OPINION: Yale provides for student abortions in its health plans and can be hostile to pro-life views. Some students are still dedicated to creating a culture of life
Pro-life Yale University students are hoping to restart the fight for human rights after a group died down in recent years.
Choose Life at Yale has been around since 2003, but largely declined in the past several years as COVID restrictions made it harder for groups to meet. This also led to problems handing over leadership to younger students, according to the group’s president.
Despite these challenges, the group is planning for the annual “Vita et Veritas” conference this year. “The Vita et Veritas Conference, now in its eleventh year, aims to bring pro-life thought to Yale and to engage the pro-life communities of other universities,” the website states. “We believe the right to life is fundamental, and we design our conference to help and inspire others to advocate for the lives of the unborn.”
President Emma Ventresca told The College Fix via email that post-COVID, “many extracurricular groups struggled to transfer leadership to future classes. The group aims to provide a “distinct perspective on a largely pro-choice campus,” Ventresca said.
With multiple years of university life disrupted by sudden quarantines and limited gathering capacity, this created a generational gap for the pro-life group.
Ventresca said she hopes to “build back this institutional memory” that has been lost over the last few years.
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The student group has attracted attention both locally, from Yale Daily News and the New Haven Register to nationally at First Things.
The group’s archives also show regular conferences, candlelight vigils, and trips to the March for Life. However, this activity has been largely absent for the past five years.
Speakers at the October conference include conservative commentator Will Witt and Eric Scheidler of Pro-Life Action League. Witt, who previously worked for PragerU and Turning Point USA, will give a talk on “engaging with the pro-life cause on campus.”
Past speakers have included Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, and Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who is now a pro-life activist.
The group has also faced pushback throughout the years from within the university. Both the Social Justice Network and the Women’s Center at Yale have refused membership to the pro-life group, according to a 2016 article in the Yale Daily News.
Choose Life at Yale seeks to universalize the call to life on Yale’s campus, seeking to emphasize to students that “life is a universal and should be promoted by all,” Ventresca said.
The group “is not a religious or political organization,” Ventresca said.
It also wants to shift the culture at Yale.
“Today, some Yale labs use fetal stem cell tissue, the Yale-New Haven Hospital performs abortions, and Yale tuition dollars fund the provision of abortions on our health plan,” the group states on its website.
The group wants to build bridges and “seeks to connect students of all backgrounds who are dedicated to promoting a culture of life on campus,” Ventresca said.
Editor’s note: The author serves as the social media outreach coordinator for Choose Life at Yale.
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IMAGE: Choose Life at Yale/Flickr
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