Today was training day! This morning, after a quick breakfast, we all drove to the Baptist Church in Miami, whre we spent the day in the school.
Devorah Gilman, a 26-year-old from Toronto, gave us our training. We sat in a classroom, and went over each thing we'll need to know for approaching the students at the universities. We also got to know each other much better. There are about twenty-five of us, mostly girls, mostly around 20 years old. There are two couples, each with a little baby boy, who are the sweetest, and very well-behaved.
For training, we covered common arguements to use, common things people say, their standpoints, support, and the various responses we'll recieve and what they mean about the person.
Devorah likes to call all of this "Weapons of Mass Instruction".
We went over historical injustice, such as slavery and child labour, and what was done about it. When a picture of injustice is shown to the world, such as with William Wilburforce, it speaks more than words, and stays in peoples' monds much longer.
So many people do not realize that abortion kills a child. The pictures expose the injustice, change minds, and activate people who may be pro-life, but aren't doing anything about it.
The main thing we'll have to remember when speaking to people is 'show, don't tell'. People do not listen when you preach information at them.
We learned that our three most important building blocks are common ground, analogies, and questions. Common ground will show that we care about the person and respect them. It also turns what could be a debate into a dialogue. Analogies will help us tell a story to show the person what their words really mean. And questions, the most important, show the person whre their own thoughts go, and what they believe.
Often in analogies, when the person is talking about a fetus, we can 'introduce the infant', tell the same story they just put forward, except with a baby who has been born.
One of Devorah's favourite arguements is the Human Rights Arguement. It goes like this:
Do you believe in human rights? (yes) Who gets human rights? (humans, of course) If two human beings reproduce, what species will their offspring be? (...human) If something is growing, than isn't it alive? (well, yes) Then doesn't it logically follow that abortion is a human rights violation?
On the other side of things, we discussed the 'they're not a person yet' issue.
Historically, to be a parson has meant many things. At one point, to be a person meant to be not black. In WWii Jews were not persons. If you base human rights on being a person, some people will believe certain races or groups not persons. It's always been Human + ? = Person. Why not base human rights on us being humans?
We also covered much more, including reasons people will say fetuses aren't humn, brain function, and medical dilemmas.
Now, just after supper, all of us are feeling rather wiped, after taking in so much information, so we'll probably swim and then go to bed early, to be ready for church tomorrow!
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