Earlier this week we looked at the fatal assumption and pro-life activism. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be shining the spotlight on our wonderful students, and what made them actively pro-life. Meet the first, Helena from Birmingham Students for Life!
Student Heroes
12th June 2020
I’m Helena – the societies secretary. I’m entering into my 4th year of medicine and my second year on BSFLs committee. Like most of us, I grew up in a very pro-choice home and peer group. My first exposure to pro-life was from an unexpected source. As a pre-teen, I read The Timetravellers Wife (bit adult for a 12 year old but I got my hands on it) – in it there’s a very graphic description of a miscarriage. It was horrifying to read about a translucent skinned little baby being born, gasping for air, and dying, its lungs too underdeveloped to cope. I was repulsed, sickened, I cried, but I was also transfixed by this hidden horror that no one seemed to talk about. Learning that this happened in 1 in 4 pregnancies was shocking to me, and I spent time reading other miscarriage stories, totally aghast. The first time abortion came up in school it was described to me as ‘induced miscarriage’. I honestly felt a bit sick. WHY would ANYONE want to CAUSE that?!!? I was young and I didn’t have articulated points to say, but every time the topic came up I squirmed. I tried repeating the pro choice logic, trotted out their slogans in class, but in the face of what I knew about life before birth – it sounded hollow even to my ears.
Once I hit the teens it was time for ‘the talk’. For my pro-choice environment, this included talking about how pregnancy would ruin my life and derail my education (nothing more freeing than fear!). I remember telling my parents in the car that I would just repeat a year, give birth and put the baby up for adoption. I was told I’d get too attached, once I have the hormones I’ll feel a bond and it’s better to nip it in the bud.
The women in my family told me about their own abortions. One had aborted in her 20s, and said her career since would have never happened without that abortion, or her relationship now, or her current family. Another had aborted a child with a foetal abnormality. My brother, very angry when I expressed some pro-life sentiments at 15, asked me if I thought these women that we loved were murderers. I don’t know if they understood what they were doing, I don’t know if you can assign guilt to them – but these children had been killed. I couldn’t deny that. I found myself mourning family members I had never met, who were never given the dignity of a name or a grave.
We reach the uni years. I was ‘personally pro-life’ long before I got involved in activism. The urge to get involved grew, but I was conflicted. What would happen to me, was I even allowed to be pro-life? What would my family and friends say? Could I get thrown out of uni? Since I got involved in pro-life activism, I have never felt so free. All of the things I thought I couldn’t say have been said, all of the things I thought I wasn’t allowed to do have been done. Whatever happens I can now think about those family members I lost and say to them ‘I did something about it’.
And what am I up to during lockdown, I hear you cry. Well, I’m as pro-life as ever, just in a face mask and PPE working in a care home. Pro-life is broader than the foetal humans, and spending time with the geriatric humans has been LIT.
I love the pro-life society we’ve built, and I hope more people will be empowered to just go for it, and experience that giddying freedom of standing up for what you believe. This has already been so worth it.
