Tomorrow the Viva la Vida conference begins and it look like being a great success. Aiming to motivate and shape young pro-life activists and leaders, it has attracted widespread interest and is shaping up to be a weekend to remember.

“We’ve been lucky enough to get really inspiring young speakers,” said Rebecca of Youth Defence. “The response has been brilliant and we’re looking forward to building on that positive feedback.”

One of the speakers featured has already addressed student in NUIG Galway this week. Lila Rose, a 21-year-old history major has made headlines in the US for her exposure of abortion providers’ wrongdoings.

Since 2006, Rose has orchestrated undercover ‘stings’ at abortion clinics in Los Angeles, Indianapolis, Bloomington, Tucson, Phoenix and Memphis. Secretly videotaping their interactions with abortion providers, she and a friend have posed as under-age teens impregnated by older men. The videos - posted on Rose's website, LiveAction.org, and YouTube – show abortion providers coaching what they believe to be young teenage girls in how to obtain with an abortion without reporting statutory rape.

In one instance Rose captures a staff member at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Tennessee telling what she believed to be a 13-year old girl to lie about the age of her 31-year-old boyfriend in order to obtain a secret abortion. Other videos on the LiveAction.org website show abortion clinics coaching teenagers in what to say to avoid parental consent for an underage abortion.

Lila Rose’s new-media twist on exposing the abortion industry has put her front and center of a new generation of pro-life activists. Legal inquiries and grant suspension have followed her undercover exposés of US abortion providers.

Also speaking at the conference is Gianna Jessen, an amazing young woman who survived a saline abortion at seven months gestation. She has delivered her testimony to both the US Congress and the UK House of Commons. Gianna puts a human face to the abortion debate, which so often forgets that, in every abortion, a unique human being’s life is ended.

The conference will also hear from John Pridmore, the former gangster who went, in his own words, from “gangland to promised land”; and a former abortionist Dr Tony Levantino, amongst others.

For more on these speakers please go to http://www.youthdefence.ie/conference-09/ . Speakers are available for interview: please call Youth Defence on 01 8730463 for further details.