By DEXTER DUGGAN
SAN FRANCISCO — Modern media capabilities allow pro-lifers to get their messages straight out to the public, jumping past the restrictions of dominant pro-abortion writers and editors.
Such capabilities also helped Students for Life of America (studentsforlife.org) reach young people even though the east coast’s dominant blizzard shut down SFLA’s annual major conference scheduled to complement the March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Although about 2,000 registrants couldn’t attend the planned January 23 east coast conference, “many of them tuned in to the livestream” of SFLA’s west coast conference here the following day, January 24, the organization’s director of communications, Kristina Hernandez, told The Wanderer.
Predictably, Planned Parenthood’s ravaging the nation came in for conference attention.
“We have frequent trainings with our student groups on talking about Planned Parenthood as well,” Hernandez added.
The scheduled content was to be the same at both conference locations, she said.
The California conference is scheduled the day after the nation’s second-largest pro-life march, the Walk for Life West Coast through downtown San Francisco, exceeding 50,000 people.
Presentations at the daylong student conference included “Learn how to defend your beliefs,” “Knowing your rights on campus,” “Creating a culture of life,” “Dialogue,” “Reaching your peers,” and “Leadership and effective practices.”
The San Francisco audience, and anyone else who tuned in, also heard of challenges in the works to the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood — a “Women betrayed” tour and a “We don’t need Planned Parenthood” tour.
SFLA President Kristan Hawkins told an afternoon audience of “the overwhelming success the pro-life movement has had . . . talking about Planned Parenthood,” following the Center for Medical Progress’ (CMP) video revelations of PP baby-parts harvesting for money.
In the previous year, she said, polling found a more positive attitude to PP if people didn’t know about its abortion business.
“(W)e just have to tell people what Planned Parenthood actually does,” Hawkins said.
The east coast conference was the first one canceled in its 10-year history, SFLA said.
“We’ve never done this before, and waited to the absolute last minute to make this call, but the state governments here have declared state of emergencies, which means the roads are going to close and public transportation is being suspended,” the SFLA website posted on January 22, advising students to “head straight home after the March for Life is over. . . .
“Our team has spent months planning this event and a lot of money,” it added. “We’ve been so excited to see each of you as well. But we will go forward, we will not stop until abortion has ended. And no blizzard is going to stop us. PERIOD.”
The companion San Francisco conference was the largest in its three-year history, with about 450 students attending, SFLA national field director Missy Stone told The Wanderer. They were from Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, and Washington state, she said.
The west coast weather was only cloudy with some sun and a few sprinkles.
Hawkins, the SFLA president, told the audience that PP is scared at the results of people learning about its activities.
“We are actually living in a very historic time in the pro-life movement,” with PP coming under investigation, she said.
Referring to SFLA’s goal, Hawkins said, “If we are going to end abortion in our lifetime,” PP’s financial lifeline has to be cut off.
PP receives about a half-billion taxpayer dollars a year that it uses to help fight against the taxpayers who oppose its depravity.
“They’re the leader of the abortion industry,” Hawkins said. “. . . They are scared!. . . . They have no defense” against facts shown in the videos.
“. . . We have one year to do everything we can” to defund PP, she said. “. . . This year we’ve got to keep Planned Parenthood the main thing. . . . We have a moral obligation to stop this because they have our money” through tapping taxpayers while pushing forward with the agenda of dismembering and selling babies.
Earlier in her talk, Hawkins said people don’t like corporations that don’t tell the truth and make money off them — the profile of PP.
PP’s plan is to keep its customers coming back to it again and again, she said, and it doesn’t like competition from pro-life pregnancy centers.
Missy Stone, the national field director, told the audience that PP has strategically branded itself as the best in women’s health care.
However, the videos show that PP didn’t get women’s consent before selling baby body parts, and unethically changed abortion methods in order to do better harvesting, Stone said.
Abortion is a dangerous procedure to start with, she said, and “they’re actually doing more dangerous medical procedures” when they alter them to improve the harvest.
The Shocking Indictment
During the conference here, Hawkins presented CMP leader David Daleiden with one of SFLA’s Defender of Life awards. The following day, January 25, the Harris County, Texas, grand jury announced it was indicting Daleiden and a pro-life associate.
The shocking indictment obviously was a corrupt power play to protect the huge PP abortuary in Houston that was exposed by CMP.
SFLA provided The Wanderer with a statement from Hawkins responding to this.
“It’s horrifying that the Houston grand jury failed to indict the organization who was willing to sell baby body parts, yet somehow manages to indict the journalist who caught them in the act,” Hawkins said.
“The fact that an employee of the district attorney is on the board of Planned Parenthood confirms an incestuous relationship between corrupt officials in the Harris County DA’s office and the nation’s largest abortion provider, whose livelihood is on the line should they be criminally charged with selling the body parts of aborted babies,” she said.
“I’m proud to stand with David, the Center for Medical Progress, and journalists everywhere on this one,” Hawkins said.
For those tempted to think the indictment must be “good” because it was issued in “conservative Texas,” one need only recall that the state isn’t politically uniform. It wasn’t long ago that the homosexual mayor of Houston itself demanded to review the sermons of morally traditionalist Christian pastors.
An online petition at LifeSiteNews.com’s “Life Petitions,” supporting Daleiden and demanding an investigation of PP, went viral, gathering 62,000 signatures in its first day.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress