Here Is Someone Persuading Others To Reverence Life

Twelve-year-old "Lia" of Toronto has become a star at her school and online with her five-minute pro-life speech, crafted for a school competition. Despite discouragement and outright opposition, Lia's presentation was so well done that she reportedly won the contest she was told she would be disqualified from, due to the "controversial" message of her speech.

"What if I told you that right now, someone was choosing if you were gonna live or die?" begins the charismatic seventh-grader. "What if I told you that this choice wasn't based on what you could or couldn't do, what you'd done in the past, or what you would do in the future? And what if I told you that you could do nothing about it?"

Lia's mother says that the topic was of her own choosing. "She was told that if she went ahead with that topic, she would not be allowed to continue on in the speech competition," the mother wrote in an email. She also said the girl's homeroom teacher was supportive of Lia's speech, even though she was pro-choice.

The mom noted, "After helping Lia do the speech (the teacher) said, 'It really got me thinking.'" At the schoolwide competition, the mom said one pro-choice teacher on the judge's panel "didn't even want to hear" the speech and stepped down from the panel before Lia began. After the speech, the judges initially told Lia she had indeed been disqualified, but controversy among the judges eventually led to a reversal, and Lia's family learned the next day that the panel agreed the girl deserved to win the competition.

Lia presented her speech at a regional competition last week, representing her school. The speech is available in its entirety here. It has since been viewed over 260,000 times and sparked a heated discussion.