A 12-year-old Canadian girl's passionate pro-life speech has captured the attention of thousands on the Web and earned her top recognition at her school.

The 7th grader, only identified by her first name, Lia, did the speech for a contest at her school in Toronto, despite urges by teachers to cover another topic.

In the speech she says, "Fetuses are definitely humans knit together in their mother's womb by their wonderful Creator who knows them all by name."  View the entire speech here.

"She was told it was 'too big,' 'too mature' and 'too controversial,'" Lia's mom, Kimberly, told creators of the blog Moral Outcry. "She was also told that if she went ahead with that topic, she would not be allowed to continue on in the speech competition."

But Lia's teacher decided to let her continue in the contest and she won first place as a result.

The speech has received nearly 300,000 views on the video sharing site, YouTube. Lia begins the video posing questions to the audience.

"What if I told you that right now someone was choosing if you were going to live or die?" she asked. "What if I told you that this choice wasn't based on what you could or couldn't do, what you had done in the past, or what you would do in the future?"

Lia went on to a regional speech competition, but did not win.  Still, Kimberly said she is proud of her daughter's "genuine" passion on the subject.

Source: OneNewsNow, Moral Outcry Blog