My freshman year at Wheaton, I had only a vague impression of Voice for Life (VFL), the college’s pro-life ministry. I figured they held some sort of a book club, drank lots of tea and the women on the cabinet loved baking bread. Not really my scene.
Like many students at Wheaton today, while I would have called myself pro-life, I knew little about VFL or the national pro-life movement. The politics surrounding abortion, however, I understood to be angry and heated.
At my public high school, I knew of no one else pro-life — though I was well aware of a classmate whose mother worked at the Planned Parenthood downtown. Once, I sat in front of two friends on the school bus, listening to them passionately extoll an expectant mother’s right to choose. I disagreed; but what would I have said?
However, after a friend invited me in late April of my freshman year to the Speak Life Conference, which was co-hosted by VFL and the University of Chicago chapter of Students for Life, I agreed to go, feeling cautiously optimistic.
At Speak Life, national pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf spoke at length about the violence of surgical and chemical abortions as well as the trauma women experience from abortion. He focused specifically on apologetics surrounding the abortion debate, introducing me and my peers to this useful syllogism: “It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong.”
Klusendorf talked us through common objections, from abortion as healthcare and “my body, my choice” to the real tragedy of rape and abuse. Through it all, he narrowed the pro-life versus pro-choice debate down to that one syllogism — and this one question: Does life begin at conception? Citing a number of facts, not least being that 96 percent of secular biologists agree that life does begin at fertilization, he gave me the tools to express a viewpoint I held as a Christian but was unable to defend.
After the conference that April, when the VFL cabinet asked me to join their cabinet for the following school year, I said yes. Feeling emboldened by the scientific and moral reasons to stand up for life as a human right, I committed to the cabinet to spend my sophomore year filling the two roles of secretary and historian.
We put on educational lectures in collaboration with Wheaton faculty, prayed in front of the Planned Parenthood in Aurora and attended the March for Life in Springfield. I created posters, kept meeting minutes and researched the club archives. The work wasn’t always fun, but I knew it was good to do.
At a prayer night later that year, I connected with students from Moody Bible Institute involved in their own pro-life club, Zoe. I exchanged numbers with a girl named Jenna, who led the group, and from this brief interaction, a friendship formed. After months of texting ministry updates and prayer requests, she invited me to sleep over at Moody to join her and other Zoe members to go sidewalk counseling. I instantly agreed.
In person, we reconnected immediately, and Jenna asked me who would be taking over Voice for Life the following year. I explained that no one had applied for president. She looked at me meaningfully. “No way,” I laughed uneasily. “I don’t think I’ll have time to get much of anything done. I’m not educated enough, and honestly, I don’t feel passionate enough.”
Jenna shook her head and gave me three pieces of advice. “Small can be strong, passion is a matter of faithfulness and education comes with time.”
Her words rang in my head the next morning as we walked a couple blocks down the street to one of the largest Planned Parenthoods in Chicago, Jenna and her team carrying hand-made signs and pamphlets — they had done this many times before.
Upon arrival, I followed Eliana’s lead, kneeling to pray as Jenna and Amira approached women with tracts encouraging them to visit a local pregnancy center that offered free ultrasounds, counseling and other resources.
I can still feel the biting wind and the cold concrete as I knelt. Another Moody student, James, stood across the street holding a handmade sign: “Free prayer! Jesus loves you,” in bubble letters. Otis, a local, stood with him. The adrenaline of the morning slowly faded as more and more women approached the entrance. I had never been directly in front of a Planned Parenthood before, and the gravity of the situation began to sink in. Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion provider in America, and I knew those entering were likely there for that one reason.
What must it be like to be in an unplanned pregnancy? I thought. Imagine the fear. The panic. The desperation. This was a different sort of realization than the educational Speak Life conference had given me. I knew rationally abortion was wrong, but there by the clinic, I felt it too. How many women seek abortions believing their child is only a clump of cells? Or worse, knowing they are ending an innocent life? I was at a loss for words.
“Jesus, Jesus,” I breathed over and over again, beginning to cry. Looking up, I made eye contact with one of the Planned Parenthood ambassadors watching me. There were four of them, all women, standing outside at 9 a.m. in coats, gloves, boot-cut jeans and Uggs, each with a thin, neon-pink vest to welcome clients. The one with shoulder-length blond hair stared at me. Neither one of us turned away.
I left that day convinced that God wanted me to lead Voice for Life at Wheaton the following school year. I subsequently applied for and received the position of president for 2023-24.
Last summer, still uncertain about my qualifications to lead, I prayed constantly for God’s will to be done, and did my research. I watched the 2022 documentary “The Matter of Life,” to more fully understand the abortion debate. I read newspaper articles and old VFL memoranda. I volunteered at a camp for children in the foster care system, becoming further convicted of the value of life that supersedes circumstance and the overwhelming love God has for every single one of us. As the summer came to a close, I emerged with a three-fold goal I hoped to accomplish through VFL that year: consistent prayer, community outreach and student engagement.
This year, VFL has spent Saturdays by the Aurora Planned Parenthood, one of the largest facilities, and perhaps the largest abortion provider, in the state of Illinois. They perform surgical abortions up to 22 weeks of pregnancy after a woman’s last menstrual cycle. They also openly advertise abortions for women and girls traveling out of state after Dobbs v. Jackson returned the right to abortion to state legislatures. At Aurora prayer, we stand across the street from Planned Parenthood. There, we say hello to our friend Phil from 40 Days for Life, an international pro-life campaign, and together read through liturgies of psalms and hymns.
As cars pass by, we wave to the friendly honks, and bow our heads when we get flipped off. We pray for each family that turns into the parking lot, for the doctors and nurses and for each woman feeling scared and alone. As we stand on that hill in the wind and gray sky, singing “Amazing Grace” and “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” the spiritual warfare is almost tangible. It is a powerful thing to worship God in the face of death.
When we’re not praying, we’re volunteering across the street at Waterleaf Women’s Health Center, a local faith-based pregnancy resource center (PRC). PRCs play a key role in helping women keep their babies. They often provide financial, material and emotional support through childbirth and beyond, supporting families holistically. We spend our Saturday mornings at Waterleaf doing odd jobs like filing, packing gift bags or pasting stamps on envelopes to send to their donors. This work enables them to spend more time with their clients.
But while prayer and local volunteering remain a bedrock of our club’s ministry, it is more difficult to engage students and women on campus. Through tabling in Lower Beamer and other conversations around campus, we know that a number of students, often women, at Wheaton are pro-choice. To reach this demographic, we hosted an apologetics night in October to discuss common pro-choice arguments.
But we wanted to equip those women who already identified as pro-life as well. From this vision, we decided to host the Embodied Faith: Navigating Womanhood in a Post-Modern World conference sponsored by the Chaplain’s Office in February 2024. Centered on Romans 12:1-2, we heard from speakers discussing, biblically and practically, the larger implications a pro-life worldview has for women living in a post-modern society.
I am truly thankful to be studying at a college that believes in life at conception as listed in the Community Covenant, and that we were able to put on the women’s conference; however, it is very easy to disconnect belief from action. Many Christians, even at Wheaton, are complacent when it comes to defending the least of us: those without a voice, whose very lives are often unwanted by society and even their own biological parents.
There are tangible on-the-ground measures you can take to support women and families in crisis pregnancies. While impact may seem meager, when we join in pro-life work we glorify Jesus, the self-proclaimed “Life.” I would encourage anyone reading this article to, from this moment, become an active participant in the fight for life. At Wheaton, join Voice for Life! At home, start donating to your church’s baby bank; find a local PRC; pray and witness outside an abortion clinic; go door-knocking in your community to spread awareness about free women’s health resources; talk to your friends about the sanctity of life.
While the political stigma and negative reputation of being pro-life can certainly turn people away, Christians on both sides of the political spectrum should care for human rights; please don’t let misgivings about the pro-life movement or volatile politicians stop you from living out truth supported by the Bible and reason. Reservations do not excuse the responsibility we all have to speak up for the most vulnerable and marginalized among us: those with no voice at all.
Being “pro-life” is something that many of us will agree with, but never act on. That used to be me. But life created in the imago Dei has great value. God’s word and truth shared gently and in love is powerful.
Rachael Burtness is a junior English writing major from West Hartford, Conn.
The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the position of the Record or Wheaton College.