By MARIA PAPPAS

STAFF WRITER

Cecilia Brown is many things: a mother, grandmother, Green party member, vegetarian and Buddhist.

She is also ‘Lesbian, Liberal and Pro-Life,’ which was the title of the speech she gave at the event held by the Respect for Life club.

Brown, the president of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, addressed students in Tognino Hall on Wednesday, Mar. 20, speaking about her experiences as a liberal lesbian with pro-life views.

As a teenager, Brown found herself unexpectedly pregnant, and was persuaded by a nurse practitioner to have an abortion.

Brown described the painful experience that she went through, but warned that it did not solve any of her problems.

She still dealt with the repercussions of growing up in a broken home with an abusive and homophobic father who forced her to hide her homosexuality.

After the abortion, Brown dropped out of school and turned to drinking and drugs, what she described as her “wild life,” that eventually led to her second pregnancy three years later at the age of 21.

This time, she decided to keep the baby, and nine months later her daughter Margaret was born.

Years later, having married and divorced a man, and met current partner Renee, she received a phone call from her daughter.

She told her mother that she was pregnant and that she planned to have an abortion.

Due to Brown’s own experiences with abortion, she did not support her daughter’s decision and simply told Margaret that her experience was too painful to speak about.

However, as a mother, she supported her daughter and promised to give her anything that she might need.

For two weeks after receiving the news, Brown meditated. She describes meditating day in and day out, hoping that everything would fall into place.

A little while later, Brown received another phone call from her daughter telling her that she had decided not to abort the child.

Currently, Brown has full custody of the child that her daughter chose not to abort, her grandson Nathan. She describes raising Nathan as a challenge, as he has been diagnosed with autism and ADHD.

Despite the challenges of raising her grandson, Cecilia Brown is strongly involved in the pro-life movement.

She described her experience with pro-life organizations, beginning in the early 1990s, about 20 years after her abortion.

She faced many difficulties since most pro-life groups were religious during that time. As a homosexual woman, she felt ostracized by these groups.

She was eventually referred to the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGL) where she felt that she belonged.

Brown wanted to join the pro-life movement so that she could help women from different environments that were struggling with various issues due to pregnancies and abortions.

This was a difficult mission for her at first, as PLAGL was often attacked, both verbally and physically, for its views.

Specifically, she mentioned an instance at the March of Dimes walk in which she was harassed and arrested upon sharing her views.

Growing up, Brown was taught that gays were pro-life, and that she had to support abortion rights because they were deemed a “privacy issue.”

Now, gays want to get married and have children; as gay rights are vocalized and brought into the public sphere, abortion is no longer a privacy issue.

Now, the issue is equality.

“The climate is changing,” Brown said.

She believes that the current generation is more aware of these issues.

Currently, PLAGL works to educate gays and lesbians who do not know about abortion and the emotional aspects of it.

Brown thinks that as more gays and lesbians have children, they begin to understand the sanctity of human life, and thus agree with PLAGL’s pro-life stance.

Mike Prescia, FCRH ’14, president of the Respect for Life club, agrees with Brown on that point.

“I think it’s important for our club to have this because being pro-life isn’t just a Catholic issue,” Prescia said. “No matter where you’re at you can be pro-life. I think it’s important to show that, especially at a Catholic school, being pro-life isn’t unique to Catholics.”

Brown also wants to educate the public about reasons why women abort children, specifically the fact that some women are forced into abortion by bosses, family members, boyfriends or husbands.

During the education process, Brown focuses on “how you let them know,” emphasizing that one must not be violent in one’s education techniques.

Most importantly, Brown’s advice for pro-life groups is to work to “find a common ground” with other groups, such as LGBT and pro-choice organizations.

Although these groups may disagree on some or even most issues, Brown believes that there are always commonalities between groups and their opinions.

She thinks that these commonalities can be used in order to maintain civility between individuals and groups, and even to strengthen the bonds between them.

While she explained that she is not naïve enough to think that biases will eliminate themselves, she is working towards seeing these biases disappear.

Since trying to tackle all of the world’s problems at once would overwhelm anyone, Brown focuses on pro-life issues specifically.

She advocates that everyone find an issue that he or she is passionate about and dedicate himself or herself to helping that cause.