Last week, I wrote a column called “Abortion in Retreat” where I made a simple point: the pro-life argument is winning.  More people are pro-life than ever before, the abortion rate has sharply declined from its post-Roe highs, and even pop culture has come to appropriate the language of life.

But it’s one thing to talk about or describe cultural momentum, it’s another thing to experience it first-hand.  Pictures can’t convey the energy and passion of the 1,800 pro-life students who packed into a Bethesda conference center.  I speak to thousands of college students at dozens of locations every year, but never do I encounter the heart-felt passion of these pro-life students.  College students — like most of us in the context of our own lives — are often content to sit back and passively watch monstrous injustice rather than risk their grades, risk their grad school recommendations, or even risk their attendance at the next frat party.  But not these students.  The highlight of the conference (for me) was the roar of the crowd as they watched on the big screen the real-life courage and real-life conviction of Carleton University students as they submitted to arrest rather than consent to censorship.  We’ve posted this before, but watch it again for textbook example of a respectful, powerful pro-life witness:

I went to the conference hoping to motivate and inspire the students.  Instead, they motivated and inspired me.