Right Now is the brainchild of long-time pro-lifers Alissa Golob and Scott Hayward, both trained through years of work at Campaign Life Coalition. The new organization wants to promote pro-life advocacy by appealing to new audiences and instilling in them the tools to become effective advocates for the cause.
“Working at (Campaign Life) I was able to see that there was a big void in the pro-life movement, that there needed to be another organization to address and fill that void,” said Golob.
What the movement was lacking, claimed Golob, was outreach to “grassroots activists.” She would like to engage more people at the ground level “to get them trained so that they can efficiently and effectively be brought into the political sphere.” She wants to build on the work that Campaign Life has undertaken for four decades by attracting a broader base of participants.
“The pro-life movement is kind of at a standstill,” she said. “In many instances the pro-life movement does the same campaigns year after year. As helpful and beneficial as they are to individual people ... it is not moving the yardstick.”
Right Now, a non-partisan, non-profit organization, launched its startup web page, itstartsrightnow.ca, on Feb. 1 to start to build awareness, with their official softlaunch scheduled to take place on Feb. 23.
In the coming weeks, Golob and Hayward plan to attend the Manning Networking Conference as well as at the Progressive Conservative’s policy convention for Ontario. Between the two events, both to be held in Ottawa on consecutive weekends, the pro-life partners will scout locations for new headquarters.
For more than 40 years Campaign Life has worked nationally in support of such initiatives as 40 Days for Life, Life Chain and the annual March for Life in Ottawa that attracts more than 20,000 pro-life marchers, as well as work at all levels of government to advocate for life and support pro-life politicians. Right Now will focus almost exclusively on politics with the aim of helping to elect more pro-life members to Parliament and provincial legislature.
Hayward said Right Now intends to work “both with elected politicians as well as with pro-lifers on the ground right across the country from coast-to-coast-tocoast to get as many pro-lifers in the House of Commons as well as provincial legislatures.”
Along with targeting the country’s political capitals and major cities, Right Now intends to also reach out to potential supporters in remote regions of the country.
“In the past a lot of parts of the country have been ignored by the pro-life movement,” said Hayward. “There are a great number of prolifers who haven’t been engaged in a very, very long time. So we’re going to reach out and physically contact those areas.”
Lobbying politicians on controversial issues is not within the comfort zone of many Canadians, said Golob.
“Many pro-lifers in Canada find politics scary,” she said. “When I first started in the pro-life movement I didn’t know the difference between certain types of legislation, and MPs and MPPs.
“So I think it is really important to do political workshops, easy hands-on political workshops that train pro-lifers on how to become actively involved in the political sphere. Even at a small level it is effective.”