School’s out, but the pro-life movement’s on

The day SkyView Academy High School called a last-minute school assembly in the gym to discuss the coronavirus, high school senior Brooke Rizuto and her Students for Life group had planned to use the school library for a speaking event featuring local pro-life activists. But the mandatory assembly forced them to cancel. When the campus in Highlands Ranch, Colo., closed for the remainder of the year, Rizuto said, “Every event we had planned was completely canceled.”

“April is usually one of our most busy months on college and high school campuses,” said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. But the COVID-19 pandemic has forced pro-life college and high school students like Rizuto to make major changes to their plans for campus activist work and to move much of their activism online.

The cancellations have had positive effects, too. “Historically, we see the most vandalism and threats of violence against students [in April],” Hawkins said. It’s also the time of year when groups like Planned Parenthood usually come into schools to teach their liberalized version of sex education. With the sudden closure of campuses, vandalism and violence are a non-issue, and Planned Parenthood has lost its opportunity to reach students in the classroom. Pro-life organizations have an unexpected opportunity to engage with students without pushback from pro-abortion groups, which Hawkins said have been “neutralized.”

Now, instead of planning and hosting in-person events, Rizuto is participating in online training and other meetings. A couple of weeks ago, she joined other high school and college pro-life advocates from Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming for a video chat with their Students for Life regional coordinator. During the videoconference, each student attempted to engage pro-abortion supporters on social media. Rizuto posted a question on NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Facebook page. Another student, Jaylem Durousseau from Regis University in Denver, posted comments on several abortion threads on Reddit. He said some of those discussions continued for a day and a half. Although the interactions helped Durousseau learn to carry on online conversations, “it’s hard to gauge how much people were able to change their minds,” he said. “Sometimes, all we’re really doing is just planting that seed in someone’s mind.”

Pro-life students from across the country also have come together for online training and webinars. Students for Life hosted a virtual showing of the pro-life movie Unplanned a couple of weeks ago. On Friday, the organization is encouraging students to participate in a chalk contest by writing pro-life messages on their driveways for their neighbors to see.

Hawkins said the organization has found more than 100 leads for possible new Students for Life groups because of its virtual events: “We’ve never had an initiative where we’ve had so many new group leads come in.”

But students on the ground fear that the lack of in-person interactions could lead them to lose momentum with their campus clubs. Rizuto said talking face-to-face was the most effective way for her to encourage other students to join the pro-life club at her school. Some of the students who showed commitment while on campus have not joined in the online efforts. Durousseau said that carrying on pro-life work remotely would likely continue to be difficult: “But I think it’s going to be something that will teach us how to be grittier. Everything else is going to seem so much easier to do.”