Color me shocked: The Washington Post has an excellent article today covering the Students for Life Conference at Catholic University yesterday. The students they interviewed sound intelligent, passionate, and completely dedicated -- not the treatment that pro-lifers are generally accustomed to receiving from the mainstream media.

On their ministry to prospective fathers:

Billy Valentine . . . is carrying on their message with a twist: persuading other young men to take responsibility and "stand up for life" when their girlfriends become pregnant.

"As a sidewalk counselor, I wait outside abortion clinics until the men come out to use their cellphones. I tell them I'm not there to judge them. I'm there to help," said Valentine, 20, one of about 800 participants in the District yesterday for the annual conference of Students for Life of America. "Sometimes they break down and cry and go back and bring out their girlfriends to reconsider."

On support for the mothers:

A common theme was the need to focus on the challenges of being a mother. Several participants said the antiabortion movement has evolved in that direction, partly to counter criticism that it was indifferent to the hardships of raising a child in poverty or alone.

"In pro-choice circles, people tend to talk about abortion casually, like getting a manicure or an appendectomy. But it is a procedure that takes one life and leaves another one irreparably damaged," said Cayce Utley, a speaker from Feminists for Life. "We can't say we care about the baby and not care about the mom."

And perhaps my favorite touch:

Valentine, who is majoring in human life studies at a Catholic college in Ohio, said that every time he and his friends persuade a young woman not to have an abortion, they throw her a baby shower to make sure she and the newborn start out with the necessities.

He noted that the antiabortion movement is becoming predominantly youthful while the abortion rights movement is aging. "This conference shows that the youth are not the future of the pro-life movement," he said. "We are the movement."

Coverage of the March for Life, set for tomorrow in downtown DC, is notoriously shoddy, so this is a refreshing change from the usual stereotype.