Students for Life: Becoming the Revolution

By Kristan Hawkins, CP Op-Ed Contributor Wednesday, January 22, 2014

This week, our nation will commemorate not only 41 years of legal abortion in our land but also the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act. With this historic moment in mind, choosing the theme of yesterday's 2,500 person Students for Life of America National Conference was easy. We selected, "Be the Revolution."

Because now is the time for us, and those 600,000 Americans at the March for Life today, to truly become revolutionary. To not only continue to do our life-saving work every day in communities across America, but to do more. To begin treating this cause, the greatest human rights battle our world has ever known, as if our own lives, our children's lives, and our nation depends on it - because they do.

This week, our team at Students for Life will be reaching the pro-life generation with this very message. And just as how the leaders of the civil rights movement relied on the passion, energy, and creativity of younger Americans, so does our pro-life movement.

From our history books, we know it was four courageous Greensboro students who sat at a segregated lunch counter, which propelled many to get out and march. Now it's our turn.

It was almost 100 years after the Civil War that black Americans finally received their full legal rights and protection that are God-given. To be honest, our nation, our families, cannot survive another 59 years of abortion. Too much blood has been shed and too many women and families have been ripped apart. Now is the time to change our thinking. From simply a movement to a revolution, from reducing abortion to eliminating, from "fighting the fight" to winning.

First, we have to see the end in our mind's eye - what our nation will look like without legal abortion - and believe it is possible. As I travel the country, I often meet pro-lifers, who have dedicated their lives to this cause, yet don't actually believe that what we are fighting will ever end. With that mentality, victory will never be achieved as abolishing abortion begins with envisioning its end and forcing our nation to make sure all of the resources and support a woman facing a crisis needs to choose life. Because we know, no woman ever chooses abortion, it's what she feels forced to do, to go running into the very hands that prey upon her.

Next, we have to transform our thinking from telling to recruiting. We've told our friends and family about the gruesome reality of abortion for decades. Now, it's time to recruit them. To ask them to join the revolution with us, to not sit in the booths watching, but to become abortion abolitionists and sit at the counter alongside us.

Then, we have to go out and win this revolution in every school and community. To fight for the resources and support she will need when our land is abortion-free and to shut down the very industry that preys upon her. With this, we will transform our culture with our every move.

Make no mistake about it, revolutions are long and often take more than one generation to win, but this is a cause worth fighting for.

Kristan Hawkins is the President of Students for Life of America, the nation's largest pro-life youth organization with over 700 groups nationwide. She is author of the new book, Courageous: Students Abolishing Abortion in this Lifetime.