Pro-life speaker encourages culture of life

By DAWN PROSSER
Director of Communications
 
Mary’s Choice pregnancy and family resource center in Sioux City hosted pro-life advocate Brandy Meeks of Missouri as speaker for the annual Giving Hope banquet Oct. 15. Meeks has served as a pregnancy director before leading the Vitae Foundation. She and her husband now operate Cornerstone Marketing Strategies that assists pregnancy centers.
 
Meeks spoke to approximately 235 pro-life supporters, explaining she wanted to talk about being a courageous advocate for life in today’s culture of death.
 
“We all have to create a culture of life within our own circles of influence, and we will … because you never know who is watching you live your whole life values,” she said, noting people pay attention to social media content and personal interactions with others. “Are you showing compassion for that woman who finds out that she’s pregnant? Are you showing love to your neighbor?”
 
Meeks pointed out that since 2022 when Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court and the abortion rights battles erupted in many states, “each state is trying to outperform each other when it comes to how extreme they can be.”
 
The speaker stressed that in the current “abortion culture,” abortion advocates are very public and outspoken to keep their message alive.
 
“The truth of the matter is each pro-abortion advocate that’s speaking now, they’re louder than the last one,” Meeks said. “It seems like they never stopped talking about abortion. Ever.”
 
Easy access abortion pill
The widespread and easy access to chemical abortions, also called the abortion pill, is an issue of great concern to the pro-life movement.

 

Meeks

“We have this abortion pill that can be shipped into any state, any home in our communities,” she said. “We also live in a world (where) abortion pill trucks drive around in different college towns. On the back they have electronic billboards that say, ‘Pregnant?’ At first glance you might think it’s a pregnancy center.” 
Plan C is the group behind abortion pill trucks, Meeks said. According to their website, Plan C is a group that provides “information on how people in the U.S. are accessing at-home abortion pill options online.”
 
“This is the kind of environment our kids are experiencing,” Meeks said. “They are pursuing our children and if you do not recognize that, that’s our first problem. We have to understand that they are actively pursuing our kids because they don’t just want our children, they want our children’s children. That is what we are up against.”
 
Describing the abortion pill, which causes a chemical abortion, Meeks explained it could be confused with the “morning after pill.” The abortion pill is actually two different medications – one that takes the life of the child and the second to “deliver the baby.”
 
“This culture of death has turned our homes into abortion clinics,” she said.
 
To see how easy it may be to obtain the abortion medications, Meeks and staff at the Vitae Foundation went online to see if they could order the drugs. They found 72 different websites where they could order chemical abortion pills.
 
“We got it. It was in a yellow envelope and they said there were four times the amount (of pills) of what they normally give you,” Meeks described the content of package, adding that medical professionals are not involved in the distribution of the drugs.
 
The speaker pointed out questionable information about the abortion pill communicated by abortion advocates such as chemical abortion medications are as safe as Tylenol. She said some groups are encouraging women experiencing complications from abortion pills seeking medical care should indicate that they are having a miscarriage rather than admitting to taking the abortion drugs.
 
Conformity theory
Meeks described the studies of Solomon Asch, a social psychologist who conducted experiments to prove a conformity theory. His theory was that a subject will conform to a response to a question if others in the same room give the same response, even if it is incorrect. The study proved the theory. However, if just one person in the group offers the correct response, the subject will then offer the correct response.
 
“Conformity, friends, this is what we’re up against when you have a sign that is constantly telling you it’s safer than Tylenol, a woman’s life matters more than the child, all of this stuff,” she said. “This is what’s happening in our culture.”

 She asked the group if they would struggle to “know what to say,” when confronted with pro-choice messaging. In order “to be courageous you have to know what you are up against,” and learn more about those advocating for abortion in society. Meeks shared that she and her 15-year-old daughter attended a South by Southwest Conference in Austin, Texas. She said the convention attracted musicians, actors and other creatives.
 
“And you might be thinking, what does that have to do with abortion?” she said. “I saw that they were planning to show a film called Plan C. It’s a documentary about the group I talked about earlier.”
 
The mother and daughter decided to attend the film to “do a little opposition research.” They were disturbed by the comment from a woman on the documentary planning to abort her child that said, “I love this baby enough to let it go.”
 
Meeks explained that some women “feel like they are trying to make a choice between abortion, adoption and parenting. They think abortion is the least of the three evils. They think if they abort, they send the baby back to God.”
 
A woman considering abortion may also think she can’t parent a child and if the baby is adopted, it could be abused by its adoptive parents.
 “When women are faced with abortion, they are going through all of that in their head. That’s why we’re here, to be able to help alleviate some of those problems and help them see that we can walk this out and do this with them,” the speaker said.
 

Bishop Nickless thanked the crowd for their support of life.

Also, as part of the conference, condoms and Plan B pills were giveaways along with informational brochures and stickers. The duo also attended a small group discussion “to talk about our post-Roe strategy, what we’re doing in order to combat what conservatives are going to do to take our abortion pill away.” 

“And we’re hearing them talk about their post-Roe strategy,” Meeks said, noting the speakers repeated the message to tell health care professionals that a chemical abortion is actually a miscarriage.
 
As the culture of death messaging is commonplace in the world, the speaker said, those who champion life need to recognize what is wrong and be courageous enough to communicate the truth.
 
The pro-life advocate said people cannot be “swayed in any way by social conformity. …The culture of death has robbed enough from us. We have to recognize it and we have to have the courage to turn from it and lead others to do the same.”