When Luci Giorgi enrolled at Cardinal Spellman High School, she considered herself “pro-choice.” Her thinking changed soon after attending an event organized by the pro-life club at the Catholic co-ed high school, which is located in the northern section of the Bronx, N.Y.

A woman who had undergone an abortion spoke about the emotional pain and regret she suffers. A doctor showed images of a developing child in the womb.

“I had no idea how violent abortion is, and how it affects the woman,” Giorgi recalls. “I had thought it was all very simple: You go in, have an abortion and that’s it. But the doctor showed that they are aborting children who could live outside the womb.”

Wanting to put her new pro-life views into action, Giorgi joined BeFrienders, a club at the high school that was just forming.

Now, four years later, she is the senior leader of the student-run group that offers friendship and personal support to students who are seeking confidential help and information regarding issues of chastity and relationships. The group also provides pro-life referrals and prayer for female students who become pregnant or suffer the physical, emotional and spiritual pain of an abortion.

Father Peter Pilsner, a religion teacher at the school, said he founded BeFrienders for two main reasons.

“Students often know who is pregnant or post-abortive before faculty members do, and a small amount of knowledge on the part of a single student can go a long way,” he says. “It’s like first aid. You don’t have to be a doctor, but if you know a few things, and you are there for someone at a critical time, you can save a life.”

He chose the name BeFrienders to stress the personal link that is key to the program’s effectiveness.

“I wanted a name that did not infer that the students in the club are peer ‘counselors,’ which sounded too clinical,” says the priest. “To befriend a person in need is something anyone can do.”

All on the Line

The club this year has about 12 members, most of them female, who undergo hours of training and information sessions, and meet periodically to keep updated. They are identified by the BeFrienders buttons they wear. The club is online at cardinalspellman.org/prolifeclub/befriend.

Training sessions include viewing the video “After the Choice,” from Life Cycle Books, in which women talk about the effects of abortion in their own lives. To learn about post-abortion healing, BeFrienders watch “Dear Children,” a video from Liguori Publications. Father Pilsner also leads discussions and answers questions on many topics and has prepared a resource folder for each student who completes the training. Included is a copy of the book No One Told Me I Could Cry, a Teen’s Guide to Help and Healing After Abortion, from Life Cycle Books, and pamphlets from Heritage House that can be given to students who are seeking guidance.

Sister of Life Lucy Vasile, coordinator of pro-life activities for the Archdiocese of New York, has invited members of the group to give presentations at the annual high school Pro-Life Leadership Day.

“It is a powerful, dynamic program that is very practical and has done an immense amount of good for students,” she says. “The Sisters of Life have helped some of the girls they have referred to us and we do training sessions for BeFrienders, with role-playing to suggest what they should or shouldn’t say to a girl in need.”

“The BeFrienders have really put themselves on the line and gone out of their way in difficult circumstances to help their friends in need,” adds Sister Lucy. “Every school should have this kind of program.”

In training sessions, Father Pilsner tells students that the “pro-choice” position rests on two misconceptions.

“The first is that abortion makes a girl un-pregnant — that it brings her back to the way she was before the pregnancy,” he explains. “But being pregnant for a woman is a life-changing event. She has a baby, and the question is: What does she do about the baby or for the baby? Whatever happens from then on must involve a choice about a baby.”

The second misconception, he points out, is that abortion “catches the fetus before it becomes human.” A review of fetal development dispels this error, he says.

Although the emphasis in BeFrienders is on the beauty of new life and compassion toward women, Father Pilsner shows members of the group graphic images of what takes place in an abortion.

“If they’re going to be witnesses to the sanctity of life, they have to understand the reality of abortion,” he says. “Many students have never seen these pictures, and they can seriously alter the way they think about abortion. It’s clear abortion does not remove a clump of tissues or ‘catch’ a pregnancy before it really begins.”

Pressure Relief

The training is effective, says Selina Santiago, who was the group’s student leader last year and is now a freshman at Villanova University.

“When I first joined, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t educated enough to talk to other people about chastity or abortion,” she said.

Through BeFrienders, she learned that many of the problems people her age face can be addressed through friendship, an open ear and, in the case of pregnancy or post-abortion healing, a referral to a competent expert.

“We provide, first of all, chastity awareness. It’s okay to be chaste, and there are other students in the school who are making that choice,” Santiago says. “That provides a lot of the support the students need.”

If a female student does become pregnant and is thinking about abortion, club members talk about positive choices such as adoption, which can be arranged through services of the Archdiocese of New York. If the student is still intent on abortion, they may refer her to a local pro-life pregnancy center.

“So many girls have so many pressures to abort from the boyfriend, the family, friends,” Santiago says. “If these problems can be overcome, we ask the girl, ‘Will you keep the baby then?’”

For young woman who have gone through an abortion, the BeFrienders offers referrals to Lumina, a post-abortion healing ministry that operates out of a former convent on the grounds of the Bronx school.

Giorgi has worked with a young woman who chose life and another who had suffered an abortion. Before BeFrienders, she says, “I had no idea how to talk to someone in trouble. It gives me a whole lot of satisfaction, being able to help. I have a whole new outlook on the pro-life/pro-choice situation. There are a whole lot of resources out there that people don’t know about that can help them make the best choices. I tell them that it’s best to get all the information you can before making a wrong decision.”

Stephen Vincent writes from

Wallingford, Connecticut.