The following comes from a May 16 email sent by Casey Tesauro of Students for Life.

In Chico California, the Boys and Girls Club of America hosted a Youth Empowerment Camp this past Saturday. Originally when I had heard about the camp I was excited and of course loved the idea of empowering youth, and giving them tools to be successful. I was impressed that the Boys and Girls Club would host such an event and inquired about further details. That was when I was told Planned Parenthood and the local abortion clinic, Women’s Health Specialists, were BOTH sponsors of the event!

I had to ask myself, “Since when does Planned Parenthood empower youth, or teach them how to write a resume?” It sounded odd to me. I contacted my pro-life friends in Chico who contacted more friends and we decided we need to speak the truth at this “empowerment camp”, trusting that we would be the only true empowerment. We submitted a request to teach on healthy relationships in hopes of giving these students truth and a point of view different than the abortion Goliath. We were denied a speaking breakout session, which was bothersome, but we had to somehow get the truth to these students.

We did what we could with the space we had! I drove down from Redding and met a team of pro-life people from around Northern California. We got to work setting up the Students for Life of America Planned Parenthood Project. This display is five different banners exposing the dirty and corrupt ways of Planned Parenthood. We were quickly approached by the camp organizer who didn’t ask too many questions thinking we were Planned Parenthood with our pink display. It wasn’t until the camp organizer read our literature that he began to inquire more about what we were doing. He asked us to leave stating that we were “on Boys and Girls Club’s property”, which we were not—confirmed by the Chico Police Department prior to the display going up.

As we passed out information to every car and student, we noticed that two employees of the Boys and Girls Club came and held signs that said “Parking for Youth Empowerment on J Street.” They didn’t want their students or parents getting anywhere close to the information we had. We saw the camp organizer telling students they couldn’t bring our information into the conference, how is that for empowerment!

I would like to pose a challenge to the Boys and Girls club: Shouldn’t they be a place where students can be safe and feel welcome? Why then would they be a supporter of students listening to Planned Parenthood’s sales pitch? More than ever we need to be ready to stand up for truth and show the inconsistent and bad practices of the abortion industry.