Rebecca Grace

AFA Journal staff writer

Editor’s note: The family name is withheld to guard their privacy.

July 2009 – Dr. Seuss’ penned the words first; now 12-year-old Lia is echoing them around the world: “Even though you can’t see them or hear them at all, a person is a person, no matter how small.” 

These are the closing comments quoted in a pro-life speech the young Canadian wrote about abortion. What began as the fulfillment of a class assignment turned into a worldwide proclamation after Lia’s mom, Kimberley, posted a video on www.YouTube.com of Lia presenting the speech. YouTube is an Internet Web site where original videos can be posted and viewed.

“[I] posted it because I wanted my friends to see it,” Kimberley told AFA Journal. 

By the end of the first day, 170 people had viewed the video. As of press time, about four months later, over 650,000 people had watched Lia’s speech online. 

“We’ve had requests to send it all over the world,” Kimberley explained. “We got a request from the Island of Malta to use it in their public school systems, so we sent them a DVD.”

Other DVD requests have come from Australia, England and Spain, where the speech is airing on Spanish television. Various individuals and organizations have asked to post it on their Web sites. 

“So the worldwide response has just been phenomenal. I can’t imagine how many people have actually seen it,” Lia’s mom added. 

The topic
The story begins with Lia needing to pick a topic for a school speech that she would give in class and as part of a school speech competition if she qualified. 

Lia initially chose to write her speech about abortion, but her teacher discouraged her. It was a big topic, and she was afraid Lia wouldn’t be able to represent both sides of the argument. The teacher also knew that the competition was important to Lia, and with abortion as her a topic, Lia would likely be disqualified. Kimberley understood the teacher’s concerns and helped her daughter explore other options, as did the school librarian. 

“So it was to everyone’s amazement when about a week and a half later, Lia just announced: ‘No, I’m doing the topic of abortion,’” Kimberley recalled. “[S]he recognized it may mean disqualification from the speech contest, which was quite important to her, but she just felt that she needed to pursue that topic.” 

This was not the first time Lia was compelled to put her strong pro-life convictions into action. Evangelist Lou Engle inspired her, as did an invitation to participate in a silent life tape siege. As a participant in the siege, Lia covered her mouth with a piece of red tape on which the word “life” was written. Then she stood with others in silent protest a few blocks away from an abortion clinic.

Lia was excited that God was using her in this way, and she knew He wanted her to write and present a speech on abortion. So she did.

The speech
To prepare her speech, Lia used information from Focus on the Family and the question/answer format the Apostle Paul used in Romans 9. Kimberley helped Lia do the research, formulate the basis of the speech and understand difficult words, but Lia did most of it on her own. 

“She presented it to her class,” Kimberley said. “Her teacher was quite impressed with it and felt like Lia had done such a good job [that] she should be given the option of pursuing the speech contest.”  

But the topic was still problematic. So, Lia presented her speech to two other teachers for approval. They also agreed she should advance to the contest. 

“Obviously somebody in the background had quite a heated discussion about it because one of the [contest] judges … decided to step down because he didn’t want to hear her topic, …” Kimberley said. 

Then Lia was asked by her teacher to remove a profound sentence from the speech. If she did not, she would once again face disqualification from the speech contest. 

“[I]t was probably the only sentence that actually firmly stated that there is a Creator,” Lia explained. 

Lia went home and prayed with her parents about what to do.

“I wanted to do the contest, but I knew I had to keep that sentence in,” Lia said. 

“It was quite another test of her faith,” Kimberly added. 

The next day Lia went to her teacher; the teacher could tell from the look on her face that she didn’t want to delete the sentence. So the teacher allowed Lia to keep the sentence in the speech and participate in the contest.

Lia presented her speech before the whole school only to find out the next day – after delayed results and overnight deliberation – that she had been disqualified because of her topic. 

Kimberley was upset about the principle of the matter, so she contacted the school administrator and politely asked him to reconsider the situation. 

“I don’t really know what happened, … but somewhere along the line, the decision was reversed, and Lia was declared the school winner,” Kimberley said.

She went on to compete at the regional level where she didn’t win – “probably because of the topic, mostly,” Lia said. 

But the speech has caught the attention of hundreds of thousands – some critical of a 12-year-old speaking on the topic of abortion and others supportive of her bold and articulate claims. 

The consequences
At the time, Kimberley was praying: “God show me your heart. I really want to know your heart. I want to care about the things that you care about. 

“So when I saw my daughter passionately pursuing this topic, giving this speech, and seeing the response, I realized this is something God really cares about,” Kimberley said.

“It’s hard to explain the amount of turmoil that we went through as a family because of the things that were being sent to us and said to us and said about us,” she added. “You can try living at peace with everybody around you, but you realize there is unreasonable hatred out there. It’s not because you’re doing anything wrong. It’s because you’re bringing God into people’s faces, and they don’t like it.

“But I think there is almost more peace being in that place where you are getting persecuted because Jesus said, ‘In this world you will have trouble, but take heart because I have overcome the world.’”

Despite hateful comments posted about Lia and her family on the YouTube site, they’ve received encouragement there, as well. 

Lia was also awarded the Susan B. Anthony Young Leader Award for her “trailblazing pro-life leadership.” 

Neither Lia nor her parents had any qualms about her being so young and discussing such a mature topic. Lia, who is in a gifted class where weighty topics are discussed regularly, has an open and strong relationship with her parents. She asks lots of questions, and they offer her honest and appropriate answers. 

“It wasn’t a really hard topic for me to talk about,” Lia admits. 

“I don’t think you necessarily have to live through an unwanted pregnancy to be able to have an opinion on abortion,” Kimberley said. “… Lia did her research on it. She came to her conclusions – that’s to be expected of anybody.

“Others have aptly pointed out that there are 12-year-olds who are having abortions in other parts of the world, so I think a 12-year-old needs to know about these things.” 

Plus, girls only a year older than Lia are allowed to get abortions in her home province of Ontario. In Canada, abortion is funded by the national health care system, making it more readily available than in the U.S. 

The truth
Being Canadian, Lia and her family knew very little about American politics when Kimberley posted Lia’s speech on YouTube.

Kimberley said, “We knew President Obama had been elected, but we didn’t know anything about the Freedom of Choice Act, his policies, …”

“Or Planned Parenthood,” Lia added. 

That’s why Kimberley sees this whole experience with Lia’s speech as “one of those Esther situations where God gave her a voice [and a message] for such a time as this. … He’s trying to get our attention, and I hope people will listen to the message … and rethink [the issue] so it will start changing these policies that are put in place by countries like the United States and Canada.”

“I just really want people to … think about the pros and cons of abortion,” Lia said. “We’ve already had two e-mails, I think, of people telling us that they didn’t have an abortion. I really hope that becomes more common. Me saving lives is really exciting.”

When Lia gets older, she desires for God to keep using her in His work of saving lives. 

“Since like the age of six or seven, I’ve wanted to be a missionary,” she said. “I want to go out to all the foreign countries riding on horses.”

Although Lia is not an equestrian just yet, that’s her dream. For now, she enjoys musical theater, sewing, playing the piano and competitive dancing. She dances nine-and-a-half hours every week. 

Lia is the middle of three children in a family that Kimberley describes as one that loves Jesus passionately. They don’t watch TV, but they do have family dance contests from time to time.

“We just try to have a lot of fun together,” Kimberley said. “I really think Jesus is the center of everything we do. We just hope that other people feel that [too].”   

To view Lia’s speech, click here.