Reflecting on my First Pro-Life Conference
by Jacob Thomsen
I attended my first Pro-Life Conference last week. Now, much of my work was working behind the scenes to make sure everything went smoothly, but I still got to hear our tremendous speakers and what they had to say. There were a lot of important things to take away from our conference, the two most important things in my opinion were that 1.) we’ve had some tremendous pro-life successes, but the fight is far from over, and 2.) God is infinitely caring and loving toward each of us individually, despite our histories.
Our keynote speaker, David Bereit, was absolutely remarkable and had some excellent points. The focus of his presentation was that, as long as we still have breath in our lungs, our pro-life fight and mission are not yet over. While we had a huge success in the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the battle on abortion was sent back to the states. In our state, NDFA helped pass pro-life laws this session and we will continue to actively fight the battle against abortion, both in the legislature and in the courts. Never believe that Planned Parenthood has given up. They have attacked several states with ballot measures to enshrine abortion in their state constitutions, and they actually have a campaign directed at North Dakota to legalize abortions here.
In North Dakota, the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo was closed. However, they moved across the border into Moorhead. That is the story for so many other states across our nation. In fact, David mentioned that abortion has gone up 9% nationwide. The fight is far from over. While we certainly want to protect life in all its forms here in ND, there are scores of unborn children still being killed across our nation.
The most important thing David left us with was an action that each of us can take, should we find ourselves with someone who is seriously contemplating abortion. He said that a study was done where 1,000 women who had abortions were asked, “what could have changed the situation?” Approximately 74% of those women said they would not have had an abortion if one person in their life said, “I will help you.” If we truly believe in the fight to eradicate abortion, we must be willing to say those four words and mean them.
That was an incredibly powerful part of his presentation that really resonated with me. I know people who have made the decision to have an abortion. What could have changed if I had said those four words?
Our other speakers, Jor-El Godsey, Jill Chandler, and Attorney General Drew Wrigley all had great presentations as well. They touched on things like mail-order abortion pills, the harm they do, and our tremendous network of pregnancy health clinics across the state. They also talked about the value of life, and how we value life here in North Dakota. They were wonderful speakers, and we are truly blessed to have heard them at our conference.
Our final speaker was a mother who had an abortion. She is an incredible woman with a tragic story that moved from pain and suffering into God’s forgiveness. Out of respect, I won’t go into details about her story, but I will tell you it was heart-wrenching, but so incredibly beautiful. It reminded me that God sees each of us individually and knows our hearts personally. He sees what we are going through and leaves the 99 to save the one. Our God is redeeming, loving, caring, and gracious, and that fact has been reflected beautifully in so many stories around the issue of life. This is so fundamental to the pro-life movement, that we distributed a book to every attendee which relates many stories of how God has transformed these situations for His glory.
This gives me hope that the issue of life is something that can be won for the glory of God. Not only can we save more babies through actively partaking in the pro-life movement, but we can win more souls for Heaven! What a beautiful gift!
I loved the first of many Pro-Life Conferences that I hope to be part of. I heard about the challenges those of us in the pro-life movement face, but also so many inspiring, beautiful stories about how God works in people’s lives to bring justice and healing to situations where He is needed most. If you haven’t been to one of our Pro-Life Conferences before, I hope you’ll join us for our next one. I promise it will educate, inspire, and motivate you to step forward in faith and fight even harder to protect the unborn in our state and across the country!