The Right To Life Club at the University of Notre Dame is establishing itself as pro-woman and pro-child in a whole new way. The group has started offering child care on campus for graduate students with children.

Daycare services take place once a week and allow students that utilize it to take a break from parenting and focus on studying for a bit. “Raising a child is hard enough,” Lorenzo Beer, sophomore and commissioner of the service, stated. “Raising a child while being a graduate student requires superpowers.”

This service was created by the pro-life club as a means of assisting those who choose life for their unborn child. “The Right To Life’s mission is to promote and uphold the sanctity of all human life from conception until natural death through prayer, service and education,” Beer explained.

“The Child Care Service is a direct, concrete action of the Right To Life Club to showcase the love the pro-life movement has for those who choose life.”

Sarah Drumm, president of the club, is hopeful that people who utilize the service will feel supported by the pro-life movement.

“We recognize that our once-a-week child care service isn’t going to dramatically improve the lives of parenting students,” she said. “However, we do hope that the little we do somehow can make their workload a little lighter and their jobs as parents a little easier, at least for a few hours a week.”

This may not seem huge, but by offering child care services, Notre Dame Right To Life sets a model for the pro-life movement to follow. All too frequently, abortion supporters criticize pro-lifers for only supporting children while they are unborn. This is a broad (and typically untrue) sentiment, but it is simple to see their logic when all the services that are being offered are for parents of unborn children.

By simply offering child care services, Notre Dame’s Right To Life is sending a message of care and concern. Their message states that their concern is not about regulating what women can do with their bodies (as some would argue) or merely taking a stance on moral high ground, but instead truly for protecting children. It is a reminder that the pro-life movement is for life consistently, whether born or unborn.

More pro-lifers and pro-life campus organizations should take note. Implementing pro-parent and pro-child options when available will take the pro-life message to a new place of credibility, care, and concern.

(H/T: The Observer)

Photo credit: Matthew Rice via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0