A life support group is trying to start a club at Sinclair Community College but need more students to get involved.
The proposed group said their focus is to give support to students who find themselves with unwanted pregnancies or who would like to remain or become chaste. They said they believe that students are misinformed about decisions they make about pregnancy and that sex should be saved for marriage and between a man and a woman.
Supporting Pro Life
The group’s members, Professor Vickie Lair, Emeritus Professor Al Giambrone, Professor David Stott and Paralegal Student Bonnie Borel-Donohue, believe that young people are making decisions about abortion without understanding what they are doing and want the student body to know there are people willing to help.
“We suspect many young people make a decision for abortion versus carrying the child without really a full knowledge of, for example, the whole process of fetal development,” Giambrone said. “We are not necessarily experts on (pregnancies), but we can direct them to agencies and places where they can get help.”
Lair said she decided to start the group after seeing the pain that young students go through when making the decision to have an abortion and said she wanted to make sure that other people knew there was help available to them.
“A lot of girls really don’t want to have an abortion but they are pressured so much by their boyfriends, or their parents or friends and they end up having an abortion and years later they really regret it,” she said. “It is a whole lot harder to face anger for the rest of your life than it is to face fear and guilt for a little while. That I know from experience.”
Giambrone said they would be showing a series of videos throughout the next couple of weeks in the basement of Building 8 on the process of fetal development and testimonies from people who have had abortions. He said they want to emphasize the dangers of abortion to the mother and child while helping them understand abortion is an unhealthy choice. He said there would be room for discussion to anyone that has questions.
“Young people hear many voices from the culture that are telling them that things like abortion are normal and natural and not harmful to either the mother of the child,” he said. “We want to make sure there is another point of view on that.”
Borel-Donohue said she became interested in the group after being informed by a friend from Elizabeth New Life Center that the group was trying to start and said the topic is something she has always been interested in.
“A pro life friend mentioned that these people were already trying to do what I am interested in doing too; getting students to get together to see the importance of this issue,” Borel-Donohue said. “And that with the right thinking there really is reasoning and logic behind our point of view. It’s logical. You sometimes just need somebody to help you to see through the immediate to the long term to think through to the consequences.”
Emphasizing Chastity
The group also is there to support students who want to stay or become abstinent. They said they believe in saving sex for marriage and that it should only be between heterosexual couples.
“When you become sexually active you run the risk of becoming pregnant, getting a venereal disease and it’s not good for the culture,” Lair said.
While the group said it does not discriminate against anyone, they are concerned about the activities that people are engaging in and believe that all people can control their sexual tendencies.
“Our only intent is that if there is one student in this college who has same sex attraction and doesn’t want to engage in that, we want to provide them with the resources to help them do that,” Giambrone said. “That principle that sex inside of marriage is important and between a man and a woman implies that homosexuality doesn’t comply with that.”
Lair said that the group’s objective was not to enforce their religious beliefs on anyone and want the homosexual community to know that they do not hate them. If someone within that community does want help staying chaste and living a different lifestyle, they are there to support them.
“Christians get bashed a lot in the media because they think we hate homosexuals. We don’t hate homosexuals. We want that firmly clear,” she said.
For more information on the group, contact Lair at 512-2313 or stop by her office in Building 1 Room 317.