Students for Life President Anna Maher explains how genocide results when a group of people are denied rights of personhood.

Our long-awaited GAP at George Mason University (GMU) finally arrived!  We were hosted by the GMU Students for Life, who are doing great work on that campus.  During the day, we spoke with many students who changed their minds as a result of seeing abortion pictures and hearing good arguments.

Sasha told me that our pictures made her realize that abortion was wrong in the late first trimester, but what about the first few weeks?  Sasha is 24 years old.  I asked her if she would still be Sasha at age 54?  “Yes.”  Was she Sasha at age 4?  “Yes.”  Was she Sasha at 4 months in the womb? “Yes.”  What about 4 days in the womb?  “You’ve changed my mind.  It would be wrong to kill me at any time.”

Abortion photos help students see what "choice" really means.

CBR organized a Choice Chain at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) last week.  Jane Bullington and Renee Weber from Knoxville met up with Mick and Edie Hunt from Asheville at the Borchauck Plaza on the ETSU campus for a day of pro-life outreach.  Hand-held “Choice” signs show passersby what “choice” really means (a dead baby) and draw a crowd.  We handed out hundreds of our “Unmasking Choice” brochures and spoke with students all day long.

It was a beautiful day; students continually crossed the Plaza.  Some saw and quickly turned their heads.  They were trying to ignore the reality of abortion, but it didn’t work … a glance is enough.  Others wanted to talk.  No matter how big or small the exhibit, the debate is always the same.

Chelsey was so upset, she whimpered that she is pro-life, has not had an abortion, but wanted us to know that we were “doing this the wrong way, in case no one has ever told you.”  (If Chelsey only knew!)  Chelsey is studying to be a counselor and she is sure abortion photos will traumatize women … that women will not be able to recover from seeing them.  She didn’t seem to realize that women won’t recover from the abortion unless something compels them to repentance.  Chelsey may not have had an abortion herself, but it was apparent that someone in her life has been personally affected by abortion.

Three young women were passionate about educating their fellow students and gave us their contact information, so we may help them continue the battle on campus … including more Choice Chains and the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP).

A class was coming across the lawn when the teacher spotted the signs.  They were high achievers, very polite, and very interested in what we were doing.

Jane speaks to high school honor students; the photo tells a story her words never could.

Jay Watts explains how to defend the preborn by "trotting out the toddler."

The Pro Life Training Academy (PLTA) trains you to articulate and respectfully defend the pro-life position.  Today, we are at George Mason University (GMU).  Tomorrow, we’ll be in Richmond, on the campus of the University of Richmond.  Here’s our schedule for the coming week:

• March 31 – Pro Life Training Academy (PLTA), Fairfax
• April 1 – PLTA, Richmond
• April 2-3 – Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), George Mason University (GMU)
• April 4-5 – GAP, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)
• April 9 – Choice Chain, University of Richmond (private school)

Featured PLTA speaker is Jay Watts, the VP of Communications at the Life Training Institute (LTI).  As a former pro-choice atheist, Jay is uniquely prepared to show you how to deal with people like … well … his former self.

Let us know when you want to bring the PLTA to your city!

On the road again!  We’ve been in Virginia the past week, meeting with University officials and activists alike, gearing up for the continuation of our huge I-95 Spring GAP Tour!

Earlier, we took GAP to 4 schools in Florida.  Next week, we’ll be at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University in Virginia.  After that, we’ll be in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine.  As interstate highways go, there is none more influential than I-95; it connects Washgington, DC with some of the most important swing states, including Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maine!

Brad Staffon helps a student at the U of North Florida understand that life is a better choice than death.

On Sunday, February 19, CBR Project Director Nicole Cooley spoke to two Sunday School classes at the First Baptist Church of Hinesville, Georgia.  After she spoke, Brad Staffon, a 19-year-0ld young man, expressed interest in joining us on campus for a future GAP event.  Nicole said, “Pack your bags, we leave in 2  hours!”  Three days later, Brad was back in Hinesville, reporting on his GAP trip to the University of North Florida.  Here are his remarks:

Last Sunday Nicole came into my Sunday school class and told us about the Genocide Awareness Project, or GAP.  She showed us images that were not only graphic and disturbing, but were also inspiring.  I decided to not look but listen to what she had to say instead.  What she had to say was just this: killing unborn children is wrong.  She proceeded to tell us how many unborn babies were killed each year and it shocked me.  I spoke to her after class and asked her when then next time I could help was.  She said, “Pack your bags, we leave in two hours.”

When we first arrived at the University of North Florida, we attended CBR’s Pro Life Training Academy, where we learned what to say when we spoke to people about abortion.  They taught us a few questions to ask so we could have them questioning their own views.  The questions were, “What do you mean?,” “How did you come to that conclusion?,” and “Have you considered the implications of your views?”  Once you have all the information they have given you on their views, you can respond with your rebuttal.

One thing that will stick with me until the day I die is an encounter I had with a polite young lady who I’m almost sure had had an abortion.  She came to me with haste and much energy to ask why abortion is genocide.  I began to explain that by the UN definition, if any specific group of humans is killed on a massive scale, then it is genocide.  I also told her that in this case, the group in question is a specific age group.  So she understood that, however she was pro-choice and almost couldn’t stand near the display for long because of her choices in life.  I and three others got her to understand why we show these graphic displays.

When she finally understood, she walked away after thanking us for our time.  Her lips quivered and she walked away slowly thinking about what we had said and done.  What we had done is change her mind on how she felt about abortion.  She will forever have problems with her situation but now she knows we aren’t only trying to give knowledge and information but we are also here to help.

So you see, it may not always end in this way, but it really helps those who need it now more than ever.  It’s time for us to make a change.  Whether it’s changing hearts and minds, or changing lives and saving others in the process.  The time is now to stand up and speak for those who can’t.  Stand up my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and give your support.  Save your siblings from death.  If there was ever a cause more worthy of all our support, this would be it.  So please support us in any way that you can, whether it be donations or volunteering your time.  Thank you.

Please let us give a talk in your church!  We can show your brothers and sisters how to be heroes.  We can show them how to save babies within your own church and within your own community.  We can show them how to help reform the culture.  If you are willing to help arrange a talk in your church, please e-mail me at fletcher@ProLifeOnCampus.com.  Thanks!

Nicole and Stephanie at Open Mike.

As I reflected on the range of emotions from our GAP excursion to Florida, the opening lines from Charles Dickens’ great novel came to mind:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness … it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair …

Hope that’s not too literarial for all you people in Rio Linda.

Anyway, I am hopeful for the future when I think about the team of young people who accompanied us to the U of North Florida (UNF) and Florida State U (FSU).  They gave of themselves so freely, so that others might live and live more abundantly.  I was blessed to be with them.

But I can’t escape despair when I reflect on some of the students we encountered – students who believe that unrestrained sex (anywhere, anytime, with anybody) is another “entitlement” to be demanded, rather than a curse to be avoided.  They don’t know about — indeed, they don’t want to know about — the physical, emotional, and spiritual dangers inherent in the lifestyle they’ve embraced, not only for themselves, but for others as well.

The ups and downs of the week were personified by two young women we met along the way, Julie and Brandi.

“I cried until I couldn’t breathe.”

We had been to UNF in 2009.  As with every GAP, many students had said our pictures had changed their minds.  But we didn’t know about Julie.  She was a freshman at the time.

Fast-forward to February 21, 2012.  CBR staffers Nicole Cooley and Stephanie Gray had been holding “Open Mike” for nearly 2 hours.  They had withstood an intense barrage of pro-abortion artillery.  Just before they were about to close it down for the day, a young lady stepped forward and asked for the microphone.  She remembered when we came before.  She had been pro-choice.  She had been really angry.

“I thought your pictures were disgusting,” she said of that first encounter, “but they followed me home.  They followed me for several days.  And I went online and looked up a video of abortion.”

After seeing that video — likely the Choice Blues video featured on AbortionNo.org, a CBR website — she said, “I cried until I couldn’t breathe.  I changed at that moment from pro-choice to pro-life.”

What a blessing to hear those words!  On this day (in 2012), Julie had actually left campus for the day but had come back to complete a forgotten errand.  She parked where she doesn’t usually park.  She didn’t know why.  She walked a route she doesn’t usually walk.  She didn’t know why.  Then, she saw the Open Mike and decided to speak.  I told her that God had arranged it for her to come and give us much-needed encouragement!

She said we were changing many more hearts and minds than we could imagine. See Julie tell her story in the video below!

“That’s what vaccines are for.”

At FSU, it was clear that Brandi is quite intelligent, but like most of us, she struggles to blindfold her own prejudices, even for a few minutes.  She was much more interested in lecturing than listening.  Nothing I had to say could possibly be worth considering.  I’ve been around teenagers before, so I’m familiar with the disorder.

She did, as I recall, accept our position that preborn children deserve protection in the 3rd trimester, but I don’t think she ever told me what morally relevant criteria makes it OK to kill a 2nd-trimester child.

It is difficult to advance a coherent argument when you’re being interrupted at every turn.  We think it was their plan to come out en masse and interrupt each of us in mid-sentence so that nobody could hear us finish a complete thought.  Most of the time, she was interrupting to lecture me on things I had already tried to say myself.  Finally, I interrupted her, “Brandi, I’ve got a PhD in engineering, I know the difference between science and philosophy.  I know the difference between facts and conclusions.”

She asserted that even though the preborn child has structures you can see, they are not persons because the cells are yet undifferentiated.  (Which isn’t true, by the way.)  Anyway, the obvious question, which I did manage to get out, was, “Why should we accept your assertion that personhood should depend on degree of cell differentiation?”  I got no answer.

At that point, she changed the subject to contraception.  (CBR takes no position on contraception, but we do oppose any agent that acts as an abortifacient.)  She asked why we don’t hand out contraceptives, as if they are the silver bullet that would end abortion, if only we would distribute our fair share.  I replied that 54% of all abortions were performed on women who used contraceptives in the month in which they got pregnant (source).  People at FSU have ample access to inexpensive (if not free) contraception, but they still get abortions.

She countered with the unsubstantiated claim that the 54% reported by Guttmacher were largely people who ran out of contraceptives mid-month and could not afford to buy more.  [Note how silly this is: people are too poor to pay for a $1 contraceptive, but they can afford a $500 abortion .]

I told her that contraceptives fail, and it is not our goal to merely reduce the number of abortions.  Our goal is to get rid of the whole bloody mess.  And besides, I said, we have no desire to encourage people to put themselves at risk for deadly STDs.  Condoms fail, and even when they work properly they are only marginally effective against some diseases, particularly human papillomavirus (HPV).

That’s when she said, “That’s what vaccines are for.”

I was surprised by her candor.  “Brandi, is that the best you can do?  Counsel people to put themselves at risk for deadly diseases and depend on a vaccine for protection?”  As any safety engineer will tell you, the first rule for minimizing risk is to remove the hazard altogether.  But Brandi would encourage teenagers to engage in potentially deadly behaviors with only a thin layer of latex as protection.  Oh yes, the latex and a vaccine.

Or is it 25 different vaccines?  When I was Brandi’s age, there were really only two STDs.  It had been that way for centuries.  Now, a mere 40 years later, I’m told there are more than 25 different STDs.  The Associated Press reports that 1 in 4 teen girls has at least one.  What changed?  More contraceptives?  More Planned-Parenthood-style sex education?  More reckless and deadly behaviors?  Yes, yes, and yes. Of course we don’t oppose truthful education, but we do oppose encouraging teenagers to engage in reckless and self-destructive behaviors.

Perhaps latex and vaccines are the best Brandi can offer.  People on the Left apparently believe that people are so helpless, they cannot possibly control themselves where sex is concerned.  So instead of addressing reckless and deadly behaviors, they insist on latex and vaccines.

And they insist on it, not only for their own children, but for ours as well.  And the rest of us should pay for it.  And when our children get sick anyway — many will — too bad.  And when they get pregnant anyway — many will — the rest of us should pay for the abortions.  No thanks.  Leave me and my family out of it.

Our culture has become a cesspool, deadly for some, and I fear that the worst is yet to come.  Our only hope is a miracle.  Fortunately, God is in the miracle business.  If we pray and fast and sacrifice much, who knows what He will do?

Perhaps the Brandi of today will be the Julie of tomorrow.

Notes:

1. Wikipedia reports that the typical failure rate for condoms is 15%, and the perfect-use failure rate is 2%.  Those numbers are for pregnancy prevention over a 1-year period, not the prevention of STD transmission.  A woman can become pregnant only a few days a month; a person can contract an STD on any and every day of the month.  The more times a person engages in sex, the more opportunities for condom failure, so a person’s cumulative risk for catching an STD increases every time.
2. Since returning from Florida, I have run across a 2011 paper by Peter Arcidiancono (Duke University), Ahmed Khwaja (Yale University) and Lijing Ouyang (Centers for Disease Control).  They concluded, “Programs that increase access to contraception are found to decrease teen pregnancies in the short run but increase teen pregnancies in the long run.” (Source)  More good information here.

UNF GAP Team

Got a nice e-mail from Michael Oliveros, a student at the University of North Florida (UNF):

It was really nice to see you on campus, since I am around a very pro-choice environment so much.  I am really excited about the pro-life club that you are starting!  It will give me a way to express my pro-life views, as well as a place for support, and to be around people of like mind.

Again, I’d like to reiterate how appreciative I am of you all coming out.   I commend all of you for your courage in being a voice for these babies, and for standing up for life.   I hope and pray that I can have the same courage and dedication that all of you have as I become a part of this pro-life club.

God bless, and all of you are in my prayers!

Michael Oliveros

Thanks to all of you who support our work!  You make it possible!

CBR's staff member (and our hero) Sarah Cleveland speaks to group of FSU students with Edmund Burke on her back. Now that's heavy!

Day 1 of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) at Florida State University (FSU) was a huge success.  Large crowds gathered to view the signs and listen to our team explain the facts about prenatal development and abortion.

Media coverage here (includes video) and here.  Both stories implied that “hundreds of students” were “fired up” and “outraged,” but compared to recent trips to FSU, it was pretty tame.

I was able to pray with one student who had been abused as a child.  I prayed that God would reveal himself to this young man in a powerful way.  As an atheist, he was probably skeptical, but he let me pray for him nonetheless!  I hope you will pray for him as well.

The FSU crowd was large and engaged, but peaceful.

Anna and Christina talk about “choice” with a GMU student. They use a CBR “Choice” sign because they know the word has no meaning without the photo.

We continue to be impressed by the good work of the George Mason University (GMU) Students for Life, led by their president Anna Maher and aided by local CBR volunteer Jonathan Darnel.

With Planned Parenthood making national news, Aldo could intoduce GMU students to PP's main business.

Every week, they display abortion pictures.  Every week, they pick up new members.  More people are volunteering for leadership.  It’s amazing what one person can start when she puts her mind to it.

Michael and Nicole at GMU.

Earlier this month, they were joined for the day by CBR Virginia Project Director Nicole Cooley.

When they see us on campus with the “Genocide Awarness Project,” they are incredulous.  They storm over to us and insist on educating us about the definition of genocide, as if there is only one.

They imagine that we have never looked it up for ourselves.  They don’t realize that there are at least three different classes of definitions of genocide:

1. legal definitions, intended to support prosecution in court,
2. popular definitions, intended to convey meaning to a general audience, and
3. scholarly definitions, postulated by scholars to help them understand and study the phenomena more completely.

We, of course, are looking at the term more conceptually, as a scholar might, as opposed to more concretely and more narrowly, as a judge and jury might if they were being asked to incarcerate somebody for life.

How do we answer the angry student?  First of all, we agree with him, “You are right, abortion is nothing like genocide … IF.”  You can imagine the expressions we get.  They don’t hear the “IF” at first.

We go on to say that if pre-born children are not living human beings, then abortion does not kill humans and there are no relevant similarities between abortion and genocide.

But if pre-born children are living human beings — science tells us they are — then abortion kills 1.2 million living humans every year in the US. If not genocide, what else would we call it?

UN General Assembly Resolution 96, adopted in 1946, describes genocide as “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 …” Resolution 96 goes on to say it is a crime “whether committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds …” (emphasis added)

With abortion, the “entire human group” denied the right of existence is unwanted, pre-born children.

In 1948, the UN adopted a more narrow legal definition of genocide to support prosecution in court. As a concession to the Soviet Union, who feared Stalin’s mass murders might be considered genocidal if broader language were employed, the UN omitted references to social and political groups.  (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)

However, others have adopted more comprehensive language. For example, French law adds “[any] group determined by any other arbitrary criterion.”

Abortion is a form of age discrimination, in that it targets unwanted children of a certain age. Their destruction is justified based on arbitrary age- related factors such as size, level of development, environment (location), and degree of dependency.

Warning signs at UNF.

Got a comment today on a previous FAB posting.   Read Mari’s comment here (Comment 1).

My response follows:

Marie,

Thanks for commenting on the GAP project at UNF. Yes, we know that the abortion pictures are extremely disturbing. They are difficult for you to look at, because you have a functioning conscience. That’s a good thing.

Please permit me to address some of the specific points you raised.

You say that you would have no problem with us handing out pamphlets to people who wanted them. But these methods appeal to you because they would make it easy for you to ignore the injustice you now find so disturbing. Your complaint reminds us of what they said to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when he marched against racial injustice. They wanted him to confine his activities to the Black church, so they could ignore the injustice he sought to correct. They didn’t want to be bothered. And as long as Dr. King didn’t bother them, they were OK with it.

But Dr. King knew that in order to change the status quo, he had to show people that racism was much worse than they imagined. It was pictures of Black men and women being attacked with dogs and water cannons—those pictures appearing on TV and in magazines reaching millions of American households—that turned the tide against segregation in the South. We have no hope of correcting the injustice of abortion unless we expose it.

Our operating principle actually comes from the King family. Dr. Martin Luther King said that, “America will not reject racism until America sees racism.” His niece, Dr. Alveda King, now says that “America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion.” That’s why we are working to make sure that every American sees abortion for what it is, an act of violence that destroys a growing child.

The fact that you and others find baby-killing disturbing is actually encouraging. The people who worry us are the ones who don’t care about it.

You said you came to the campus to learn. You learned something today. First, you learned that the preborn child is a living human being, even in the first trimester of pregnancy. Second, you learned that abortion is an act of violence that destroys a living human child. This information will be very valuable to you, if you want to do the right thing.

Speaking of learning, doesn’t it bother you that so many people and institutions have conspired to tell you only lies … lies about who the preborn child is and lies about what abortion does to her. The education system, the media, the entertainment industry, the government, and others have all conspired with the abortion industry to make people believe that the preborn child is just a mass of cells and abortion is just removing a benign medical procedure. Had they told you the truth, we would not have been compelled to come to your campus.

You say that we are exploiting unborn children by showing their pictures. How so? If we are exploiting these children, then isn’t it equally true that the Holocaust Museum in Washington is exploiting European Jews by showing pictures of their dead bodies? You can’t go to any Holocaust museum or read a book on the Holocaust without seeing a disturbing photo of dead Jewish bodies.

You say you had no choice in the matter of whether to look at the photos or not. Actually, you could have turned your head away from the pictures and walked right on by. We watched many people doing exactly that. Apparently, you didn’t turn your head; the fact that you are so disturbed suggests you studied the images very carefully. We’re glad you did, but it was clearly your choice to study them or not.

And even if it is true that you had no choice but to see the photos for a few seconds before you were able to avert your gaze, are you so selfish as to be unwilling to endure a few moments of discomfort in other to save another person’s life?

You say that we should be ashamed. It reminds me of something Louis Hine said. In the early 1900s, he displayed photos of very young (adolescent) children working in coal mines, textile mills, etc. He wrote in his memoirs that some people were more angry at him for showing the pictures than at the industrial bosses for abusing the children. It is the abortionist who should be ashamed for killing the children, not us for exposing the truth.

For more information about abortion—no matter what you decide, you want your decision to be informed by the facts—visit www.AbortionNo.org.

GAP display at the University of North Florida (UNF).

CBR's Nicole Cooley explains the comparison of abortion to slavery.

We’re up and running with our pro-life display at the U of North Florida (UNF), an important and growing university in Jacksonville.  Our pro-life GAP display is situated on the main sidewalk leading from the Student Union to the academic buildings.

It’s a busy day on campus.  We’re seeing lots of student tours.  In fact, this might be the perfect day to reach high school students.   We’re guessing many of them (and their parents) are out of high school (and work) for Presidents Day, so this is a logical day for them to schedule a university tour.

A crowd gathers at the University of North Florida.

The Pro Life Training Academy is a big hit at the U of North Florida (UNF) in Jacksonville!  More than 100 attended!  The UNF Student Union staff were gracious to expand the room and provide additional tables and chairs on a moment’s notice!

Pro Life Training Academy at UNF. Jay Watts explains how we can "trot out the toddler" to diffuse many pro-abortion arguments.

Student at Forida Gulf Coast University learns a lesson he will never forget: abortion is an act of violence that kills a baby. He can never be lied to again.

CBR’s campus outreach for the Spring 2012 semester got off to a great start at Florida Gulf Coast University earlier this week.  Great video on the Eagle News (student newspaper) website.

Notice how the pro-aborts agree with us on the most important aspect of our display: abortion is “terrorizing,” “grotesque,” “shocking,” “aweful,” etc.  Unlike the abortion industry and many college professors, pictures don’t lie.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f19xe1ESFH4

Question:  If abortion is such a great thing, then why do pictures of it make abortion advocates so angry?

BTW, CBR will never agree to hide the truth of abortion.  That is Planned Parenthood’s schtick, not ours.

She looked at the pictures and exclaimed, "You came to my school! You sure changed my mind."

I’m in the Jacksonville Airport, headed back to Knoxville, wrapping up my 4th week on the road.  We’re getting ready for our campus outreach (GAP) at the U of North Florida (UNF) and Florida State U (FSU) later this month.  Lots of enthusiasm for our Pro Life Training Academy on February 19.

Thanks to God for all the families in Jacksonville and Tallahassee who will house and feed our traveling team of 26 missionaries, including 14 Canadian students who will be learning how to win hearts, change minds, and save lives.

After I landed in Jacksonville, Kenyana fixed me up with a rental car.  As she filled out the paperwork, she asked, “What brings you to Jacksonville?”

I told her, “I’m a radical right-wing lunatic troublemaker.”  I gave her my card.

She looked at it, “Pro-life.”  Then I showed her the photo of our GAP project on the back of my card.  She got excited, “You came to my school!”

“Where did you go to school?” I asked.

“UNF!”

“Yes, we were there about 3 years ago.”

Without any coaxing at all, Kenyana offered, “Well, you sure changed my mind.  I didn’t have any idea what abortion is.  None of us did.”