Swim Team Captain Céilí Koehr has been representing Seton School at the Girl’s State this week, and she has made all of us at Seton School proud with a courageous pro-life witness in the public arena.
Girl’s State is an annual program run by the American Legion to which one girl for every high school in the State is invited. You can think of Girl’s State as a mock State Government where you have political parties that compete to run the governments of several imaginary cities and the State of Virginia. A big part of the program is a State-wide election for Governor.
Céilí decided that the prevailing “wisdom” she had been hearing from well-meaning mentors needed a rebuttal, so she chose to run for the Gubernatorial nomination from the Federalist Party on an unabashedly pro-woman, pro-life platform.
Click here for a video of her giving her speech over Zoom.
And here is the text of her speech:
Céilí Koehr Governor Speech-Girls State 2021
Imagine a time when an entire class of people were seen as not human at all
- A time when an entire class had no legal standing in the courts
- They were considered property
- And people thought it was the best option for them
- They claimed the social upheaval of change would be too great.
We are of course talking about …………………… today and the lives of the unborn
Hi, my name is Céilí Koehr and as the Governor of the great commonwealth of Virginia I plan to attack the preeminent issue of our day… the assault on human life in the womb
- Many of us have great respect for science.
- Science is very clear that an unborn baby is a separate human life. It has unique DNA, it has its own working brain and beating heart at only 5-1/2 weeks, and it can feel pain.
- Abortion is the most frequent medical procedure that happens in the U.S. today
- And in all reality, it is the killing of a helpless baby
- It is far and away the number one cause of death in the United States, particularly among Margaret Sanger’s original targets, African Americans
- Is our “way of life” so important to us that we have the right to destroy another human life?
62 million abortions have been performed in America alone since the Supreme Court decision of Roe v wade in 1973
- That is 62 million babies that didn’t get their inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
It always strikes me as demeaning when well-meaning mentors and advisers tell me that I can do anything a man can do. Why is what a man can do the standard for me – I’m a woman!
- First of all, it’s so obviously false. I have nine brothers and even the youngest of them will always be bigger faster and stronger than me. But I can do things they’ll never be able to do
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- like give life!
We talk about women making their own destiny making their own choices.
- Why do we demean motherhood as if it’s some sort of limitation on us instead of the fulfillment of who we are and can be as women?
People think women are being targeted and abused
- Women aren’t being attacked – it’s the unborn baby that is being attacked
- Famous Suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.”
- Do we want future generations to look back at our era the same way we look back at plantation owners?
I know this is a very emotional topic and we are very unlikely to reach an agreement on it this week. So, let’s talk about one thing that we perhaps we can all agree on:
Women should have choices, and that is NOT the case today
- We are talking about sometimes desperate and scared women who are experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and see no other choice but abortion.
- Let’s give women realistic options to protect the human life inside of them.
- By supporting crisis pregnancy centers, ensuring prenatal care, and providing real support for single mothers with programs when they have no way to support themselves, we can offer another choice.
- And by improving access to adoption for the many couples that cannot have children on their own, we offer even more choices.
As your governor I will work towards ensuring Mothers have real options in their pregnancy
- I will do all I can to respect the lives of every human most especially the most vulnerable in our society, the unborn
- I will work to be a voice for the voiceless, a voice for the next generation.
- And I will work to abolish abortion – the destruction of human life in the womb
- Vote Céilí Koehr for Governor because Céilí cares
Thank you