Could a humble dandelion help win the culture?

Even as I write, roads are closing and I’ve had to surrender my travel plans. There are few signs of life on the white, cold ground, and certainly, no dandelions. 

Nevertheless, I’m calling on dandelions to help me write this column, borrowing an idea of a recent guest of my podcast, “Matters of Soul Importance,” who used this humble “flower” to show how we can win back the Culture of Life.  

Angela Copenhaver, a successful marketing expert, was dreaming of buying a multi-million-dollar home on the Atlantic Ocean when the birth of her first grandchild inspired a major pivot. She left her lucrative business to change diapers in her home state of Nebraska, where her daughter had married a Catholic and become one herself. The move proved the beginning of Angela’s conversion as well, both from a lukewarm Christianity to Catholicism and from being a “choice” proponent to firmly pro-life.  

Her conversion to life didn’t happen as quickly as her conversion to Catholicism, but ultimately, a co-worker handed her a book that punctured a hole in her previous stance. A few years after Angela was hired to produce Catholic radio in Lincoln, she decided to put all her energy into starting a marketing effort to undo the damage of the abortion industry. 

Angela was well aware of the giant marketing arm of Planned Parenthood, which had convinced her for years that its motives were pure. Realizing it had always been a lie—one that would require repentance for the financial contributions and volunteering she’d done for them—she set out to combat the organization’s pervasive deceptions. 

From that came two ministries, Human From Day One and “We Teach Think.” Now, Angela is on a mission, to help advance the cause of life, one conversation at a time.  

She understands the psychology behind what makes people decide their convictions. After all, she once made a lot of money from this. Now, she wants to help others understand it, and in a way that can save lives.  

“We need to make the thought of abortion unthinkable in the majority of Americans’ minds,” Angela said. “Then it won’t matter what the laws say. People will just stop doing it.”       

Angela explained that we often come to embrace our convictions incrementally. An idea is grasped onto, and then another. It’s not long before that idea, whether it’s true, becomes firm. “It’s very hard for humans to admit they were wrong,” she explained, and change courses. 

To undo erroneous, immoral thinking, we need to begin talking to one another—and especially those who embrace the Culture of Death—differently. Angela has created a website—www.humanfromdayone.com—and a phone app with marketing materials and videos, including one geared toward younger people: vimeo.com/983583348. We have to start young, she said, which the abortion industry has known for years. 

Angela offered several examples of the kind of thoughtful discourse that can work on our rational minds to bring us to the truth, including one centered on a dandelion. The conversation would go as follows, as she illustrated during our interview: 

“What if I pulled a dandelion out of my yard and placed it in my driveway. Could you agree that I aided in the death of that dandelion?” (Yes) 

“What if I sprayed the dandelion with some kind of insecticide. Could you also agree that I aided in the death of that dandelion?” (Yes) 

“What if I hired a professional lawn service to come and remove the dandelion for me. Could you also agree that I aided in the death of that dandelion?” (Yes) 

“So ultimately we can agree that if we remove something from an environment that is conducive to its needs, we’ve aided in the death of that something.” (Yes) 

“We didn’t use the word murder,” Angela concluded. “We didn’t accuse someone of something that will get their emotions up.” By not employing innocuous words and ideas, the conversation is more likely to advance, and in time, those who engage in the conversation will begin to extrapolate the dandelion’s situation to other living things—like a human being.  

I found Angela’s insights invigorating, and I’m hoping we can host her here in the Fargo Diocese as a speaker in the near future. She’s very open to growing her ministries, helping to foster, with help, a society in which not only weeds but a much more valuable entity—a child in the womb—might come to be considered, in every way and in all times, worthy of life.