“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

On October 22, 2019 Sherri Alker organized a field trip with other administrators and students to an abortion clinic in New Orleans. Those in attendance were members of her club, Little Lives Matter. The club’s purpose is to bring awareness to the issue of abortion that exists in America. Alker, having a passion for this subject, initiated this club and field trip in hopes of showing the women at the clinic that there does not need to be a loss of life. 

Nick Chetta was also in attendance and said that he had nerves due to not knowing “what was going to happen.” 

Their plan was to stand outside of the clinic and pray for, and potentially with, those coming in and out of the facility. However, their efforts were not met with open arms. 

“[T]he escorts were protecting their business and they weren’t very nice to us when they showed up,” said Chetta. 

Escorts work at the clinic to ensure that the women are able to exit the building as scheduled and they were not happy with the peaceful protests. 

Chetta said that the students responded well to the unkind behavior saying that “we just prayed and there was no distractions even when we had a dog come by us or we had adult men and women get in our faces and video us.” 

The administrators had a multitude of praises for how the students behaved themselves. 

Chetta attributes the students’ potential impact to Ms. Alker “because of what she does and the love she gives to these students and the confidence she gives them because they were incredible.”

Alker agreed saying that “[t]he kids were amazing” despite how aggressive the workers at the facility were. In order to encourage the students, Alker kept telling them, “Don’t let them intimidate us; we’re here for a purpose.” Their purpose was to prevent the destruction of a life and seeing these women walk in for appointments proved to Alker that their cause was important. Alker found one instance particularly heartbreaking: “What got me so emotional was when I saw a mother bring in her child and you could tell the child was very hesitant because the mom went first. The child was in the car and she went and got some escorts to get the child out of the car to go into the clinic and the child walked in with her head down very dejected.” 

The trip was so successful that Alker has decided to do another trip on October 31st. All of the students who attended the first trip felt very touched by the event and their passion seems to have spread to other members of the student body. Alker anticipates an increase in attendance with students who fiercely believe that little lives matter.