Getting teens to understand that every life has value

    Brother Martin students received food for thought about the value of life Jan. 10 when the Louisiana Right to Life Office brought ACCESS Pregnancy and Referral’s new mobile pregnancy unit to their campus.
    “What makes us equal?” Mary Nadeau, Louisiana Right to Life special projects coordinator and 40 Days for Life Louisiana coordinator, asked junior students. “Being human makes us equal.”
 

  She mentioned how things in society are valued by their usefulness, appearance, convenience and pleasantness. Is it right to determine the value of human beings?        “Human value is unchanging and equal, but in our culture, we assign value to people as we do things,” she said. For example, she said people are valued for their intelligence or their looks or their athletic ability, but our value is not determined by what we do in life or how we look, but because we are human.
    “What happens when we forget that humans are equal?” Nadeau said.
    She displayed the quote by Martin Luther King Jr.: “A threat to human rights anywhere is a threat to human rights everywhere.”
    “Does abortion violate human equality?” she inquired.
 
   Nadeau brought up the popular movie, “The Hunger Games,” and how 22 people are killed during the movie. “‘The Hunger Games’ happens every day in Louisiana,” since daily in Louisiana, there are 22 abortions, she said.
    “Twenty-two is too many,” Nadeau said. “If we lose sight of the unborn, who is to say we don’t lose sight of everyone (elderly, disabled, the marginalized) else.”
    Nadeau asked, “If the unborn is human like us, is there any justification for abortion?” Then she had them consider, “If the unborn is not human, why is there a need for abortion?”
    Nadeau thinks that taking life by abortion destroys us as a society. People just don’t understand their worth as humans.
    “Does the way we treat the unborn affect how we treat others in society?” Nadeau asked. “We’ve accepted that some human beings are less valuable than others. This undermines the value of every human being.”
Tours make it real
    The students were invited to tour the mobile unit – which the Louisiana Right to Life dubs the “Life on the Road” life bus – to learn about the resources and support services (ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, counseling) offered to women to help them make informed life choices about pregnancy, adoption, abortion and parenting.
    “The bus is a response to the reality that pregnancies happen in the world, and, as people of good will, as Christians, we have to offer women resources,” Cody Reed, youth program director of Louisiana Right to Life, said. “We feel abortion is the way we have failed women.”
    Reed made juniors realize the serious situations women sometimes face due to poverty or rape and how we must answer a call to help.
    “We can’t ignore the fact of the situation and only say, ‘Don’t get an abortion,’” Reed said.
    Cisco Gonzales, a 2013 Brother Martin graduate and Youth Ambassador for Life, accompanied Nadeau and Reed. Gonzales is a member of LSU Students for Life and prays outside the Baton Rouge abortion clinic.
    “This is the prime age here,” Gonzales said. “If we educate them now, once they get to college, they will remember this. If we educate them young, they will know what to do.”
    Juniors think approaching the issue of abortion through a more biological and human rights perspective and not necessarily as a moral issue  – that abortion is a sin – is more effective.
    “Kids our age are confused on where they stand on abortion,” one junior said. “I feel as if they might not respond as well since they are confused, but presenting it as human rights would make more sense.”
    The message received in the presentation by Louisiana Right to Life reinforces what Brother Martin juniors are learning this year in their social justice class, said religion teacher Tony Melito. “It ties into the curriculum of Catholic social teaching.”
    The bus is scheduled to visit other high schools.
    Christine Bordelon can be reached at cbordelon@clarion herald.org.