to be trained at multiple camp sessions)—a ratio typical of Teens for Life events. (Note to mainstream media ... the girls outnumbered the guys about five and a half to one. How’s that for our allegedly “male-dominated” movement??) We had children adopted from Liberia and Bosnia, as well as within the United States. We had young people with disabilities—one young man had bilateral prostheses on both legs and a personality that just would not quit. We had a contingent of young Hispanic men and women from southern Wisconsin who are, as we speak, starting our first completely bilingual chapter of Wisconsin Teens for Life. We had accomplished violinists and trumpet players, scholars, home-schoolers, students from public and private schools, and kids with skin in a variety of hues. But none of that is what mattered most. We had a veritable army of passionate, dedicated young people eager to learn how they could defend the cause of life and make a difference in a world that often dismisses them as too young to be involved. If only the world knew! My camp team could certainly tell them. We watched as a 12-year-old boy passionately defended a pro-life federal law in a mock lobbying session. He was so good he knocked the socks off our NRLC senior congressional liaison who was conducting the session. I observed five little Hispanic girls quietly cornering my assistant to ask how they could get more copies of all of the brochures in their camp binders ... and where they could also get them in Spanish to reach out to everyone in their community. We bit back tears and grinned at each other as we overheard one young man, in a mock peer counseling session, respond to a crisis pregnancy with “Congratulations! You’re having a baby, that is so awesome! What can we do to help you?” We watched kids from all walks of life put aside cultural and geographic differences to unite behind a common cause. We watched them get to know each other, make each other laugh, and form bonds that will last a lifetime. We smiled to ourselves as they exchanged e-mail addresses and promised to add each other as Facebook friends the minute they got home “so we can back each other up when school starts—people there can get really obnoxious about abortion and stuff.” We tried not to jump for joy when they interrupted sessions with pertinent, well-thought-out, and (in my humble opinion) quite brilliant questions about everything from the Hyde Amendment and the Mexico City Policy to the fight against euthanasia. We choked back tears as we read their evaluations, most of which pledged specific ways in which they were, as individuals, going to make a difference and help in the fight for life. And we were reminded that no matter how long it takes, how much work is involved, how tired we “oldies” get, or how much the media harangues, the bottom-line, honest-to-goodness, jaw-dropping, heart-racing, joy-inducing truth is this: our movement is strong and getting stronger by the day. For more information on how you can involve youth in your area, contact us at jlittle@wrtl.org. Joleigh Little works full-time for Wisconsin Right to Life where she is a region coordinator and Wisconsin Teens for Life director. |