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Life

28th Oct 2021

Students storm out of school after anti-abortion assembly

Katy Brennan

The students were having none of it.

Hundreds of students at a US high school staged a walkout during an assembly which featured an anti-abortion guest speaker.

One of the pupils took to TikTok to share footage of the incident that occurred in Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco, California. The video shows students getting up and leaving in protest, as they walk towards the school’s exit.

“My school tried to hold a pro-life assembly, so we walked out,” the caption read.

Commenting on the video the creator also said that the guest speaker had “compared Holocaust deaths to abortion.”

@nolegonWe were out of there ##fyp ##foryou ##foryoupage ##fypシ ##prochoice ##prolife ##walkout ##xyzbca ##abortion♬ Life Goes On – Oliver Tree

According to The San Francisco Chronicle, the guest speaker was Megan Almon, a prominent pro-life speaker from the Life Training Institute.

According to the Life Training Institute website, Megan works with a programme that teaches others who are opposed to abortion how to “persuasively defend their views in the marketplace of ideas”.

The Chronicle reported that five minutes into the speech, hundreds of students at the Catholic high school got up and walked out, leaving only a few dozen pupils remaining in the hall.

The TikTok video received over 2.8 million views on the platform and 721.5k likes.

While opinions were mixed in the comment section, most people praised the teenagers for their walk out.

“Schools shouldn’t hold assemblies like this. That isn’t their place,” one viewer wrote.

“We can’t have comprehensive sexual education but we can have anti-abortion assemblies in school. Kayyyy,” another said.

“Proud of young people for knowing what they want and not just letting the school brainwash them,” a third added.

“As a millennial, I am continually in awe of this generation’s dedication to stand up for what’s right. Proud of y’all,” another person said.