Standing Firm [Megan}

Sept. 17, I showed up at Bishop Alemany High School in California’s San Fernando Valley prepared to give the Case for Life presentation to six classes — approximately 20 students in each class — throughout the course of the school day.

As the teacher led me into the school’s chapel, and students began filing in, he explained that he had sent an email to his fellow teachers and they, too, were interested in their students being trained to defend their pro-life views. Nodding in understanding, I mentally registered that the 120 students I had planned to reach that day had just jumped to 1,200. Internally, I was pumping both fists in the air and dancing with excitement.

For the next six hours, I did what we at Life Training Institute do — teaching students the nature of moral claims; how to simplify the issue by asking, “What is the unborn?” (the question at the center of the issue); answering that question by appealing to science; and making a philosophical case for human value and defending it with SLED.

I found myself more than adequately able to answer even the student’s toughest questions, and they didn’t hold back:

What about the rape issue?

What about birth defects?

How is abortion any different from innocent lives lost during war?

The laundry list goes on. (Answers to these questions and more can be found in our training material.)

A couple of students were particularly relentless, but even their heated appeals could not stand against the logic of the truth we at LTI proclaim — that the unborn are human beings, and human beings are inherently valuable because they bear the image of their maker. My responses, while gracious, left students with opposing views little to no wiggle room, and their fellow classmates got that. I watched as many of them looked from me to the questioners, drew their brows in thought, and nodded at my replies. I am certain that many walked out convinced, while dissenters hobbled out with stones in their shoes, as Greg Koukl would say.

One young man approached me afterward and thanked me for my presentation. He pointedly ended with: “I think you’re wrong. And the state tells me that I’m right.”

In parting, I was able to leave him with one final question about the origin of the laws to which he was appealing (again, more on this in our training material).

Countless of his classmates approached me with genuine excitement. I cannot recall the number of times I heard, “Thank you! That was awesome!” And “I wish I had known this information when I was talking to someone about abortion the other day…”

I left exhausted, but greatly encouraged. We at LTI are students of our craft; therefore, we know our field. We are able to keep on shedding light on this issue because our feet are firmly planted in the truth. Knowing what is reasonably true, and being able to think carefully about it greatly lessen any fear of ideas that might be raised up against it.

It stands, and we stand on it.

I hope that our work enables others, by God’s grace, to plant their feet just as firmly.