The pro-life club is one of the more active clubs on the Meramec campus.
By: Ashley Biundo, Editor-In-Chief
The Circle of Life Club believes that all life is equally valuable. Club President Alyssa Marin said that the club’s mission is to encourage and cultivate a culture of life on the campus. “We have displays that are trying to educate our peers on campus, on various aspects of the pro-life movement,” she said. “We also hosted a representative from Students for Life of America and this particular display was educating people on basically when do they think life begins and then when does the heartbeat begin.”
The club hosts several events throughout the year. “We do a toy drive in the fall semester for the holiday season and we donate those toys to a local pregnancy center to make it easier for their residents and their residents families to kind of have a nice holiday season and have presents to open for their kids,” said Marin.
They also work with the Student Assistance Program (SAP) office when they collect donations. “We are having a baby item drive to collect new and very gently used baby items and also cash donations to purchase more items. We give the items we collect to the SAP office, so that they can give them to the students that they’re helping,” said Marin. “Just to make it easier for them to choose life because you can’t ask somebody to choose life for their child and then say okay, good luck, have fun. You know, like, you have to follow up. You have to make it possible. So that’s really what we try to do.”
Another event that the club participates in is going to Washington D.C. for the Pro Life conference that takes place in late January and that has been happening for years, according to Marin.
When joining a club, most students look for a social aspect for their college life and Marin said that the club is very social. ”We are a very loud group and we are a joyful bunch,” she said. But, the club’s focus is also to learn more about the Pro Life Movement and the meaning behind it. “If people want to learn more about the pro life movement, if people are pro life already, and they want to find an outlet and they want to be more active in the pro life movement, that’s the main reason people join our club,” Marin said.
The Circle of Life Club is all about all life being valuable and they try to support people, said Marin. “People see our logo and they think we’re like Disney or something like that,” she said. “On our flyers, I put a little slogan, ‘from womb to tomb, every life equally valuable’ which is really the point of being pro life. We focus a lot on abortion, and that’s kind of the hot button topic that a lot of people talk about. But, we do believe that every life is equally valuable from fertilization to natural death.”
Not only do they talk about the hot-button issue of abortion, but they also talk about physician-assisted suicide and how everyone has a purpose in life. “That kind of thing also broaches into the topic of being pro life because sometimes if people aren’t always mentally all with it, but otherwise they’re healthy and sometimes people might use that as an argument that maybe their life isn’t worth living anymore,” Marin said. “People talk about handicaps and like being stuck in a wheelchair or with a degenerative disease. People sometimes argue that people with chronic diseases, that their lives are not worth living anymore and that kind of gets into ableism because you’re saying that ‘Oh, because you can’t do x, y & z’ that an able bodied person will be able to your life really isn’t worth it anymore. So we disagree with that as well. And I would like it if we could, as a club, try to get more into that.”
The Circle of Life Club seeks to share their mission, said Marin. “You can’t argue that somebody’s life is valuable if they never made it out of the womb to begin with,” Marin said. “You can’t address the challenges that their life has if they never made it out of the womb. So that’s kind of really the starting point. All life throughout the course is equally valuable.”
