By Ethan Vaughan, Asst. News Editor
George Mason University’s Catholic Campus Ministry carried out its pro-life week starting last Monday, with special events at the campus chapel and elsewhere aimed at promoting pro-life views.
Organizers said that the event’s goal was to take the pro-life message, with which Mason’s Catholic students are already well acquainted, and
disseminate it to the school as a whole.
“We’d been talking about this throughout the year,” said Katie Robinson, a junior English major and a member of CCM’s Bellarmine Board, which functions as an activities coordination body. “We’ve done a lot at [the] chapel to educate and raise awareness, and we wanted to take that to campus as well.”
From Monday through Thursday, CCM participants set up a kiosk in the Johnson Center, where they used an innovative method to attract students.
“We had a sign that said ‘Free Brownies,’” Robinson said. “We knew if we just said we were pro-life a lot of people wouldn’t come, so we offered free brownies and then passed out flyers and talked to anyone who wanted to talk to us.”
The flyers included an advertisement for Olivia Gans, a pro-life speaker who came to campus on Saturday, and philosophical reasons for supporting the pro-life movement.
“People walking by took the fliers,” Robinson said. “And a few people stopped. We had a few who told us they were opposed to what we were doing and weren’t sure if they should take the brownies, but there were no big reactions.”
For Robinson, though, one particular visitor stood out.
“There was a man who stopped and said, ‘Thank you for making a philosophical issue about this. You really don’t need to have religious beliefs to understand the pro-life movement.’”
CCM members held all-day prayer sessions on Friday, and on Saturday, they heard from Gans, who became involved with pro-life issues after getting an abortion as a young woman and who is now the president of the Virginia Society for Human Life.
Robinson said that CCM’s Pro-Life Week activities on campus were limited, but that the organization thought initiating further outreach was important.
“It was our first time and we didn’t want to do too much,” Robinson explained. “We wanted to see people’s reaction, and we didn’t have the resources to do a weeklong outreach. It’s important, though. Most women who get abortions are 18-25, which means that there are dozens of women on our campus who are pregnant and considering abortions or who have had abortions already. We want to approach these mothers with understanding and let them know that there are other options.”
Robinson said that Life Choices, an organization with an office at University Mall, was a good resource for those who needed assistance making a decision or coming to terms with decisions already made.
“The Life Choices Pregnancy Center offers alternatives to abortion and will talk to women who have already had abortions,” Robinson said. “There are people out there who can help girls finish schooling and keep their child. People need to know that.”
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