Now one of the pro-life movement’s new cutting-edge activists, the national youth co-ordinator for Campaign Life Coalition is using every social media tool at her disposal to convince young people to join the cause. But she has not forgotten the importance of faceto- face, one-on-one activism the old-fashioned way.
“Back before Facebook was invented we had something called pen pals when you were a teenager,” Golob said. “We would write letters and they would write letters back.”
Her pen pal invited her to join her for a week of pro-life activism. Raised Catholic, and the eldest of nine children, Golob remembers praying for an end to abortion.
“But that was the extent of it.”
So at the age of 13, Golob joined her pen pal on a Show the Truth tour, a week-long bus trip where the participants sleep in church basements or peoples’ homes, and for six hours a day display large graphic signs of aborted babies taken at every stage of fetal development.
“I’ll never forget that week,” she said. “It was really shocking and exhilarating and I learned so much.”
She called the experience a “trial by fire” that taught her the importance of apologetics, of being ready to explain pro-life arguments. It “impassioned me and put that spark in me and my whole pro-life activism has grown since then.”
Golob has not missed doing a Show the Truth tour each year for the past 13 years.
“The pictures were probably the most shocking thing I had ever seen in my entire life,” she said. A Grade 8 student entering high school is “not thinking about abortion. I was not really expecting it.”
She found the pictures upsetting at first, but eventually they gave her “the drive, the motivation that everyone should have for pro-life activism.”
She knows not everyone embraces graphic images as a tactic, and she does not expect all pro-lifers to use them, but she has heard young women tell her seeing the pictures changed their minds about having an abortion.
Golob, who grew up in Sarnia, Ont., attended public high school, then went on to Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy, a small Catholic liberal arts college in Barry’s Bay, Ont., that integrates academic studies with the Catholic faith. She finished her last year at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ont., where she graduated in 2009.
She ended up working at Campaign Life not long after graduation, beginning as an administrative assistant.
“When they saw what I was capable of and my passion, they said, ‘I think you would be good at this area’ and it just kind of took off from there.”
Golob now takes care of Campaign Life’s social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. She produces promotional videos, blogs, puts material on the web site and occasionally writes for LifeSiteNews.com. She engages in political and social activism, working closely with other pro-life leaders. She and a committee of Campaign Life youth have been the leaders and organizers of the Defund Abortion campaign in Ontario that has involved leafleting, picketing of MPPs officers and demonstrations at Queen’s Park.
She is also one of the main organizers for the May 10 Youth Conference that follows the National March for Life.
“It’s a lot of work to get people to come and make it grow,” she said.
Golob was in Ottawa recently for a two-week speaking tour targeting high school classes.