Young women speak with one who is older and wiser.  Thank you for making Debbie’s work possible.

by Jacqueline Hawkins

A UNC Greensboro student walked up to the Deeper Still (DS) post-abortion counseling table.  She told Debbie Picarello that seeing the pictures had “completely undone any healing that I had accomplished until now.”

As Debbie asked probing questions, the young woman said she believed her child would be reincarnated.  She reasoned that because of the abortion, she could now help more people, that she was better off, and so on.

This student wound up sharing her justifications with a small group of like-minded female students who had gathered around.  They were adamant that Debbie’s approval of the pictures was hurting women.  They told Debbie she really didn’t care about them.

But Debbie stood her ground.  She said healing comes through Jesus Christ alone.  In her words, “Acknowledgment that we murdered our children is essential to being forgiven, because that is how God sees what we did.  Our opinions are trumped by His Truth.”  Amid much scorn and scoffing, another female student opened up.

Holding back tears, Jackie said she had been raped by a police officer and had an abortion.  Debbie expressed her deep sorrow for the young woman, and came out from behind the table to speak with her privately.  She asked if she could hug Jackie and the young woman cried even more.  The angry, mocking group of girls became silent.  Debbie took Jackie off to speak privately.

Jackie is a Christian,  Debbie pressed a Deeper Still pamphlet into her hands.  Looking her in the eye, Debbie told the young woman that she believed her child is in heaven and holds absolutely no unforgiveness towards her.  Her baby looks forward to the day when they will be reunited.  The girl allowed Debbie to pray with her.  Afterwards, Debbie encouraged her to get help as soon as possible for the rape and the abortion.  Jackie’s did not have to carry these burdens by herself; she could find healing through Lord Jesus.

Debbie hopes to see her someday at a Deeper Still healing retreat.  Debbie sewed the seeds — and so did you, because your support made this encounter possible — and now we pray for God to bring the fruit.

Jacqueline Hawkins is a CBR Project Director and a regular FAB contributor.

At UNC Greensboro, reactions ranged from furious, to calm, to … kind of weird.

by Jacqueline Hawkins

As you can read here, the response to GAP at UNC Greensboro was quite animated.  CBR Project Director Lincoln Brandenburg said that many of the students were like hyenas descending upon a scrap of meat.  Between the bloodthirsty vitriol and the stealth appreciation, there was a wide range of reactions.

The man who almost wasn’t
Based on his expression and the way he spoke, it was obvious he wasn’t out for blood like his schoolmates in the crowd.  He made neutral inquiries concerning the life of the mother.  I gently answered his question, mentioning cases such as toxemia and ectopic pregnancies.  I made sure to stress to him and those listening that saving the life of the mother did not involve Planned Parenthood and ripping children apart.  It was a matter of administering medical treatment to BOTH patients.  Unfortunately, in the case of ectopic pregnancy, saving the child is impossible, given current medical technologies.  Satisfied with my answer, he then told me he was almost an ectopic pregnancy.  He had implanted very close to the fallopian tube.  I told him just how happy I was he had survived and was there to speak with me.  He thanked me and disappeared into the crowd.

Maternal instinct
A young woman walked by, just as Bill offered a pamphlet.  “I’m pregnant!  I don’t want to see this!” she exclaimed.  She was determined but not antagonistic.  She didn’t want to see pictures of what she could have had done to her own child.  “I’m not doing this!  I’m keeping my baby!”  This young woman already had a healthy level of maternal instinct.  The pictures will help her to encourage the same instincts in her friends and family.

Best argument on campus
The grand prize for best pro-abortion argument goes to the young man who came to within 6 inches of Jane Bullington’s face and shouted, “You are STUPID.”  Jane stood toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with this learned scholar until he backed off and went to make his prize-winning argument with someone else.

Enlightened pro-abort musings
At the height of the rowdiness, four young women from a protest group came over to Jane Bullington to talk.  They had the usual lack of knowledge that facilitated the usual objections.  But because they were somewhat open to what Jane had to say, they were able to learn a few things they hadn’t known before.  At the end, one girl mused, “It is sad that we don’t have discussions when we have difference of opinions.  We shouldn’t just try to shout people down when we could talk to them.”  Amen to that.

Selling out for consistency
A young black man walked up and asked pointedly, “Why?  Why are you doing this?” After answering him, he reasoned that since people are going to have abortions anyway, there was no reason to try to stop them.  I applied his argument to slavery.  “Would you want them legalize slavery because people are going to traffic humans anyway?”  He shrugged nonchalantly, musing that when push comes to shove, legalizing crimes that already happen wouldn’t be such a bad thing, even if it meant he got shipped off to the nearest cotton field.

Post-liberal dictatorship?
A male student was a pro-abort, but he was by no means pleased with his fellow students. As they demanded GAP leave campus, he exploded.  “F*** all of you!  As liberals, if we can’t defend free speech of those who disagree with us, then liberalism is dead!”  He stormed off continuing to curse at the protesters,  “Are we trying to live in a post-liberal dictatorship?”  Umm, yeah.  We kind of are.

Jacqueline Hawkins is a CBR Project Director and a regular FAB contributor.

I saw Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie, Hillary’s America, over the weekend.  You must go and see it.  This documentary exposes many deplorable aspects of Democratic Party history, including how Democrats have promoted abortion to reduce the numbers of Blacks and other “undesirables.”

Some of you are old enough to remember how the Clinton’s perpetrated and covered up sexual harassment/abuse during the 1980s and 1990s.  Their crimes have gotten bigger and more lucrative.  Hillary’s America exposes the formula used over and over again by the Clinton’s and career criminals at every level:  When caught, deny, deny, deny.  Then deny, deny, deny some more, until nobody cares or even remembers.

Hard-core pro-aborts, when they have no argument, try to change the subject.  Stubborn people are not our target audience, so we aren’t dismayed when they deny the evidence in front of them.  Our target audience is people in the middle who (a) are still open-minded and (b) have a functioning conscience.

At UNC Greensboro, some students complained that we cited sources older than 2010.  Our information about embryology was too old, they said.  Science changes, they said.

Hmmm.  You mean they don’t make babies like they used to?  Really?

Suppose you can’t find a recent publication proving (again) that gravity is real — and you can’t, because nobody would publish a paper proving something we’ve known for centuries — what does that mean?  Maybe pigs can fly?

These same scholars took issue with the definition of genocide we cite, because they claimed the definition has been altered for political reasons.  In this case, they undermined their own argument, because we cite UN Resolution 96, adopted in 1946.  Having no enforcement provisions, Resolution 96 defined genocide as targeting any group of people for destruction.

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, however, includes enforcement provisions and thus was limited, for political reasons, to only those genocides committed against national, ethnical, racial, or religious groups.  Genocides against social and political groups, for example, were excluded because the Soviet Union feared Stalin’s mass murders might be considered genocidal if broader language were adopted.  (The Study of Mass Murder and Genocide, Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, in The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 18)

Some tried to claim that our sign referencing honor killing was invalid because it did not include a photo of each and every group of women subjected to that particular atrocity.  Desperate people say absurd things.

This often happens with GAP.  They have no argument to support decapitating and dismembering little human beings, so they try to change the subject.  If one logical fallacy won’t work, they try another.

In the end, it doesn’t matter.  They only help us, because they give us a chance to juxtapose our good arguments with their logical fallacies.  Our target audience, the mushy middle, gets to hear and compare.

And with time, we’ll pick off even some of the hard-core pro-aborts.  As long as they hang around, they absorb the hard evidence.  Some of them contact us later and tell us how the seeds we planted eventually sprouted and grew.  Julie was a committed pro-abort when we first met her at the University of North Florida, but she told us 3 years later that she had changed her mind.  “The pictures followed me home,” she said.

Deeper Still’s Debbie Picarello at UNC Greensboro.

by Debbie Picarello

When I set up the Deeper Still post-abortion counseling table near the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), students always ask if I am part of GAP.  They are often angry about the abortion photos and don’t want to speak with GAP volunteers.

I always give the long answer, “I am here with Deeper Still, which is a post abortion healing ministry.  We offer free healing retreats for men and women.  Yes, men hurt from abortion too.  And (pointing to the pictures) we are hurting because we have done that to our children.”

I am also repeatedly asked about the pictures angering or upsetting post-abortive women.  I explain how being upset at the pictures is a telltale sign that something is still wrong.  I point out that healing and counseling is a emotional and messy process.  I always encourage hurting people to seek help.  I say to women and men that if the pictures still cause them extreme distress, it’s a sign they still need healing.  When asked if these pictures “trigger” me now, I say they do not.  That is a product of healing.  They are hard to look at, but not triggering.

The Fall 2015 GAP tour was especially evangelistic.  I was repeatedly asked about Deeper Still being Christian.  I say that the only lasting healing from the wounds of abortion come through Jesus Christ alone.  Over and over again, I have shared miraculous stories of healing and deliverance from the Lord Jesus at these campuses.

Are you a post-abortive person who has found healing?  We need you!  Come with us and reach out to students in a way that only you can.

Debbie Picarello is a post-abortion counselor with Deeper Still, an international post-abortion counseling ministry based in Knoxville.

by Jacqueline Hawkins

UNC Greensboro, I suspect I was hearing a fish story.  You know the kind.  The fish just gets bigger and bigger and bigger as the story unfolds.

Unfortunately for the teller of this tale, I had experience with the subject matter, so I wasn’t so easily impressed.

An irate girl brought up the case of child poverty, the oft-repeated circumstance of a mother too poor to take care of her offspring.  The obvious answer to poverty is to kill the youngest (i.e., the most invisible) child, right?

I trotted out the toddler, which means I presented a hypothetical 2-year old and asked if poverty would justify killing the toddler.  She avoided the question, stating that she could never take care of a baby because she was poor.

As someone who has lived in relative (not absolute) poverty, I questioned her statement, trying to get a feel what degree of poverty she was experiencing, so I could frame an appropriate response.  “Of course I’m poor!” she said.  “We’re all poor!  We’re poor college students!”

Hmm.  Poor college students.  Was she talking about the college students who drive late-model cars and spend hundreds of dollars each semester on alcohol?

I explained how poverty is a bad justification for killing a child.  Again she attempted to change the subject, “My family is poor! We have debt!”

Ah, the fish has gotten bigger.

I told her that she seemed to be doing pretty well for herself.  She was alive, well-fed, going to an expensive college.  Then I got personal, “As a card-carrying poor person, I don’t take kindly to people telling me that I’d be better off dead.”  To that she exclaimed, “I was homeless!”

Ah, homeless.  She went from a poor college student, to the daughter of parents with debt, to climbing her way out of homelessness.

And yet, despite being homeless at one point or another (maybe), she hated pregnancy resource centers because, “they push anti-choice propaganda!”  Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Was she telling the truth?  If she was truly climbing her way out of homelessness, she was condemning those like her simply because they didn’t have much wealth.  Had she forgotten where she came from so quickly?  Was she really so blinded by her success and potential to succeed that she would callously sentence poor children to death?  Did she not realize that she was stealing their opportunity to follow her example and carve out a life for themselves like she was doing?  Did she not grasp that we poor people, past, present, and future, need to stick together and help each other out?

Or was she telling a tall tale to get her point across?  Was she simply ignorant of the fact that poverty, particularly American poverty, isn’t so bad that those living in it are better off dead?  Was she completely unaware that, in many cases, poverty has helped people build character, mental and emotional stamina, and unique life skills (rags to riches, anyone?)?  Was she, dare I say, a privileged young woman who looked down upon those without and easily sentenced them to death because helping them took too much work?

Jacqueline Hawkins is a CBR Project Director and a regular FAB contributor.

While debate rages in the background, young women learn about compassion and support from volunteer Debbie Picarello.

by Jacqueline Hawkins

Trust women.  It’s her choice.  Support women.

These are the slogans.  But they only seem to apply when a woman chooses to abort her child.  Women who embrace unplanned motherhood need not apply for trust and support from the left.

At the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with all of the angry student yelling about women’s rights and supporting women’s decisions, a female senior was not impressed.  In fact, she was downright sad and her downcast expression prompted Jane to speak with her.  The young woman was 15 weeks pregnant.  The baby was unplanned and she was unmarried.

Thankfully she was in a long term relationship with the father of the baby.  They were keeping the child and would ask for support from friends and family.  Looking at the crowd of angry protesters, she said, “I am not married; I am in school; I am broke.  But I don’t get any help from my peers; I just get questions about why I don’t ‘get rid of this problem.’  They don’t support my choice to keep this baby; they want me to be selfish and weak like they are.  It makes me so sad.”

This double standard was this young woman’s reality.  Where was her support?  Where was her trust?  Granted, there are pregnancy resource centers to help families like hers, but those are staffed by pro-lifers.  What about her pro-choice peers?  Where were these people who reject the label “pro-abort” but bask in the glory of the term “pro-choice” because they want women to make their own choices, even if it’s not abortion.  It probably sounds good in their heads but when it comes to real life, they quickly become 100% pro-abort and unplanned mothers who keep their children suffer for it.

Jacqueline Hawkins is a CBR Project Director and a regular FAB contributor.

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At the UNC Charlotte UNCC), Dr. John Cox, Associate Professor of International Studies, came out to cast aspersions on our scholarship and our character (to put it mildly).  He claimed that abortion is not genocide, staking his claim on the 1948 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

When I brought up UN Resolution 96, adopted in 1946, Dr. Cox angrily denied that the UN ever defined genocide outside the 1948 Convention.  Wrong.  In fact, Resolution 96 stated

Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, …and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. …

The General Assembly, therefore, affirms that genocide is a crime under international law … whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds…

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_definitions, accessed June 17, 2016)

Note that targeting any group for extermination is genocide, whether those groups are targeted based “on religious, racial, political or any other grounds” (emphasis added).  With abortion, the entire human group being denied the right to live is unwanted, preborn children.

Dr. Cox insisted that because he had written a book about genocide, he knows.  I was not impressed with his appeal to authority (a common logical fallacy, to which arrogant college professors are unusually susceptible) and I invited him to google UN Resolution 96.

Perhaps Dr. Cox does not understand the difference between a general definition, which is intended to convey meaning, and a legal definition, which is often written to circumscribe the scope of some law or regulation.

Perhaps Dr. Cox was not aware that the scope of the 1948 Convention was limited to national, ethnical, racial, and religious groups solely for political reasons.  Genocides against social and political groups, for example, were excluded because the Soviet Union feared Stalin’s mass murders might be considered genocidal if broader language were adopted.  (The Study of Mass Murder and Genocide, Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, in The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 18)

Dr. Cox kept talking about his book, but given his error concerning the UN definition of genocide, I suggested he issue an errata sheet.  A bit provocative, perhaps, but when a belligerent college professor arrogantly asserts a falsehood, he must be held to account.

Professors have tremendous power in the classroom, and they use that power to propagandize the gullible students and bully the rest.  They routinely make appeals to authority (with themselves as the authorities, of course), and students rarely have the knowledge, experience, or courage to expose the professors’ logical fallacies.  We have to be willing to bring them down a notch when they deserve it, and this one did.  Maybe that was my inner Donald Trump coming out.

I should mention that if the preborn are not living human beings, then abortion does not kill humans and there is no relevant similarity between abortion and genocide.  But if the preborn are living human beings — science tells us that they are both alive and human — then abortion kills 1.2 million humans every year in the US alone.  If not genocide, what else would we call it?

Students gather in front of the signs to see the photos, read the messages, and ask their questions.  Although UNC is more intolerant than most places, there are many students who were willing to engage with open minds.

Nothing could be finer than a GAP in Carolina!

At UNC Chapel Hill, we were hosted by the Carolina Students for Life (CSFL), one of the many campus pro-life organizations we’ve had a hand in starting over the years.

We set up at our usual location on Polk Place, in the heart of the campus.  Thousands of students passed by during every class change.

UNC Chapel Hill is a real bastion of intolerance and hate.  Several students vandalized the warning signs we normally place on approach routes to the display.  Because these signs are really a courtesy to students who may not wish to see genocide photos, we had to wonder if these vandals hated us, or did they just want to make sure everyone saw our display?  Not too sure about that.  Anyway, …

We had huge crowds both days. On Day 1, a street preacher stationed himself across the sidewalk from the GAP display and spoke about abortion, relativism, and salvation, to an ever-growing crowd of protesting students.  While the preacher was not a part of our operation, he used a lot of our debate techniques and talking points in his preaching.  The preacher, the protesters, and the crowds of students which gathered, all focused even more attention on our pictures.

For me, the highlight of the trip was this note left on the free speech board:

My mom was raped.  She didn’t want to have me.  I was almost aborted.  My grandmother saved my life.  When I was born, my mother was grateful.  She then loved me well.

That pretty well says it all.

On Day 2, as we prepared to leave, the protesters blasted us with “music” performed by a woman-hating “artist” who blurted out “f— you, b—-” over and over again.  The pro-aborts who blasted this rant obviously did not value or even respect women, even though most were themselves women.  So often, following Satan leads to to some form of self-loathing behavior.  Fascinating.  Instructive.

Media:

• Anti-abortion group compares abortion to genocide in Polk Place
• Letter: Anti-abortioners have no claim to genocide
• Letter: ​Abortion protesters spoke false narratives
• Letter: Anti-abortionist had no place on campus
• Letter: ​Chapel Hill’s anger is sometimes laughable

Students study the photos at UNC Charlotte.

GAP at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) is always a special treat for me,  having lived there briefly about 30 years ago.  Both UNCC and the city have grown tremendously; the change is really something to behold.

Like many urban universities, UNCC seems to have a lot of students who actually work as well as go to school.  People with productive jobs are not as susceptible to left-wing kookery.  We had many pleasant encounters with thoughtful students.

On the other hand, one man jumped the barricades to vandalize one of our signs.  He was arrested and is currently facing charges in criminal court.  We got some awesome video.

More to come.

Another former fetus speaks out.  This message was left on our free speech board, which invites students to write comments about GAP and abortion.

This sculpture honors ASU’s heritage as a teachers’ college. We couldn’t think of a more appropriate place to set up GAP on Day 2. The display footprint is smaller this day because of threatening weather in the forecast.

We headed into the mountains of North Carolina to bring GAP to Appalachian State University (ASU).

It was refreshing to be around people who know how to pronounce “Appalachian.”  A few damnyankees want to call it a-puh-LAY-chuhn or, even worse, a-puh-LAY-shuhn.  These mispronunciations have been advanced by the mass media since the mid 1970s … and we all know how evil the mass media are.

Phonics.  You would never call our western mountains the “ro-SHEE” mountains.  It’s ROCK-ee, just like it’s spelled.

The correct way to say my home is a-puh-LATCH-uhn.  The ASU folks told us it took three national championships (Div I FCS) to get ESPN to finally say it correctly.  Come to think of it, if you can shame ESPN into doing the right thing, maybe we do have hope.  Anyway, …

On Day 1, we set up GAP on Sanford Mall, right in the middle of campus.  The epicenter of action was the free speech board and poll table, both right next to the GAP display, where large crowds of students gathered.  Volunteer Laurice Baddour took the lead and became the star of the show (see really bad photo).   Although many were pro-abort (for now), they calmly listened as we made our case, like truly civilized adults.  We love it when that happens.

On Day 2, heavy rains and thunderstorms were forecast, so we set up a smaller display at the eastern end of Sanford Mall.  With the smaller configuration, we could deconstruct and get off the site on short notice, before lightning would become a hazard.

On Day 3, the weather was better and we followed up with a Choice Chain for a few hours in the middle of the day.

Media:

• On campus: Abortion protest (video)
• Anti-abortion display sparks controversy among students

Lincoln Brandenburg and Jackie Hawkins explain how abortion is evil because it kills a living human being.