The young pro-life pilgrims attending the Students for Life of America National Pro-Life Summit were urged by the event’s keynote speaker to live life to the fullest amid the many cultural challenges today.
Rachel Campos-Duffy encouraged the young people to get off social media, live life, start families, and experience Christian joy at the pro-life event held in Washington D.C. the day following the national March for Life
The Fox & Friends Weekend co-host began by acquainting attendees with her youngest child with husband, former Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy. Valentina, who is four years old and was born with Down syndrome. Campos-Duffy showed pictures and videos of her daughter, the youngest of nine.
“Valentina's greatest accomplishment is that she is shaping our family in such extraordinary ways,” Campos-Duffy said.
“Through Valentina, we are learning patience, compassion, authentic tolerance, unconditional love,” she said. “She teaches us how to be in the moment when we celebrate her small achievements and her milestones. We adopt new and better ways of measuring success and happiness.”
Campos-Duffy said that just 10% of babies survive a Down syndrome diagnosis currently, in part because doctors and genetic counselors often scare women and pressure them into abortion.
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She went on to say that “decades of liberal feminist ideology have resulted in millions of lost lives, but it has also done unbelievable damage to our understanding of what it means to be a woman and a mother.”
Campos-Duffy discussed the current wave of transgender ideology, in particular the position feminists now find themselves in with not being able to stand up for women in sports, something that women fought hard for.
Citing the varying cases in the culture, sports, and media of men identifying as women, she questioned what makes a woman and a mother.
“What about the unique role that women play in reproduction? Does that matter?” she asked. “Are the innate maternal instincts that biological and adoptive mothers have for their children, are they irrelevant to who we are? Are they irrelevant to our children?”
“Through its radical abortion agenda,” she said, the feminist movement has endeavored “to erase women rather than elevating and celebrating us and our unique and very powerful contribution to the continuation of the human race.”
Additionally, Campos-Duffy said that the question of what a woman is matters as science and technology continue to push ethical boundaries.
“Will outsourcing pregnancy fundamentally change the relationship between men and women?” she asked. “What about the connection between mother and child? Just because we can do something, should we do it?”
“Make no mistake, there is a transhumanist movement afoot to erase women our purpose and our spiritual and biological connection to our children,” said Campos-Duffy. “If ever there was a time to speak about the value of life and motherhood, it is now before it is too late.”
“Today being pro-life means making the case for our gender and motherhood itself,” she said. “We live in an anti-child, anti-family culture that tells women to forego motherhood for career for the sake of the environment or convenience.”
“Celebrating motherhood isn't just countercultural,” she told pro-life summit crowd, “it's necessary and it's downright subversive and revolutionary.”
Discussing sex selective abortion, Campos-Duffy said, “When gender selection is available, baby girls are usually the losers.”
Feminist voices are silent about this discriminatory and deadly practice, she said, but pro-life advocates have stood up and denounced it.
“When our culture tells women that an unplanned pregnancy will ruin their life,” said Campos-Duffy, “pro-lifers tell women that an unplanned pregnancy can also mean unplanned joy and that motherhood doesn't mean losing yourself or your dreams.”
“There is nothing more empowering for a woman than to make a decision to overcome fear and judgment and embrace life,” Campos-Duff stated.
She noted that while Planned Parenthood fights tooth and nail to prevent women from seeing their own ultrasounds, pregnancy centers across the country arm women with their own ultrasounds.
“So, you are empowering women with the truth,” she said. “The truth that abortion will not end a woman's problems.”
Campos-Duffy said that in fact, abortion is the beginning of a whole new set of problems, including depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction.
She then pointed out the compassion shown to post-abortive women by the pro-life movement in contrast to the abortion movement.
“You acknowledge their pain and their trauma, and you comfort them,” Campos-Duffy said. “The abortion movement and also the medical community tell women that their post-abortion trauma and anguish isn't real.”
Campos-Duffy spoke about how Planned Parenthood lies to women about the abortion pill and safety, with chemical abortions four times more likely to have complications.
“Pro-lifers aren't just the protectors of vulnerable women who are susceptible to the abortion movement lies,” said. “They're also the protectors of poor minority women and their children,” citing Planned Parenthood racist and eugenics-tainted foundation.
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Campos-Duffy noted that the WHO has labeled Down syndrome a birth defect.
“Down syndrome is not a defect, it is a chromosomal variation,” she said. “The WHO knows that the labeled defect encourages abortion. My little Valentina is not a defect. She is a human being.”
“No one stands against hate, prejudice, and profiling more than this movement,” she said.
Campos-Duffy said the nation is amid a spiritual battle and abortion is at the heart of it. She drew a parallel between abortion and slavery, both made possible by the dehumanizing of certain classes of people.
“Once you decide someone is not human, you can justify doing anything to them, including the sale of body parts and organs,” said Campos-Duffy. “And yes, this is happening in America and around the world.”
“America will never be united until the evil of abortion is resolved and the unborn are legally included in the human family,” she said. “You are here today because you know this.”
Campos-Duffy challenged the young people in attendance on what they are doing to build the culture of life, suggesting “proclaiming the joys of motherhood or making the case for marriage.”
Abortion is robbing men of their life's purpose, she said.
There is hope, she said, with millions of young people now yearning for tradition and beauty, both in aesthetics and in how they live their lives.
Campos-Duffy told the audience they will want grandkids one day, but they won’t come without having kids first.
“Always remember, companies don't love you, families do,” she said.
“My message to you is that the most important thing you can do right now is live your life fully,” said Campos-Duffy. “Get off of social media and just live. It's a wonderful life.”
“Yes, I want you to work hard. I want you to serve others, but I also want you to make time to be merry, especially with others,” she said. “It's good for the world, and I believe that Christian joy is infectious, and it is our most underappreciated and effective tool of persuasion.”
So many liberties are under attack today, she said, religious liberty, free speech, the right to bear arms.
“But we need to start with the first and most important,” Campos-Duffy said. “And that is the right to life. So, let's recommit today to our noble cause to being happy warriors as we go through with our cause to fight, to preserve liberty and life for our sons and our daughters born and unborn.”
