Students for Life selected Bailee Brown from Corn (Oklahoma) MB Church as one of 14 recipients of their 2020-21 national Christian Leadership Fellowship. A junior nursing student at Oklahoma Baptist University, Brown is leading an effort to establish a Students for Life organization on campus. Brown enlisted her church family to help her collect 2,363 baby socks for her project of taking the pro-life message to Christian schools in Oklahoma. (See her presentation given at Corn MB Church at https://www.facebook.com/CornMBchurch/videos/248189330013250)
What was Students for Life looking for in their Fellowship recipients?
The biggest thing was to understand why abortion is wrong. From a Christian point of view, I could share several verses that show life inside the womb. But also, as a nursing student I have studied embryology where we learned you can hear the heartbeat just three weeks after conception. In pathophysiology you learn about pain and as early as 15 weeks a fetus can feel pain. How can we say abortion is ethical if a fetus can feel pain?
Why did you decide to speak in Christian schools for your Fellowship project?
I graduated from Corn Bible Academy. I’m very passionate about Christian education and I remember when I was in school and someone younger would come in, we would really listen. As someone they can relate to, I can plant the seed in students’ minds that abortion is a big deal—something they should really care about.
What did you do with the baby socks?
When I’m talking about why they should care about abortion I pull out a laundry basket of baby socks and dump it on the stage. I just keep going back for more until four laundry baskets of socks are spread across the stage. Each sock represents one little baby aborted in the U.S. every day. It’s an impactful way to show that 2,363 abortions are happening in America every day—you can see it on the kids’ faces.
What do you hope to see come from your efforts?
For starters, I want to be able to take some of these baby socks to a thrift store. My hope and prayer is that the nation’s heart is changing on this issue. I’ve seen people of both parties come to the realization of how serious this is. Maybe one day one of these high school students who hears my speech will become a senator or representative and help make abortion illegal in this country.
Kathy Heinrichs Wiest is a freelance writer who loves the smell of whole wheat bread in the oven, the feel of an orange being plucked from the tree and the view from her front porch in Kingsburg, California. On Sunday mornings you’ll find her in the fourth pew from the front on the left at Kingsburg MB Church, moved by the hymns and praise songs and inspired by the stories of God at work locally and around the world. She and her husband, Steve, own Dovetail Remodeling. They have two grown daughters, one son-in-law and a precious granddaughter.
