On Sunday, January 15, hundreds gathered in downtown Chicago equipped with yellow umbrellas, signs and balloons with the word “LIFE” written staunchly across. In that crowd a group of eight Northwestern students proudly raised their “I am the pro-life generation” signs like shields as they marched for the right to life.
The March for Life is an annual anti-abortion demonstration held in cities across the country, and the Northwestern Right to Life student group has been anticipating the Chicago leg of the march.
Formerly known as Northwestern Students for Life, NRTL was founded in 2003 and aims to “raise awareness about abortion and the unborn child’s right to life,” according to Dominic Bayer, a Weinberg freshman and president of the group. The members have high aims for their organization, but on Northwestern’s liberal-leaning campus, NRTL struggles with visibility. A few days prior to the march, there were only five members at the weekly meeting, four of whom were part of the executive board.
Members of the group say they feel an obligation to be the voice that speaks out on campus against abortion. For Noah Repel, a Weinberg senior and service chair, his involvement with the club is a form of gratitude for the single mother who raised him.
“It breaks my heart to think how many people did not get that opportunity to be born and to have a loving person in their life,” Repel said. “So I feel like I don’t have the right to have another position from the one I have.”
Bayer approaches NRTL from a similar vein, citing his younger siblings and his mother’s multiple pregnancies as important factors in his decision to help single moms and those in unwanted pregnancies through the process.
Others spoke about simply feeling a strong tie to protecting the rights of all.
“One of my favorite quotes is by Pope Francis: ‘The right to life is the right from which all others flow,'*” said Christian Surtz, Communication freshman and NRTL vice-president. “All the other issues that are going on in our world are all about protecting individual rights, and I don’t know why that shouldn’t extend to that of the unborn.”
The members of NRTL express a need for compassion and love as a means of ending abortions rather than punishment. They emphasize the importance of actually doing something about the issue, rather than just being a protest group.
The NRTL has “a clear foundation in service,” according to Ellen Peters, a SESP sophomore and the group’s secretary. The group has created a Northwestern pregnancy resources website and pamphlets to be given out at Northwestern health services. They also try to volunteer at the Well of Mercy, a home that provides single, pregnant women with resources and education opportunities, at least once a quarter. Many of the members recalled the Well of Mercy as one of their favorite and most impactful service opportunities. There they spent the day doing handiwork around the home, caring for the children and helping mothers with daily chores.
However, at the end of the day they go back to a college campus and be students. None of the members are parents and they have never assisted any Northwestern undergraduate students through an unplanned pregnancy.
Repel said it was distressing that no students had ever reached out to them even though they knew that statistically, unintended pregnancies must be occurring. Over 2 million college-aged women (ages 18-24) become pregnant each year, but parenting as an undergraduate student is not usually discussed on campus.
However, as much as NRTL emphasizes its commitment to helping women and placing women first in this contentious debate between pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion activists, four out of five of the members at the last meeting were male – which begs the question: on what footing does feminism stand within the organization?
“When feminism gets brought up in the talk of pro-life, one of the best answers I’ve heard to that is if you want to go statistically, you’re killing 50% of women in abortions,” Peters, the only woman in the room, said. “So, if we want to go talk about women’s rights, you’re killing women.”
That may not be accurate. The gender of abortions is hardly discernable statistically, since most safe abortions are performed during the first trimester (within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy) and the gender of a fetus is discerned between 16 and 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Peters stressed, though, that banning abortion wasn’t the best way to approach the NRTL’s mission.
“Even if you ban abortion, women will still be getting abortions,” Peters said. “It’ll just be unsafe, and we don’t want that. We don’t want women to have to go to the point where they want to kill their own child, and the only way that you’re going to be able to combat that is through love and understanding.”
NRTL wants Northwestern students to know it is here as a resource and a real voice on campus. Though the group may be small in numbers, NRTL wants to be heard.
“We want to make clear our commitment, the commitment of a bunch of people defending the unborn child’s right to life,” Bayer said. “Whether that be through ending abortion through political means or through providing support to women in unwanted pregnancies, we’re there to support unborn children.”
*NBN could not find evidence of the claim that Pope Francis said these words.