by ESME O’RAFFERTY
Pro-life organisation Family Life International (FLI) is organising a secondary schools outreach programme to teach young people about pro-life values, saying it is needed “urgently”.
FLI said that the brand-new programme will put them “face-to-face” with pro-abortionists.
“Pro-abortionists are aggressively targetting New Zealand students,” FLI wrote in a letter to their supporters.
“It is frightening to think of the moral damage NZ Family Planning, the country’s biggest pro-abortion group, is inflicting on young people.”
The programme will involve the Gianna’s Choice mobile life centre, named for St Gianna Beretta Molla, the patron saint of mothers and unborn children.
FLI presenters will visit public and Catholic secondary schools in the North Island with the mobile life centre, and
students will be taught about the “reality” of abortion. All FLI presenters are fully qualified teachers who hold pro-life values.
FLI said they have already been visiting schools on a test basis and believe there is demand for their services throughout the North Island.
FLI are planning to start their programme by visiting schools in the Waikato and Waipa regions once weekly each, and will then expand into the central and lower North Island.
The organisation is planning to raise $38,350 in order to take their programme into schools, with the money raised going towards educational material, social media advertising, insurance and other day-to-day expenses in the running of the mobile life centre.
The CEO of the New Zealand Catholic Education Office, Paul Ferris, said that, while it is a Catholic view of the world to be an advocate for pro-life values and that supporting the group was “without question” a good move, he could not say how many schools would take up FLI’s invitation to run the programme.
“Each school is an independent authority at present,” he said. “I think the decision to agree will be influenced by a number of things . . . not all will relate to whether you are pro-life or not.”
He also said that timetabling issues might play a part in whether the organisation would be able to visit a school or not.
“If they are prepared to work in lunch times then that would require support from staff,” he said. “Each school will make a decision based on how that can fit in their schedule.”
Good work.
It’s tough pushing back positively against the other message when it has support of the State and media, whether it’s abortion, gender fluidity, sexual promiscuity, or euthanasia.
We can’t be gullible mugs when allowing free state funded courses on these areas into Catholic schools.