(LifeSiteNews) — Bethany Janzen, president of Pro-Life Global, once again joins Jonathon on this week’s episode of The Van Maren Show, this time to talk about the experience of pro-lifers around the world and how her organization seeks to train millions of pro-life advocates.
Janzen briefly touches upon the start of Pro-Life Global before shifting to the organization’s current goal: training 73 million “life-savers” to save the 73 million babies who die from abortion each year. While Pro-Life Global was founded less than three years ago, she notes that the organization has members in 13 countries, including countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and at least two in Europe.
Further, while the organization has helped organize pro-life activism globally, Janzen notes that fear is the “biggest challenge” people face.
“To be able to actually step out, to be able to have conversations, to be able to actually talk about difficult things in the face of someone who might reject you,” she observes. “And so that fear is the biggest challenge to overcome, and once you’ve stepped out, you’ve had a conversation, you’ve seen that you actually changed someone’s mind, you actually saved a life.”
Describing the experience of two pro-lifers in Africa associated with Pro-Life Global, Janzen says that lives being saved is “beautiful” and admitting that while the setting does not resemble a “traditional pregnancy center,” the pro-lifers do not have the money for a building. At the same time, she notes that “a building can only be a building.”
“I believe that we need life-savers who go where there is no building, because we need to go where the people are, we don’t need to expect them to come to us,” she tells Jonathon.
Describing how Pro-Life Global seeks to train millions of pro-lifers, Janzen says it is difficult to fight alone, and thus Pro-Life Global is calling “the Church,” as it has the responsibility to be vocal on the issue of abortion. The way she would see this happen is by calling churches to gather from every city, school, or university, to establish groups to fight abortion, and doing this on a global scale. The focus on schools and universities, she adds, is because Pro-Life Global is focusing on youth, noting that schools and universities are battlegrounds for the minds of the young.
Speaking to how teams of pro-lifers are formed, Janzen says that someone will normally come into contact with Pro-Life Global, either by contacting them through their website, attending one of their online training sessions, or by in-person networking at an event.
At other times, Pro-Life Global will have one “contact” in one place, the organization will send people to the “contact” to get in touch with other contacts, will eventually host a Zoom call, and finally send a team when possible to do a two- or three-day workshop with local pro-life leaders. The workshop’s content deals with what abortion is, what it means to be pro-life, the issue of contraception, how to argue for the pro-life position, and others.
Janzen explains that part of the training is not coming off as too harsh while doing pro-life activism. She describes a story of something that happened to her in Kenya last autumn while speaking with someone who had an emotional reaction to what she was saying. Janzen asked her if she knew someone who had an abortion, to which she responded “maybe.” Janzen in turn noted that Christ came to die for our forgiveness, and the woman speaking with her acknowledged that God is a God of mercy.
When Janzen asked her if she would like to have seen a support system in place to help women considering abortion and if she would like to be part of it, she gave Janzen her contact information to speak with local leaders. Speaking about the need for kindness, Janzen tells Jonathon, “I think that’s the beautiful power of actually transforming conversations that actually change hearts and minds.”
After the workshop, there are two “basic trainings.” The first deals with how to start a local pro-life group, the second with “basic leadership” and “spiritual fortitude.” Janzen states that the pro-lifers will be going into a spiritual battlefield. Pro-Life Global will give ongoing mentorship to the local pro-life leaders, so that they continue to mentor students at schools and universities, and hold meetings with local pro-life leaders so that the group survives.
Looking to culture itself, Janzen says that it is “lost in a lot of ways.” Describing Pro-Life Global’s experience at a Kenyan university, Janzen tells Jonathon that the group had conversations with people for only half an hour and found that a little over half were advocating for abortion. But about 90 percent of those present changed their stance, which Janzen sees as a testament to how they were handed “lies.”
Speaking to the situation in Latin America, she tells Jonathon that it is slightly more difficult to change minds, since Latin America has been “indoctrinated somehow longer or more quickly” than Africa. However, she suspects that it could be due to a cultural and linguistic difference, and that Latin America is becoming “woke.” While Latin America is perceived as Catholic, she notes there is only one pro-life university group active in Mexico, at a Monterey university, because Mexican universities often shut down pro-life student groups. While the group in Monterey was at one point shut down, they were reinstated three months later after speaking to the media.
Juxtaposing Mexico with a country like Honduras in terms of how pro-life they are, Janzen observes that Mexico is subject to greater Western influence, but also suspects Hondurans are not watching Western films that promote things such as abortion, likely because they are “poorer” – a phenomenon she notices worldwide, with the media itself the agent of “corrupting” the minds of the young.
Admitting that she has yet to visit Honduras, and cannot “speak” to it, Janzen states that “from the countries I have been to, like Bolivia, when you have less access to Westernized media, then you are more influenced, oftentimes, by your church community.” Meanwhile, in countries one would think of as pro-life or spiritually sound, abortion and abortive practices remain relevant while the young struggle with pornography. Janzen recalls a story of how a prostitute hired by a Jamaican abortionist dropped a brick on a praying pro-lifer at the country’s first 40 Days for Life campaign.
Towards the end of the show, Janzen speaks to the impact that can be made by pro-lifers. She relates how a group of around 20 pro-lifers protested the Nigerian government’s decision to approve of a treaty that would allow for different forms of sexuality and abortion in the country and undermine national sovereignty. The pro-lifers were interviewed by the media, and the night before the treaty was set for ratification, the country declined to approve it.
“It shows the impact that can be made,” she says. “In a whole country when you have one person who says, ‘Hey, I’m going to mobilize people and I’m going to take action, and this is not okay.’ … [Nigeria] and many of these countries are at such a tipping point, that having those people rise up can make all the difference.”
“You can make a difference and you can be a lifesaver no matter where you are,” Janzen says later in the episode.
“If you aren’t already a part of a pro-life movement actively in your city, in your school, in your university, now is a challenge for you to actually launch one,” she continues. “If you don’t know what to do, we can help you at Pro-Life Global and connect you with the right partner in your country to be able to launch that, and if there isn’t a pro-life student movement in your country, we can help you create that.”
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