How old do you have to be for people to take you seriously? A few quick answers might be, "Twenty, because you're not a teenager anymore," "Thirty, because you've lived for nearly three decades by then," "When you're old enough and responsible enough to own a home/car/business...etc." While those are all valid answers, I'll ask you this, "What about 15?" Would you normally take a 15-year old seriously? Is a 15-year old wise enough to stand up for an issue and stick by it? At what age would you start to take her seriously? Contrary to popular belief age does not necessarily breed wisdom and youth does not automatically come with immaturity. And, in the case of Lila Rose, a teenager can be much wiser than hundreds of other people many years her senior.
Lila Rose was raised in a Christian home and was very outspoken from a young age. She was pro-life by default, but she never did much to support the movement. It wasn't until 2003, after Lila began researching the actual process of abortion and was exposed to confronting videos showing the procedure, that she felt a spiritual stirring and knew she had to do something. At the age of 15, standing in her parents' living room, she founded an anti-abortion group, Live Action, and set to work planning effective next steps.
Her first swing against abortion took place on the local level as she went into numerous schools and churches, giving presentations on the reality of abortion and undermining Planned Parenthood by championing the superior and anti-abortion options for women's healthcare that existed at the time. She worked tirelessly to share the truth and experienced great success, but she was just getting started.
Three years later, in 2006, when Lila was a freshmen in college, she took her activism to the next level. She knew that there was more to this fight than what met the eye so she went directly to the source to get her answers: two Planned Parenthood facilities in Los Angeles, California. Going undercover in the guise of a pregnant 15-year old, Lila told "her story" to workers at the abortion clinics. Claiming that she had been in a relationship with a 23-year old friend, she said she wanted to end the resulting pregnancy so that her parents wouldn't find out about the relationship. Her goal in telling this tale was to expose the uncaring nature of the facility workers and the death-oriented goal of the greater Planned Parenthood organization. Everything that was said was secretly recorded by a camera on Lila's person, and Planned Parenthood and its workers did not disappoint. Lila's shocking footage clearly shows the clinic workers not only selling her abortion as the convenient option for her unwanted pregnancy, but also blatantly ignoring local laws to help her get away with the procedure. The most damning of this casual law bending comes when one clinic worker encourages Lila to lie on a medical form and claim that she is 16 rather than 15 so that local law enforcement would be unaware of a blatant statutory rape case. In addition, the workers at both facilities ignored or brushed off Lila's common questions regarding her baby and the looming abortion. "Is it really a baby at this stage?" "It's just a clump of cells, right?" "It won't feel any pain?" Each question, unanswered or met with an outright lie, just added more nails to the coffin of Planned Parenthood and stacked up damning evidence that Planned Parenthood doesn't truly care about the women who need their "help."
Today Live Action is a driving force in the pro-life movement and has the largest digital footprint of any pro-life organization. Lila and her team continue to run sting operations on Planned Parenthood facilities; they have uncovered numerous horrors of the industry and have brought to light some of its most sickening details. There is still a lot of work to do to completely dismantle abortion and Planned Parenthood, but Lila has said that she is eager to take it on.
Sources Cited: Wikipedia, Live Action.org
Photo Credit: The Atlantic
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