The Virginia State Final Contest of the National Right to Life Oratory Contest for the year 2000 was held on Saturday, May 6, in Richmond, Virginia. First place was taken by Caroline Wheeler, a senior at Seton High School in Manassas. Second place went to Anna Hanger, a senior at Manchester High School in Midlothian. Miss Hanger also placed second in the 1999 Virginia Finals.

Miss Wheeler will go on to represent Virginia in the National Right to Life Oratory Final Contest to be held during the National Right to Life Convention in Arlington, Virginia on June 29 – July 1. She also receives a cash award of $500. Miss Hanger receives a $200 cash award.

Ten students from around the Commonwealth participated in the Virginia Finals. Other schools represented in the contest were Bishop Denis J. O'Connell High School in Arlington, Heritage High School in Lynchburg, Holy Cross High School in Lynchburg, and Rosedale Christian Academy in Winchester. Two participants, from Chesapeake and Virginia Beach, are home schooled.

In her speech, Miss Wheeler discussed the terrible effect that abortion has had on women, and on the nation. "Our wonderful, special powers of being mothers no longer seem so wonderful and special. The reason is because of what abortion has done to the nation," she said. "Children are no longer a blessing, but a curse. The most natural and feminine power that every female shares is her gift of bearing children. We were created for the purpose of giving life, not taking it away. But the abortionists want to say otherwise." After discussing a number of effects in our society, she noted, "They have dressed up abortion, making it seem like it is the answer to our problems. Instead, it is the root of many of our problems. The abortionists left off the fine print when they published the ad for abortion."

Miss Hanger, in her second place speech, started by asking whether we are seeing an "epidemic of life," referring to the dramatic increase in life expectancy we've experienced over the past century, or rather a "culture of death," with lives of babies brutally ended by abortion, other babies left to die by their young mothers, and groups lobbying for legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. She then concentrated her talk on these last two items and the relationship between them. She pointed out that "legalization of voluntary assisted suicide cannot happen without legalization of non-voluntary euthanasia" since "courts in 14 jurisdictions have already ruled that the law must give the same right to incompetent patients as it does to competent ones, . . . leaving it to the surrogate decision makers." She told a true story of a 17-year-old boy who "was rushed into ICU after a car accident left him comatose." A brain surgeon said he would not live through the night "which is actually a good thing because otherwise he would be a vegetable." But he didn't die, and instead was spoken to by nurses and family for weeks. After being moved out of the unit, the ICU staff didn't know what had happened to him until he walked in two years later. The ICU policy was then changed "to treat comatose patients as if they were conscious." Miss Hanger notes, "If this doctor had had the option to 'mercifully' end this young man's life, the young man would not have even had a decent chance to recover." She concluded her speech by saying, "Let us do everything within our power to see that the culture of death passes with the twentieth century and that a real epidemic of life flourishes within the twenty-first."