30% of Student Body Protest Abortion for Mega Shield

Over 150 Christendom College students, faculty, and staff took part in Mega Shield — a once a semester college-wide prayerful protest at a Metro DC abortion clinic on November 12. The group prayed numerous rosaries and counseled women at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Silver Spring, Md.

Organized by sophomore Henry Love, the Mega Shield event drew enough participants to line the entire street corner around the Planned Parenthood clinic, giving the students and college president Dr. Timothy O’Donnell the opportunity to bear witness to a cause so often downsized by the media.

“It’s great to see so many students participate in this because the only way we’re going to change the culture is by showing that the youth, the ‘millenials,’ actually care about the pro-life cause. To outsiders, this is especially important. Seeing a group of over a hundred students from a random college get up early on a Saturday morning to pray and offer counsel is a shock, and really a witness to the fact that there are large numbers of young people who are willing to fight for life,” says Love.

Participants in Shield of Roses have been driving an hour and a half every Saturday morning to this Planned Parenthood clinic in Maryland for over a year now, after the clinic they had previously prayed at in Washington, D.C., was closed last year. Typically, around twenty-four students make the trek across state lines every week, but the Mega Shield event draws closer to two hundred students once a semester.

“This is so important for Christendom, because it unifies the college and shows that the stand for life is not something that occurs only once a year at the March for Life, but is something that happens every Saturday. Being pro-life in mind and action is something that should be happening every day of our lives, and this group gives people a tangible opportunity to live that our weekly, helping women in terribly unfortunate situations. This is something worth fighting for,” says Love.

Shield of Roses is Christendom’s oldest student-run group, founded the first year of the college’s existence in 1977. Advised by the history department’s Dr. Brendan McGuire, Shield of Roses has featured numerous inspiring leaders over the years, some of whom have been awarded “Volunteer of the Year” awards by the Diocese of Arlington.