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For a time after Roe vs. Wade, it seemed that the pro-life movement was making inroads in its efforts to make abortion illegal. Pro-life speakers were acquainting their audiences with the humanity of the pre-born child via slides, pictures, brochures, and other presentation options.
When pro-abortionists coined the word "choice" and started promoting a woman's "right-to-choose" as though it were one of our great American freedoms, the pro-abortion biased media was only too eager to pick up on these new euphemisms. Discussion focused on people being "pro-choice" or "anti-choice" and drove the propaganda into the consciousness of the American public. Abortion advocates and the popular media promoted the misleading "choice" rhetoric. With this new emphasis on choice, we started losing the public debate. No one stopped to examine the phrase "choice," it sounded so all-American and inadvertently helped pro-abortionists frame the debate by steering the focus away from the unborn child.
It became clear that if we were ever going to win the fight to restore the right-to-life, we would have to frame the debate in true and accurate language. HLA began in every way possible to emphasize, and focus on, the humanity of the pre-born child, not on some nebulous "choice," to make people see that they had been mesmerized into indifference. We determined that our educational efforts would have to familiarize individuals with the cold realities of abortion.
In early 1990, HLA developed an advertising supplement to insert in as many Minnesota daily newspapers as could initially be afforded. Fundraising efforts focused on a goal to blanket the entire state. The first printed edition of She's a Child, Not a "Choice" was inserted in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Rochester Post Bulletin, Duluth News Tribune and Saint Cloud Times to coincide with the January 22, 1991 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. A few months later we inserted the supplement into the Minneapolis Star Tribune and expanded distribution to cover every daily and many weekly newspapers in the state.
A unique feature of our supplement was the full page listing of pro-life resources in the state. This served to counter the charge that pro-lifers did not care about helping women. In 1991, the editor of a Twin Cities based weekly newspaper agreed to insert the supplement in his national newspaper with circulation of 35,000 at no cost. HLA's advertising supplement suddenly became the pro-life national print media. A California copywriter's agent called to congratulate us on a marvelous new pro-life tool and asked if we had considered inserting it into college newspapers. Since college age women comprise the largest percentage of those having abortions, this made perfect sense.
In our original decision to print She's a Child, Not a "Choice," one compelling argument was to provide competition that countered the popular media's pro-abortion propaganda. Purchasing advertising space beat them at their own game. We were thrilled when the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the largest daily newspaper in the Minnesota, with a known pro-abortion editorial staff, accepted the insert.
HLA knew it would be a challenge to place a pro-life supplement in the Star Tribune, but that challenge didn't compare to the struggle we had with the University of Minnesota's student newspaper. This student paper, like most others, was run by student editors who were accountable to no one and had systematically insulted almost every religious group in the state. Following the suggestion to focus on college campuses, we approached the editors and ad. managers of the Minnesota Daily requesting insertion. Their lawyers went over the supplement with a fine-tooth comb, as had the legal counsel for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. They found no reason to turn it down; She's a Child, Not a "Choice" went to the University of Minnesota causing a campus-wide debate for months after distribution.
At the same time, HLA's new advertising supplement took nationwide campuses like Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon, UCLA, Stanford, and UC Berkeley by storm and was a big hit with students and supporters alike.
The California chapter of HLA then made contacts to begin circulating a Spanish version of She's a Child, Not a "Choice." 125,000 supplements were inserted in La Opinion -- the nation's largest Spanish language newspaper. Since that first printing, all of the Spanish supplements have been printed in Minnesota. Revised in 2001, this supplement is currently being distributing both nationally and internationally.
In October of 1994, HLA mailed She's a Child, Not a "Choice" to one million residents of the Twin Cities metropolitan area in cooperation with Pro-life Action Ministries. "Project Truth" generated a tremendous response of phone calls and letters, thanking us for putting the information out for the public to read.
A new updated look to our supplements has improved our approach allowing HLA to reach more college students than ever before with the development of The Silent Epidemic, It's My Life!, Think Outside The Box, Tired Yet?, Stop the Madness, Trapped... and this year We Know Better Now. This radical new approach to pro-life supplement design is HLA's most significant breakthrough in its 30-year history.
More than ever HLA is poised to take advantage of the unmistakable trend, acknowledged by such unlikely sources as the New York Times, that the majority of students are declaring themselves to be pro-life. In many cases, this puts them at odds with their pro-abortion parents and teachers. What is most significant in this revelation is how it relates to HLA's outreach.
Surveys show that the most commonly cited reason for the increasingly pro-life views of young people is the acceptance of pro-lifers' strategy in reframing the national debate, shifting the emphasis away from the "choice" of a mother to the rights of the unborn child. This has been a key tenant of HLA's strategy for many years, beginning with the She's a Child, not a "Choice" campaign.
We are convinced that HLA, with its millions of supplements in circulation, is effectively educating students on the humanity of the pre-born child, and confidently claim a lion's share of credit for this welcoming shift.
