The following is an article written by one of our student canvassers, Ethan S., who has joined us on canvassing deployments in several key battleground states. In this article he shares his experience — including the ups and downs — of his time canvassing for LIFE with us. Learn more about our Voter Contact Program here.

One day while canvassing an angry voter told me to, “Get a real job!” I found this amusing but reflected on what the experience of canvassing has taught me, and if it really was a “real job.” The answer to that question is a resounding yes! However, canvassing is more than any job, more than scanning items at a grocery store, it is something truly fulfilling. It’s doing something worth fighting for.

I came to Franciscan University in my freshman year, and quickly became friends with Stan, who had worked with SBA Pro-Life America already. He got me signed up and soon enough I was knocking on doors in the outer suburbs of Pittsburgh. At first I did not enjoy the process of canvassing at all, but my enthusiasm for the job overpowered it. I had been given the opportunity to make a difference, however small. It was not enough for me to simply have the correct opinions on abortion, but now a notional belief became a real one which I lived out. As a Catholic, it’s simply not enough for you to believe all the correct dogmas and doctrines, but for one to be saved they have to truly live in Christ. So now thanks to SBA I was given the opportunity to live out such a calling in the world.

By December, I was going on real deployments and not just Super Saturdays. I was excited to travel, and the first stop was Miami. It was my first time aboard a plane, which brought with it a new set of fears and challenges. However, it also brought new joys, such as being able to see other parts of the country I would never travel to otherwise. Further, I met new people, gained new insights into what I believed, and the stories I heard from those voters often overjoyed or harrowed me. Not only was I living out my morals, but I became aware of the reality that abortion is not just something you read about in the news, but a real issue which affects millions of us today.

To give a specific example, in Kansas for the Value them Both campaign, I encountered one lady whose story shocked me. She was a born-again Evangelical who was staunchly pro-life. Without any prompting, she was brave enough to share her history on the issue. When she was a teenager she had gotten pregnant and had wanted to get an abortion. She had received said “abortion” multiple times, but the doctors continually failed to kill the child. Each visit weighed more and more on her conscience, yet she continued anyway. The result was a dead child and horrible internal bleeding. She repented afterwards and accepted Christ into her heart, but the scars from that time in her life clearly haunted her to this day. While I wish I could mention joyful experiences with happy families, of which there have been many, the grim reality of the plague of abortion is what has driven me after that point.

I owe a lot to my work canvassing for SBA. I’ve met amazing people both in the field and as my coworkers and bosses. It has taught me valuable skills such as being able to take rejection, how to talk about sensitive issues, and how to be a more caring person in general. To any student who may be reading: you have nothing to lose by giving canvassing a chance. It has transformed my life in ways which I couldn’t have imagined. So yes canvassing is “a real job,” but it is so much more than that.

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