The Pro-Life Action League hosted a Pro-Life Activism and Training Day on Saturday, September 19 in Aurora Illinois. League national director Joe Scheidler said it was one of the best pro-life training sessions he had ever attended. The day started with the monthly protest outside Planned Parenthood Aurora. The sidewalk along New York Street was packed with pro-lifers protesting Planned Parenthood’s deadly business. After the protest, the day continued with a pro-life training seminar at New Life Baptist Church in Naperville. The first speaker was League executive director Eric Scheidler. Eric gave a talk entitled Sharing the Pro-Life Message. In the talk, Eric presented all the facts every pro-lifer needs to know as well as how to communicate the pro-life message effectively. Eric’s talk ties in to the League’s Sharing the Pro-Life Message handbook with page number references and more so it also functions as an introduction to using the handbook. Each seminar participant walked away with a copy of the handbook and the skills to put it to good use. After a break for lunch, the pro-lifers heard from Amy Sobie from the Elliot Institute on how abortion harms women. The Elliot Institute specializes in original research on the physical and mental damage that occurs after women have abortions. Amy had a wealth of information on research conducted all over the world showing the damage so often hidden by the guilt and shame that surrounds the abortion industry. 
The next speaker was League associate JT Eschbach with his talk entitled Action Speaks Louder Than Words on sidewalk counseling. JT has been counseling for over six years and has compiled all his experience into a talk that can equip anyone to take to the sidewalks and save babies and their mothers from the pain of abortion. JT also provided participants with a booklet he and other sidewalk counselors put together on the specific challenges of counseling at Planned Parenthood Aurora. The day’s final speaker was Joe Scheidler who inspired the crowd with his talk on the spiritual aspect of pro-life activism, reminding them that fighting abortion is fighting the devil on the front lines of spiritual war. He ended with a quote from the famous St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition; and gentlemen in England now-a-bed shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin’s day.
Any day where pro-life activism is taking place is St. Crispin’s Day, Joe reminded the crowd, and they are that happy few. The crowd left the seminar full of knowledge and inspiration to get involved in activism, and new recruits were won to the critical mission of sidewalk counseling outside abortion clinics.
