TORONTO – Canada’s pro-life university students will use the latest information technology to promote a stronger right to life attitude on the college campuses throughout the country.
Students plan to use the internet and electronic mail bulletin boards to complement their regular newsletter in an effort to link post-secondary pro-life efforts coast to coast.
Leading the way in this effort is the National Campus Life Network (NCLN), a one-year-old organization working to link individual campus-based pro-life organizations across the country.
More than 50 pro-life university students from 13 post-secondary institutions took part in NCLN’s second annual symposium January 31- February 1 at St. Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto. Student pro-lifers from Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia were represented at the symposium.
Students led small group discussions on networking, sharing resources and taking advantage of the internet for pro-life work. Students also discussed some of the obstacles they face in proclaiming the sanctity of life ethic in an environment which is indifferent, if not hostile to pro-life values.
Others to address post-secondary students included pro-life attorney Angela Costigan, Philip Horgan of the Catholic Civil Rights League, and Michael Izzotti of Pharmacists for Life Canada.
“There’s no doubt that there is some hostility to the pro-life message on many university campuses,” said Vanya Gobbi, coordinating director of NCLN. “But student pro-lifers shouldn’t feel intimidated by this hostility, especially when they have support and resources from their pro-life peers in other provinces.”
Pro-life students were dismayed with news that the University of Toronto’s undergraduate newspaper recently rejected a paid advertisement from the Birthright organization, on the grounds that the world renowned pregnancy counselling service provided too narrow a focus.
Gobbi has prepared a three-year strategic plan for the NCLN which cites various objectives, including an increase in the number of university pro-life groups, a 100 per cent survival rate of existing groups, and outreach efforts to high school students about to enter university.
Gobbi and her colleagues with the campus life network believe it is important to cultivate the pro-life attitude among students. “By involving young adults at the post-secondary level, their knowledge of the issues, and their activity level is increased,” Gobbi said. “This will result in an increase in post-secondary students remaining actively pro-life in the professional lives.”
The NCLN is now developing a website and electronic event calendar to put diverse campus pro-life groups into immediate contact with one another. Gobbi expects the website will be up and running by this summer.
Carla Yanez, a religious studies student at the University of Toronto, said the post-secondary network can serve as a means of educating students to the full range of right to life issues. “Pro-lifers are often seen as single issue people,” Yanez told The Interim. “Students should be open to examining the entire spectrum of pro-life issues.”
Father Tom Lynch, a professor of moral theology at St. Augustine’s Seminary in Toronto, has long promoted the use of the latest information technology to promote pro-life work.
Why should those promoting the anti-life culture have the best technology?” he asked.