Gearing up for the 2nd conference…

Hi TSFLer’s!

Whew, what a year 2008 has been! The Christmas/New Years Break is finally over and school has begun for most of us already and I do send everyone my best wishes. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself! My name is Rachana Chhin and I’m the Conference Director of Texas Students For Life.  I mostly work on the Baylor end of things and try to get things with the conference rolling and be the go-between for TSFL and the Baylor Bears For Life.

Bears For Life(the group I’m a part of at Baylor) is busily preparing for a great year too! On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade we will be showing a flag display to represent the numbers of aborted babies in Waco each year and showing the film Demographic Winter. And rest assured that many of our Bears For Lifers are coordinating to try to bring the conference to fruition.

To be honest, it’s a bit scary to know that the conference will be in a little bit over a month. But I am pumped up at the same time and I can not wait to see Pro-Life students and leaders come together at Baylor and learn from each other and propel the future of the movement in Texas. If you have not registered yet, please go to http://texasstudentsforlife.org/default.aspx and make sure you sign up. It’s going to be an awesome day in Austin for lobbying and an even better one at the beautiful Baylor campus.

We’re excited to have Dr. Frank Beckwith, Joe Pojman, Father Tad, and many other great Pro-Life leaders to speak to the next generation of Pro-Lifers! If you have any questions about the conference or want to get in touch with me for any reason-please email me at Rachana_Chhin@Baylor.edu. Thanks and have a great day!

-Rachana

TxSFL’s Prezzy hit the Road!

Yes, you heard it correctly, the president of Texas Students For Life, Alyse Lasley actually traveled outside of the great state of Texas and the even greater city of Fort Worth for once! Yay! Meanwhile, everyone around her was sick of the phrase “Texas Students for Life”. She however, was very very happy. Where was she you ask? Well, she was very privileged and thankful to be able to attend the Texas Right to Life Generation Now: Pro-Life Scholars training, The Students for Life of America‘s Statewide Leaders Training, and then lastly the Young America’s Foundation’s National Conservative Student’s Conference. Now if that is not a mouthful of events..I don’t know what is.

The great thing is, when I went around these events, always on the tip of my tongue were words about the conference, words about the group, words about what I wanted for the pro-life movement (please please please get a hold of me if you can figure out a better word than movement. I got soo sick of hearing that word this week.) I feel as though I cannot release a good many of the ideas, people, and EVENTS that I have planned until I get a chance to solidify them better, so please keep updated on this blog. This issue was basically just a bit of a teaser for you folks!

Alles Gute,

Alyse Lasley

“Most women choose abortion because they think they have no choice.”

It’s ironic, but true. I heard this observation from a speaker at the 2007 March for Life in Washington DC. We who support life should want to promote the good choices which help people live life well. Of course, we can never consider abortion a good choice. However, it’s important to remember (especially when we get angry about the horror stories or depressed about the death stats) that the majority of women contemplating abortion actually think that there’s nothing else they can do and so abortion is probably the best option.

But think about it for a minute… Most women don’t WANT to kill their babies because most women, naturally, WANT to be mothers. Why, we’re mothers from birth- even the littlest girl instinctively knows what to do with a baby doll! I think that the truest, deepest desire of every woman’s heart is to be mother. For, this is how we love and are loved, by giving ourselves to another and in turn bringing life into the world

As a result of all this, the choice for or against abortion is crucial for the woman (as well as for the little life within her). This decision can have huge repercussions in a woman’s life. For, we women opt for abortion (or contraceptives for that matter) we will actually be rejecting motherhood, therefore unwittingly denying our own hearts the true love they crave.

But…the girl in a messy situation, she may have loved her baby dolls, she may have dreamed of having a home of her own and children of her own…but, there’s pressure from her boyfriend, her parents, her peers. There are the financial difficulties. And of course, the shame and the embarrassment of going back to school…pregnant. She feels utterly trapped and helpless. And inside, her hearts sinks: “Do I even have a choice but to…?” She asks. And amidst this unbearable stress, in this seemingly inescapable spot, what can she do? Desperate, she gropes about for a way out, often stumbling blindly into a choice she will later regret..

This girl is our classmate, our neighbor, our roommate. Our response? Compassion…

–Allannah Karas

Abortion: War on the Unborn

Sometimes all the attention and criticism that the Iraq War gets annoys me. I mean neither to decry nor promote the War in Iraq. What bothers me is that people, shocked and horrified by the casualty reports we receive in the news, cry out for an end to the war so that no more of our soldiers have to die and then turn a deaf ear to the death toll that abortion has tallied on our own soil, in our own neighborhoods, maybe across the street like the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Waco, TX that is opposite an elementary school.

But perhaps some people don’t know where the figure lies. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute (an organization established by Planned Parenthood), the number of babies killed by abortion from 1973, when abortion was legalized, to 2003 is 44,711,291. That is more than the number of American casualties from every war the United States has ever fought in. In Waco, a thriving metropolis of 200,000, an average of 22 surgical abortions are performed EVERY WEEK. Now, what was last number coming from Iraq? I mourn every death report that comes from Iraq because each and every one of those lives is absolutely precious. But I also mourn for the 3,598 babies killed EVERY DAY by abortion (AGI) in the U.S. It seems to me that something is wrong if we can ignore the fact that the tiniest among us are dying at the rate of 150/hour.  

But perhaps we don’t really know what abortion is? People often justify it in the name of freedom of choice and even in the name of mercy. What are they actually justifying? What do we think of when we think of an abortion? Do we actually think about what happens during the procedure? We see pictures of aborted babies that maybe we wouldrather not see. (But, as Randy Alcorn says, “If something is too horrible to look at, perhaps it is too horrible to condone.”)Here are two, non-graphic YouTube videos made by Priests For Life that actually show the two most common abortion procedures.

1. dismemberment abortion: http://youtube.com/watch?v=us_y9GP_-DA
2. suction abortion: http://youtube.com/watch?v=QBOAPleF1t0

May we always be mindful of our troops and the unborn.   

-Robby, assistant conference director, TxSFL

Conference Call One – Texas Students For Life

This is Alyse Lasley again, the next blog will probably not be by me though!

Wow, I am much more behind schedule than I ever planned to be! This is a real tribute to fact that Students for Life really are students! I actually missed the second conference call, but there is so much to say about this one! The Website has been updated out of Conference Mode, but will be constantly updating! Our facebook group is up to 157 people, at least a hundred more than last time I posted! I have corresponded with many people about our group, especially TeLL, the Texas Lutherans For Life group..which is primarily because I am a member of the Lutheran Church. I went to their conference on the 5th and got a lot of praise and support for the work that we are doing. it was very encouraging.

During the conference call, what excited me the most was talking about next years event. Hopefully, on Friday February 21, 2008 we will have a crash-course in lobbying and that afternoon go and lobby in Austin, since Texas Legislature will be in session at this time. If we had a budget and enough participation by then, we might could have an all night even, but we must have a good foundation first! The main thing we need to do is start calling UT and finding out how we can manage a conference there. We also really need to focus on OutReach so we can have people coming to the events. Also, we talked about logo’s and decided to have a contest between all members with some recognition and whatnot. We are also compiling a speaker list and will probably post it on the the website some time.

I wanted to tag on information about Texas Walk For Life on May 3rd. There are six locations: Coppell, Dallas, Forney, Richardson, Arlington, Fort Worth, and Fredericksburg. For more information call Texans For Life Coalition at 972-790-9044 or 972-399-1433.

Getting Everything Started! Texas Students For Life

Wow! So everything has been crazy lately. This is Alyse Lasley the President of Texas Students for life, I’ll be keeping this blog up. 

 First, a little about me: I am a freshman Fashion Merchandising major at TCU and I love it, purple is my favorite color and one day I will be a famous fashion designer…once I am better at sewing.

Now, about me and TxSFL (some people write TSFL, but I like TxSFL better for some reason..I think it is more readable): One bright sunny Wednesday on the beautiful TCU campus, I was reading the Daily Skiff (TCU school newspaper) and I saw an article about the TCU SFL group. Being a strong pro-life advocate, I immediately sought out more information. I met with the co-director of TCU SFL (Frogs For Life as I like to call it, I’m a big fan of alliteration), Melinda Castro ,  and she mentioned a pro-life conference on Sunday that she would not be able to attend. I said I was interested in attending, so I did with the other co-director, Heather Kryst. I should mention Heather Kryst is now the Outreach Director. Little did I know, that day Texas Students For Life was forming.

The conference was amazing, the speakers were awesome especially Jill Stanek, a pro-life blogger. Right before the coalition meeting, I listened to a wonderful speaker named Becky Banks (the link is to her email), a Students for Life of America representative about starting a new Pro-Life group on campus or helping it grow. During this she spoke for a moment about the Texas group and I was intrigued; I decided I would apply to be an officer. I want to help this movement in any way I can right? So at the meeting..here is a pic:

Round table conference and all, exciting I know!

Anyways, we spoke of some really exciting stuff such as the name for TxSFL, next years conference (and do believe me..there will be more on that) and who would like to be an officer. I plugged down my name for any position cause I thought “Hey, where the help is needed most, I wanna be!” They  announced that they would..well announce the officers at the end of the day, so we went on with the conference and speakers.

At the end of the day, they announced..officer spot after officer spot was being taken and I was like “hmm maybe they didn’t need me..I doubt I was anything higher than this” but then my name was called out after a hand drum roll! I am very excited about this role and am doing the best I can to be a good first President of TxSFL! This blog is designed to keep you, the audience and hopefully members, informed on my adventures!

Next Blog: The First Conference Call + Ideas and Progress!

Hello world!

This is the first post of the TxSFL Blog. Texas Students for Life..awesome.

 I will post more later, just wanted to test it out and play around with it for a bit.

 see ya.