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.
