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Students for Life

Contact Us:

  • Students for Life
    c/o The University of Scranton
    800 Linden Street
    Scranton, PA 18510-4699

On-Campus Pregnancy Resources

According to the Official Statement of the Jesuits on Abortion in 2003, Standing for the Unborn, to be pro-life means to be radically pro-woman. Inspired by this statement, by personal encounters with students, and by the work being accomplished at other Jesuit Universities, the Students for Life Club at the University of Scranton would like to have resources for pregnant and parenting students established on campus.

Because of the complexity of issues involved and student pregnancy and parenthood, we would like to invite the following organization and departments to lend their services to this cause: the Wellness Center, the Counseling Center, CHEW, the Women’s Center, Campus Ministry, Residence Life, Equity and Diversity, Student Affairs, and Financial Aid. We hope to be able to pull together the services that each of these departments offer and advertise them in a brochure that would be available around campus.

In addition, we hope that this effort will initiate an ongoing dialogue about how we can provide further support for pregnant and parenting students. In doing so, we hope to actively live out the Jesuit mission of “cura personalis” as applied to this specific issue.

2003 Statement of the Society of Jesus

“… To be pro-life is to be pro-woman. Because we support women, we oppose abortion. We realize that the prevalence of abortion on demand is a clear indication that women are not receiving the types of societal and personal support necessary to bring their pregnancies to term. As Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard law professor who headed the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nation’ Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing, in 1995, stated: “All who are genuinely committed to the advancement of woman can and must offer a woman or a girl who is pregnant, frightened and alone a better alternative than destruction of her own unborn child.

Some influential voices posit a zero-sum conflict between “women’s reproductive rights” and the right to life of unborn children. Jesuits ought to find their place among those who demonstrate the obvious confluence of women’s rights and respect for life in all its forms. Pope John Paul II summed this partnership when he wrote: “Therefore, in firmly rejecting ‘pro-choice’ it is necessary to become courageously ‘pro-woman,’ promoting a choice that is truly in favor of women. It is precisely the woman, in fact, who pays the highest price, not only for her motherhood, but even more for its destruction, for the suppression of the life of the child who has been conceived. The only honest stance, in these cases, is that the radical solidarity with the woman. It is not right to leave her alone.”

Community Resources

 

 

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