PBS100Y: The Mission

lots of content is already very polished here https://utsfl.ncln.ca/2015/10/01/the-context-reaching-out-to-a-wounded-campus-in-response-to-an-emergency/

General outline:

• Inspiration re: why are we here?

“There is a difference between passive goodness and active goodness, which is, in my opinion, the giving of one's time and energy in the alleviation of pain and suffering. It entails giving out, finding out, and helping those, who are suffering and in danger, and, not merely in leading an exemplary life in a purely passive way by doing no wrong.” - Nicholas Winton

• Nicholas Winton or Thomas Clarkson…
• The problem
  • Lack of law
  • (can also pull info from “reforming our movement…”)
  • Briefly, the stats and the history
  • Facing the victims

• The woundedness of our culture
  • Abortion's shockwaves
  • We need to be pro-life ambassadors who approach this issue with knowledge, wisdom, and character.
• The classroom
  • “Our purpose…” with links to relevant sections
  • Give you a grounding in pro-life apologetics and dialogue so you can change hearts and minds through conversation (include testimony video(s) from CC?)
  • Give you a grounding in pro-life strategy and politics
  • You can join us as we work to end the killing in Canada
    • Your campus, where students are statistically most likely to get abortions, and where the next generation of leaders is being formed…
    • Your high school, where students are beginning to face the choice of abortion…
    • Your city, where individuals every day are at best ignoring abortion–and at worst, considering it or planning it.

• Do you know the law in Canada?
  • There is none.
  • http://www.weneedalaw.ca/resources/international-law
• Do you know how many abortions happen in Canada each year?
  • ~100,000
  • http://abortionincanada.ca/stats/annual-abortion-rates/
  • For every four children born, one is killed by abortion
  • “One in three Canadian women will have an abortion in her lifetime, Dunn said, citing the findings of a 2012 study by University of British Columbia researcher Wendy Norman.”^{1) 2)} – though Secular Pro-Life disputes this figure in an American context at least
  • Repeat abortions, 38% in 2005³⁾: the post-abortive are the pre-abortive
  • age demographics, teens and 20s most likely to have abortions
• What does this tell us?
  1. This is not a charitable cause; this is an emergency. 275 children were decapitated, dismembered and disemboweled in our country today.
  2. Our culture is deeply wounded – it's safer too assume and probably more likely when talking to someone on campus that they've had an abortion experience or that a friend or loved one has than that they're untouched by abortion.
     • Killing our relatives

Key point: We need to change people's attitudes about abortion so that this human rights violation becomes unthinkable, to change how people feel and think about abortion so that they will act differently towards it.⁴⁾

But, given the cultural context – the emergency, the woundedness – we need more than just moral arguments.

• Aristotle on persuasion⁵⁾
  • ethos (credibility): we tend to believe people whom we respect (Collins: build a bridge) – hands
  • pathos (emotional) (Collins: touch the heart) – heart
  • logos (logical): persuasion by use of reason, argument (Collins: deliver the message) – head
• Qualities of effective pro-life ambassador⁶⁾
  • knowledge (logos/head) – science, evidence, reason
  • wisdom (pathos/heart) – how to communicate the knowledge that we have
  • character (ethos/hands) – everything we say and how we say it is complimented by who we are. If we talk about respect, we need to show respect. If we talk about love, we need to show love.

“Whom you would change, you must first love, and they must know that you love them.” -Martin Luther King Jr.

concrete examples…pick 1 or 2

We must…

• convert the unconvinced (head)
• activate the converted (heart)⁷⁾
• train the active to work effectively (hands)

• Head: we grow our knowledge through…
  • weekly seminar discussions on apologetics, strategy, politics, in bioethics, biology, moral philosophy, medicine, law, history, etc.
  • pro-life speakers series, bringing great speakers to our club members
• Heart: we stretch our hearts through…
  • approaching the issue from this posture, as ambassadors reaching out to a wounded culture
  • dialogue: a strategy of outreach that emphasizes dialogue and relationship with our peers on campus, to change hearts and minds in order to save lives – being “right” isn't enough
    • listening
    • asking good questions
    • not just knowing what to say, but how to say it
  • heart apologetics: being conscious of the heart and mind of a woman in a crisis pregnancy, and of post-abortive woundedness
• Hands: we lend our hands through…
  • putting our ideas and our empathy into action
  • this is not a charitable cause, this is an emergency – emergencies demand action
  • weekly activism
  • weekly volunteer outreach
  • getting active off campus, e.g. TRTL Speakers Bureau, March for Life, etc.

http://abortionincanada.ca/facts/why-women-choose-abortion/

* Rape / Incest

• http://www.abortionfacts.com/reardon/rape-incest-and-abortion-searching-beyond-the-myths
• http://christiannewswire.com/index.php?module=releases&task=view&releaseID=7284
• http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/raped-impregnated-13-year-old-keeps-baby

Important things to note:

1. the hard cases that people constantly appeal to are rare – if abortion were only legal is cases of rape, we'd have ~1000 children killed each year instead of 100,000 (still important to address the hard cases, but need to understand they're a minority)
2. the common cases of things that material, emotional, spiritual support can seriously address
   • Family Care Office
   • Aid to Women / Sisters of Life
   • What can we do to decrease the perceived need for abortion?