Fifty anti-abortion rights students traveled to Penn State from nine other Pennsylvania colleges on Saturday to participate in Pennsylvania Students for Life of America's first ever anti-abortion conference.
Students for Life of America and Penn State's chapter of Students for Life (SFL) collaborated to host what they want to become an annual anti-abortion conference, said Jackie Anderson, president of Penn State's SFL chapter and coordinator of the conference.
Anderson (senior-journalism) said the goal of the event was to get as many campus anti-abortion groups from Pennsylvania colleges together to act as a support system and resource for one another.
"Our primary focus is to allow pro-life organizations from across the state to network with one another," Anderson said. "Hopefully this will make the state more unified."
Nationwide anti-abortion organizations, including Generation Life and Democrats for Life, hosted seminars throughout the eight-hour event in the Paul Robeson Cultural Center. Seminar topics ranged from defunding Planned Parenthood to the effects the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) could have on America if it is reintroduced to the 111th Congress.
Dennis Monaghan, president of Pennsylvania Students for Life, gave a seminar on the Freedom of Choice Act, an act he said strikes him as discrimination against the unborn child.
Monaghan was born three months premature and said he is distraught by a bill that would potentially permit abortions at the six-month term in a pregnancy.
Monaghan said that if passed, FOCA would obligate every medical practitioner to perform an abortion if asked to do so.
Monaghan said he was puzzled about this.
He said FOCA claims to eliminate discrimination yet the act he says does the opposite.
"In three small pages of a document, they're limiting the personal choice and freedom of the doctors, the nurses," said Racquel Skold, vice president of the University of Pennsylvania's student anti-abortion group, Penn for Life. "In trying to prevent discrimination against impregnated women, FOCA is discriminating against those working in hospitals, thus doing exactly what they were trying to prevent."
Students came from nine Pennsylvania colleges, including Villanova University, Gwynedd-Mercy College, West Chester University of Pennsylvania, DeSales University, Clarion University of Pennsylvania, University of Scranton, University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and Lehigh Carbon Community College.
When the event was over, Anderson said she was pleased with the turnout and looking forward to the benefits the conference could have for anti-abortion groups throughout Pennsylvania.
"Now if we ever need help coordinating a pro-life event, we have many references and outreach sources, which is wonderful," Anderson said.
