We make two mistakes when it comes to using social media for pro-life outreach: The first is not relying on it at all, and the second is relying on it too much. Social media can be a crucial tool for amassing support for pro-life candidates, recruiting activists, promoting events, and educating peers on life issues. I am quite sympathetic to those who [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I have argued previously that your average member of the public has more in common with pro-lifers than with pro-choice theorists, but I would be remiss if I didn’t recognize that our movement is the new counterculture, a reality which I think some pro-lifers haven’t really internalized. Our common self-perception is that of defenders of tradition, [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I was recently reflecting on Save the 1’s drawing on of the Parable of the Wandering Sheep (Matthew 18:10-14). Save the 1 is a pro-life organization advocating against the rape exception for abortion (in either our personal views or in legislation). In the parable, the shepherd leaves 99 of his herd to find the one sheep [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke As the story of CLC Youth Coordinator Marie-Claire Bissonnette being assaulted during Life Chain by Jordan Hunt has been covered by everyone from conservative figures like Ben Shapiro and Andrew Scheer to millennial media sites Narcity, blogTO, and Vice, to YouTubers h3h3Productions, Chris Ray Gun, and Sargon of Akkad, I felt I shouldn’t miss the opportunity [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Chalk it up to our difficulty eking out cultural ground. Whenever a pro-life politician or other influential figure makes it into the spotlight, many pro-lifers immediately make it our personal mission to defend said person against any and every criticism, simply because we’re so grateful to just have someoneon “our side” to root for, and simultaneously [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Not-so-breaking news: The Progressive Conservatives won the Ontario election and nine pro-life PC candidates whom CLC green-lighted now have seats in the legislature. I’m sure their activities will be closely monitored and reported on over the next four years, so at least for this column I want to direct my attention to those pro-life candidates who [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I’m well aware that by the time you read this, the Ontario election may have already passed. If that is the case, then, if you live in Ontario, you have the next four years or so to mull over these words. With the dropping of Tanya Granic Allen as a Progressive Conservative candidate, though, I just [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke On March 20, 2017, famed white supremacist Richard Spencer declared, “We should recognize that the pro-life movement – this is not the alt-right, this has nothing in common with identitarians … Pro-lifers want to be radically dysgenic, egalitarian, multi-racial human rights thumpers – and they’re not us.” In response, I commented on my Facebook wall, “Well, [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke March 10 was quite the emotional roller coaster. The widely-anticipated release of the Ontario PC leadership election results was delayed. Rumours swirled that Tanya Granic Allen had placed in third, and Doug Ford and Christine Elliott were neck and neck and battling it out in the backrooms. Then, out of Saskatchewan: News that Brad Trost had [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke I must confess that when I found out about the Canada Summer Jobs program adding an attestation to their application to exclude pro-life groups from getting funding, I did not think anything could be done about it. I complained on Facebook and signed Campaign Life Coalition’s petition, but just accepted that this would be yet another [...]
Over the pasts several weeks I have read and reread Stephanie Gray’s book Love Unleashes Life (LifeCycle Books). At the same time, I also had the privilege of attending the U.S. March for Life, which had a very similar theme of “love saves lives.” I was particularly excited by this book because Stephanie Gray has long been a pro-life heroine of mine, [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Some friends of mine have been floating around the idea of leaving the pro-life movement and retreating into family life or their careers. I have seen it happen before – students worried about becoming social pariahs or about potential employers seeing politically incorrect content on their social media or in a google search of their name [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke There are many reasons why the content of Bill 163, the so-called “Safe Access to Abortion Services Act” and its passage through the Ontario legislature are lamentable. I could go on and on, as many have about the restriction of free speech, the absolute and intentional mischaracterization of pro-lifers, the harms that will result to both [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke Dear young pro-lifer, how do you feel about becoming a plumber? A farmer? A carpenter? I ask not to imply that these careers are inferior (for they are not), but to imply, rather, that your options may be limited. It is becoming more and more difficult for a pro-lifer or a social conservative to pursue the [...]
Talk Turkey Josie Luetke In a YouTube video published on July 25, as part of a series called “Philosophy Time,” featuring actor James Franco and his friend Eliot Michaelson, Princeton University philosophy professor Liz Harman tries to justify the view that early-stage abortions are morally neutral. Her argument, in a nutshell, is this: If a fetus does not have moral [...]