Our Face the Truth Tour last week was a great success. (You can read more details about it at the additional links listed at the end of this post.) Among the hundreds of pro-lifers who participated in this year’s Tour were dozens of teens, including members of three Chicago area pro-life clubs (Apostles for Life and Crusaders for Life, both based in Lombard, and the pro-life club at St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago). It was great to see so many teens jump right in and voluntarily take on some of the hard jobs — like passing out literature — and engage in (sometimes lengthy) discussions with people passing by who didn’t at all like what we were doing. Case in point — Alex, one of the members of Crusaders for Life: My Pro-Life Action League co-worker Corrina Gura was the one who filmed this exchange, and she wrote this on the PLAL blog earlier this week:
The debate I captured between Mr. Pinstripe and a pro-life teen, Alex, was priceless. Unfortunately the streets of Chicago are pretty loud, but you should be able to hear enough to hear Alex schooling this man. The actual exchange was over 15 minutes long (talk about pro-life patience!), but these excerpts should give you an idea of their discussion. Mr. Pinstripe was very angry that someone under the age of 18 would even be holding a sign—referring several times to the teenage girl he spoke to before confronting Alex. The funny thing is, when she told him that she was old enough to have aborted a baby like the one she was holding a picture of, he couldn’t handle her answer and walked away. The man said he thinks a person has sole dominion over his or her own body, thus no one should be able to tell a woman not to have an abortion. I answered that argument above: It’s murder, so we do get to have an opinion on the subject. And of course Mr. Pinstripe made the usual argument about the unborn baby not being able to care for itself. Alex replied by saying that if his eight year old brother was left completely to his own devices he’s not sure his brother would survive either: Does that make his eight year old brother less than human? My favorite moment, though, comes when Know-It-All tries to answer Alex’s argument that abortion is deadlier than childbirth, but…um…but… Priceless. When Mr. Pinstripe’s friend called to ask where he was and why he was late, he bragged that he’d been “harassing the anti-choice protesters.” I’ll bet he forgot to mention to his friend that he was out-debated by a teenager.
