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Engaging with College Students |
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Thursday, 20 January 2011 |
On Tuesday evening, the NAE Generation Forum held a panel discussion on "Generating New Ideas to Decrease Abortion" as part of the NAE's annual Christian Student Leadership Conference (CSLC).
After a brief introduction from me about the Generation Forum and some of our data and other resources, the panel (Andrea Kane of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, Jennifer Marshall of the Heritage Foundation, and David Schmidgall of National Communty Church) stirred a great conversation about sex, unplanned pregnancy, and abortion in our congregations and communities. The 75 college students, who come from Christian colleges and universities around the country, then enthusiastically engaged with follow-up questions about practical steps for respecting sex and reducing abortions. There were so many hands going up that we actually ran out of time for all of them!
The NAE took an informal survey of these students before they came to Washington, DC for the week, and we found that about 90% of them wanted the nation to work together in a practical way to bring down the number of abortions. This fits well with our formal polling data that 9 our of 10 evangelicals want practical and productive work to reduce the abortion rate. That and the active engagement of the students are encouraging signs that we are on the right track here. We need to build this conversation and find some real ways to face the everyday challenge of abortion in all our communities.
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