October 18, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – It is rare that a new pro-life organization emerges that does something utterly unique, but that is precisely what Laura Klassen and Choice42 have done. In the past several months, they have released a series of viral videos that have taken the Internet by storm, with Klassen and her now signature pink wig playfully poking fun at popular pro-choice arguments—and racking up millions of views and copycat videos in a wide range of different languages.
Their now famous “Magical Birth Canal” video has over one million views on their Facebook page alone.
Klassen first became aware of what she calls “the horror of abortion” when she was quite young. “I saw a graphic abortion image on the street,” she told me by email.
“That image always stuck with me. I started volunteering at my local pregnancy resource centre when I was in university. It was there that I realized the huge potential for reaching out to abortion-minded women online and so I started Choice42.”
The result was a massive online hub containing every pregnancy resource centre in the country, a one-stop shop for whatever a woman might need in crisis.
And then came the videos.
“Our #JustSaying series was created to challenge the abortion status quo by addressing various pro-choice arguments,” Klassen explained. “Usually a certain pro-choice argument will be making the rounds on social media, and then a script starts brewing. We’ve had to build some pretty random props—you can’t buy a giant sparkly birth canal on Amazon, go figure—and those take some time. We’ve spent a lot of time gathering costumes for our next video, which we’ll be filming soon! We usually take a half-day to film a video with a small crew and then we do the editing ourselves.”
The videos have triggered massive reactions right across the spectrum—especially because Klassen has a knack for poking the pro-choice activist arguments in a way that drives them crazy.
“The Magical Birth Canal” cleverly exposed a fundamental abortion apologetic as ridiculous—the idea that your physical location has anything to do with your humanity or your value. “No Uterus, No Opinion” (which features Klassen explaining to me why I can’t have an opinion on an issue of human rights because I am a man) highlighted how bizarre it is to say that you can’t have an opinion on an injustice unless you’ve directly experienced it yourself. And if there is one thing abortion activists cannot stand, it is being made fun of.
“Abortion supporters are quite offended by our work,” Klassen noted. “We receive a lot of hate mail and threats. The comments on our videos from people who don’t agree with them are usually just insults with no real argument. We have opened a lot of eyes though…especially with the ‘Magical Birth Canal’ as even many abortion supporters did not realize that you don’t gain your human rights until you are fully born.”
Success for women in the pro-life movement always comes with a backlash: Klassen puts up with some of the most repulsive and misogynist online hate that I’ve seen in a long time.
Klassen’s latest video tackles the lazy slander that pro-lifers only care about babies until they’re born, and features her and a masked colleague breaking into a “fake clinic”—the moniker given to crisis pregnancy centres by abortion activists—and filling it with thousands of dollars worth of free diapers.
“The idea for our latest video came because we wanted to do a big ‘pro-love’ gesture,” she explained. “The atmosphere here in Canada regarding the abortion issue is very tense right now with all of the violence against pro-lifers. We felt it would be a good time to do something really positive. We bought $2500 worth of diapers and did a reverse robbery at a Pregnancy Resource Centre. We ‘broke in’ to the centre and filled it with all of the diapers. We were addressing the myth that, ‘pro-lifers only care up until the point the baby is born’ which couldn’t be further from the truth. We also wanted to bring more awareness to the Pregnancy Resource Centres and all that they offer for women and their families for YEARS after the birth.”
Many more videos are being planned—and not just the hilarious parody videos Klassen has become famous for. Choice42 has put out riveting and heartbreaking stories of women who regret their abortions, and beautiful stories of women who chose life in spite of horrific circumstances. It is a powerful one-two punch of real-life stories and the clever popping of pro-choice myths—an online pro-life juggernaut that fills a unique role in the movement. Until now, there has been no group doing work quite like this—and it is tremendously effective.
