Catholic New World staff writer Michelle Martin talks with Mary-Louise Kurey.

A month after taking the reins of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Respect Life Office, Mary-Louise Kurey, 28, has plenty of plans. A pro-life and chastity speaker since before reigning as Miss Wisconsin in 1999, Kurey has degrees in voice performance and once had dreams of becoming an opera singer. But seeing friends deal with the fallout of premarital sexual activity changed her plans. Now she wants to take the stage to persuade people of the dignity of human life.

The Catholic New World: How did God intervene and set you on this path?

Mary-Louise Kurey: I felt a calling when I was in college to speak out about chastity, especially to young people. It came first of all from my own commitment to this decision. I made this choice in seventh grade, at a time when I was facing a lot of pressure to become sexually active, to use drugs. I can honestly say today I’m approaching getting married in a little over a month, and it was the best decision I made in my life. It has not been easy, but it’s been incredibly rewarding.

In high school, frankly, a lot of my friends were sexually active, and I thought it was none of my business. I didn’t want to tell them what to do. Then one of my friends got pregnant when we were 15, and I saw how that really changed her life. That was a wake-up call because she and her boyfriend had actually been practicing so-called safe sex. We were really surprised as teen-agers that this could happen.

When I went to college, my roommate had a nervous breakdown, and she ended up in the hospital. She shared with me that she had an abortion three years earlier. She just couldn’t take the sadness and the anger that she felt at herself for making that decision, and that caused the breakdown. That was another wake-up call. I knew abortion took the life of a child, but I didn’t realize how it was really bad for women as well.

I thought, looking at these two experiences, that I’d been taking really good care of myself, but I’d been allowing friends to make really destructive decisions. I felt a calling to speak out to teens about chastity so that others don’t have to suffer the same consequences.

TCNW: You’ve done a lot of work with young people about abstinence and chastity. Do you think young people are more receptive to those messages?

MLK: Absolutely. I think young adults are also receptive to the message of chastity, but it’s a different perspective. With teens, they’re more idealistic, and they’re not as willing to compromise. They still have a vision of having high standards in their lives—a vision that many adults eventually lose. Also, I think they see what premarital sex has brought to the world as far as increased divorce, problems in relationships, more domestic violence, so they want to live a life that is authentic and they want to have authentic relationships.

With young adults, oftentimes they’re coming from the perspective of secondary virginity, because there are a lot of young adults out there who have been sexually active and feel regret. So we’ve got to let them know that you can make a new beginning. You don’t have to keep living with those regrets and making the same mistakes. That’s an empowering message that a lot of young adults need to hear, and want to hear.

TCNW: How do you reach teenagers and young adults in a sex-saturated culture?

MLK: People are touched by different things. Some people are compelled to embrace chastity because of the physical consequences, whether it’s pregnancy outside of marriage or sexually transmitted diseases. Others, the emotional consequences are of significance to them—the pain of giving themselves to somebody and having that relationship end, that’s something that’s very powerful. For others, the spiritual aspect of the decision to embrace chastity are very powerful.

The image of chastity in society has been about saying no to sex. But actually, chastity is about saying yes to the beautiful gift that our sexuality is. It’s saying that sex is something so beautiful and precious that it’s worth sharing only with that one person who makes a lifetime commitment to love you unconditionally in marriage.

TCNW: It sounds like your first priority is changing hearts rather than changing laws.

MLK: The goal of the Respect Life Office is to bring people to conversion, and to do that in a loving way. The dream is to build a culture where no one would ever want an abortion, or no one would ever want to kill someone who is elderly or who is suffering. No one would ever want to kill a criminal, even a murderer or a rapist. The goal is to build a society where we don’t view life as utilitarian. We view it as something that is so sacred and so precious because each person is made in God’s image and likeness. I think that’s a challenge, because people view their own value in a utilitarian way. “I’m a good person because I’m good looking, or I make a lot of money or I’m very talented or I’m extremely intelligent.” If we view ourselves in a utilitarian way, it’s easy to say, “What’s the use of the life of a murderer?” or “What’s the use of a life of an unborn child?” When we start to view ourselves as real children of God, then we can view others in that way as well.

TCNW: Are we moving in that direction?

MLK: Yes. I don’t think it’s going to take a miracle to transform our culture into a culture of life. I think we’re already on the way. The increased number of young people who are embracing chastity is a sign of that. …

In a number of states, for example Wisconsin, we’ve seen a significant decrease in abortions over the past several years. I think that’s because people are starting to see abortion for what it is. The truth is on our side. To see abortion as taking the life of an innocent person, equating that with picking up a gun and shooting someone on the street, that’s a very important connection for people to make. That human life in the womb is as real as the life of someone walking down the street.

Young people are so into the pro-life movement. Many young people today—people of my generation—are survivors. I could have been aborted. To live with the realization that your life hung in the balance of whether you were so-called wanted or planned is a burden for our generation. Because of that, we look at the abortion issue differently.

TCNW: What new directions do you see the Respect Life Office taking?

MLK: We want to launch a major youth initiative. We want to have curriculum on chastity in the schools, to have clubs, to have a youth rally that’s very edgy and hip, that really shows pro-life as being a very appealing and attractive position to take.

Also we want to do a lot more with the media. The media is constantly saturating our society with messages that promote a culture of death, so we want to confront that and use the media to our advantage.

TCNW: There seems to be an effort to put women—especially young women—in the forefront to speak about pro-life issues. Why?

MLK: I think there’s still that stereotype that the pro-life movement is run by men, when in reality, it’s a women’s issue. Abortion is a violent act against a woman. It can damage her physically and certainly emotionally and spiritually. This is a women’s issue, and it’s appropriate to have women leading the campaign to protect human life.

The fact that abortion exists is a testimony that our society has failed women, that we are so greedy that we would rather exterminate a woman’s young than give her the resources she needs to make a loving choice, whether it’s to place that child with a family in adoption or to raise that child herself. There are many crisis pregnancy centers like Aid for Women and the Women’s Centers that do wonderful work in that area, and a lot of people don’t know about their efforts. Our office wants to work more closely with all the pro-life organizations in the city, to strengthen them and to strengthen us. United, we’ll be an even stronger movement.

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