Youth gather at the 2013 March for Life in Washington D.C.
Most high school seniors seem to be focused on college plans or the senior prom. Katie Greenwood is focused on ending abortion.
Katie attends St. John’s Catholic High School in Beloit, KS, which she describes as “literally in the middle of nowhere.” But it’s from this small Kansas town that the high school has taken on a new national project, along with the help of their religion teacher, Andrew Niewald, called Catholic School Life Rally 2013.
On Dec. 6, the senior class of St. John’s—all 10 of them, in a school of 40—is asking Catholic and Protestant schools nationwide to join them by peacefully protesting at an abortion clinic close to them. And close is a relative word because the students of St John’s don’t even have an abortion clinic within three hours of them. Katie says:
“We have to journey over three hours to get to the closest abortion clinic, but each year, the entire high school packs up and makes this trek to stand up for the unborn as well as using this opportunity as a means of educating ourselves on the reality of abortion.”
They travel to abortion clinics in both Wichita, KS and Lincoln, NE. They aren’t there to make a scene, but they are there to make a statement and to bring awareness and hope. In a sense, the students become the teachers, and now they want students across the nation to join them. Their reason is simple but powerful. Katie says:
“We want to create an awareness of abortion. My class has grown up together, we’ve been at St. Johns either the majority, or the entirety, of our lives. We know our religion, we have taken morality classes, scripture class, and theology classes. To us, there is no question at all… abortion is completely, 100% immoral. No exceptions. This is what we know, it is what we grew up with, but a big part of our world today is oblivious to the horror of abortion. We want to both educate others and remind ourselves of the reality of abortion. When you see a pregnant woman going into an abortion clinic with her ‘baby bump’ and coming out with that bump gone, how can you not acknowledge that a life was taken? A baby was killed.”
They don’t go to condemn, but to bring light and awareness. Of course, the public has varied reactions to a group of teenagers spending a school day on a field trip to an abortion clinic. Katie notes:
“We stand strong together, holding signs and praying as people drive by. We receive both extremely good, and extremely bad reactions every year (good: smiles, thumbs up, honk for life, waves… bad: yelling, rude gestures, including “flipping the bird,” scowling faces), but we persevere through it all. We continue, on an annual basis, to stand up for our beliefs, and now we would like to get you involved in helping promote this endeavor as a means of encouraging other Catholic or Christian schools to do the same.”
So Katie’s senior class decided to take this school project and ramp it up to the nation and launch Catholic School Life Rally 2013. On Dec. 6 for students across the nation to join them, to take their own trips to clinics, to bring truth to their generation and affect many others.
Katie is young; her classmates are young, but they know something too many don’t:
“My class knows the horrors of abortion, and we want other people to join in our fight. How can our country ignore the plight of the unborn if the next generation is screaming for the public to recognize this ongoing genocide? Honestly, how can you ignore thousands of teenagers, begging for the life of the innocent to be spared.”
Katie says that she does what she does because of what the Bible says in Luke 12:49: “I have come to set the world on fire, and how I wish it were already burning.”
“Personally,” Katie says, “this is my way of setting the world on fire, and I believe that my generation will set our world ablaze if we can do this together.”
To find out more about Catholic School Life Rally 2013, you may like their Facebook page, linked here. They will be using it for information and communication. We will follow up in December with a report on what will be the first event for St. John’s Catholic High School in small Beloit, Kansas, which is starting a flame of awareness to ignite a generation into the reality of abortion.
The Facebook page asks that you contact them and call 785.738.2942 (ask for Katie G. or Andrew N.) to inform them of your plans to join them all over the nation for what they would say is one of the most important field trips they can take.
Only when the truth of abortion is realized will the evil of abortion cease.
