Scottish Catholic Observer

Walking into Turnbull High School to inform a classroom of 16-year-olds why abortion was an ethical and scientific wrong was a daunting experience. The apprehension came not from any doubt over the pro-life message but from the image of young pro-choice millennials defending a ‘woman’s right to choose’ while furiously deeming abortion a basic healthcare right. It is the image painted by society, so it is the image I expected.

With students filling the room it was difficult to ignore the large numbers of young girls present in the class. As the pro-life lecture began, hysterical backlash was all I envisioned. Yet, 10 slides in, I looked up to find the faces of those teenage girls staring back with a look of horror. It was stunned students that followed that presentation—stunned as they were caught in the realisation of what this ‘civilised’ secular society supports, and how it has misled them.

16-year-old Anna (names have been changed) said: “I don’t agree with killing a baby—human life is precious and I think we should obviously value it. I don’t think it’s ever a necessity. The world could live without abortion.”

Students condemned the ‘disgusting’ notion of abortion. Yet when discovering the United Kingdom’s stance on abortion for babies with disabilities, it was tones of betrayal that captivated their voices.

Emma, 16, said: “I think that’s shocking. It should be the same as ‘normal’ people because they are just the same. We would never discriminate against them when they’re out of the womb, so why would we do it when they’re inside?

“It’s wrong, I have disabled family and they grow up just the same as me. That’s not right at all. We can’t differentiate between people. It’s not fair.”

The presentation began at 10am and ended at 10.40am. Within those 40 minutes a truth had been given. It enlightened those teenagers to the value of life. But it also revealed a lie: that society has deceived us.

The young women of today are not frenzied in support of pro-choice advocacy. They are not screeching militants pressing for ‘abortion on demand without apology.’ That is the rhetoric of the past. Yet it is the image that society still plagues us with.

It has been depicted to us that the 1967 Abortion Act has ingrained within our society a pro-choice culture that will not be challenged or changed.

Society has preserved the image of the angry woman brandishing a coat hanger and has failed to represent the young modern woman who is horrified by abortion and equipped to battle it with a fresh sense of science, ethics and justice.

The reaction from these young girls reveals that we are in the midst of a cultural shift. The pro-life cause has revolutionised and is rising fiercely through the new generations. The issue of abortion no longer lies within the clutches of hostile pro-choice advocacy: it has been seized by the modern pro-life generation, and they are disgusted by 1967—they are disgusted by abortion.

These girls are the pro-life generation.