Beth Fox and I exhort Liberty students to be pro-life with their actions as well as their thoughts.

by Kendra Wright

Who needs to see abortion photos?  Everyone?  Even those that are already pro-life?

Absolutely.

This point can seem confusing.  If you already believe something, you don’t need to be convinced of it.  Right?

Yet, it is clear that Christians are doing almost nothing to stop the killing in the culture.  They are even killing their own children at staggering rates.  One in five women who abort identifies herself as a born-again or evangelical Christian.

Secular universities devote massive resources to training advocates for the abortion industry, but Christian universities like Liberty University have zero training programs to prepare Christians students for the pro-life mission field.  Zip, zero, nada.

In fact, Liberty has even forbidden pro-life students from displaying abortion victim photos on campus.

It is a tragedy every time a savable baby at Liberty is killed by abortion.  But CBR is working to change all that.

Beth Fox is one Liberty student who is willing to stand up and be counted.  On several occasions, Beth, (CBR Project Director) Maggie Egger, and I have stood in front of the Liberty library with a sign showing an abortion victim photo.  The sign first asks if Jesus would use a bloody picture, then answers that question with a picture of the Crucifixion.

Many student studied this sign and discussed it with their friends as they walked by.  Two students that gave us a thumbs up.

As we were packing up to leave, a professor came up and asked why we were there.  He wasn’t against the use of the pictures, but he was confused about their use at Liberty.  He asked, “But why are you here on a Christian campus?  Isn’t everybody here already pro-life?”

Maggie stopped him with her reply, “Are they doing anything about it?”

Good question.  The pictures challenge Christian complacency.

Kendra Wright is a CBR project director and a regular FAB contributor.

Emma Wiltshire (right) with CBR volunteer Kalan Walker.

Emma Wiltshire is a pro-life Christian who labors with the fine folks at the Athens Pregnancy Center in Athens, GA.  She also attended Passion 2014.  In fact, she is the bold young lady who gave an impromptu sidewalk speech to her fellow conference goers, exhorting them to put their faith into action for preborn babies!  (Passion Part 3)

Emma penned some excellent observations about our outreach at Passion:

I have worked at a pregnancy resource center for a little over six months.  But after this weekend, my heart has never been so broken over abortion.

I attended the Passion Conference in Atlanta where 20,000 college students gathered to proclaim the name and fame of Jesus Christ.  I watched people surrender their lives to their maker and accept the love, forgiveness and freedom of being in relationship with Him.  It was an unbelievable experience.  As we flooded the streets of Atlanta for our evening dinner break, I saw extremely graphic pictures of aborted babies at just ten weeks, posted on signs.  The images were disturbing, but what was more disturbing were the reactions of my peers to the people holding the signs.  “No thank you, I’m pro-life already.”  or  “No I don’t want any brochures or papers.”  The majority of students didn’t say anything at all; they simply ignored the display and the people all together.

I spoke with one of the [CBR staffers] and he was astonished by the students lack of participation.  He said,  “Surely students coming out of a Christian conference would be more receptive.”  There is a difference between saying you support a cause and actually doing something to support it.

I was tormented for the rest of the dinner break,  just thinking of the students who carelessly walked past the exhibit.  Were they turned off by the graphic images?  Did they not understand that it was a plea for help and not a protest?  My mind was spinning as I walked back into the arena for the last session.  I looked around the enormous room packed full of 18 to 24-year-olds, 20,000 of them to be exact.  Then I had a vision of what it would look like to save an empty seat for every aborted person in the state of Georgia last year alone … 33,000 silenced voices … 33,000 empty chairs.  Even though the room was packed full, all I saw was a vacant building.

I haven’t been able to get this image out of my head since Saturday.  I know that abortion is seen as as political issue that is highly controversial.  But I also know that it robs humans of life and haunts post-abortive men and women.  It doesn’t matter how a person was conceived;  they still have a right to exist.

Please hear me when I say I am in no way condemning those who have had abortions before.  Because I am a Christian I believe there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and that the blood of the cross can wash away any transgression.  God’s redemption knows no boundaries, and I know many women who are post abortive that He has healed and made new.

That being said, lets put an end to it.  Let’s not tiptoe around the issue anymore, let’s be bold in our faith and our convictions and speak the truth about abortion.  Education is the only way we can shed light into a very dark aspect of our legislation.

If you find value in these words or agree with me, please don’t just like this post.  Share it.  Start a dialogue with friends, classmates, co-workers and family.  Don’t condemn those who have had abortions but love on them and show them that their story can help another person from making the same mistake.  I know my words are probably going to offend and maybe enrage some people, but I just felt I had to speak up for the 1,388,937 people that would have been my age if they hadn’t been aborted in 1991.

Thank God for brave Christians like Emma!  My prayer is that the young people of Passion, like Emma, will rise up and be “in it to end it” for the victims of slavery and for the victims of abortion in their own backyard.  Both are important to God’s heart (Proverbs 24:11-12).

Submitted by: Lincoln Brandenburg

We handed out nearly 4,000 brochures!

Like water gushing around a river rock,  herds of young people swarmed past our signs, on their way into and out of the Passion Conference.  How would they respond?

“I’ve never seen these pictures before…  I didn’t realize abortion was this bad!”  Some were arrested by the pictures of abortion victims.  They stopped and responded with compassion,  wanting to know how they could help.

Our volunteers and staff were glad to speak with them and even prayed with some.  We showed them how to win hearts, change minds, and save lives in their own churches and schools.  One young woman,  herself a pro-life advocate,  was very grateful and moved by our outreach.  After speaking with us at length, she turned to a group of fellow conference-goers and pleaded with them, “We need to pay attention to this message.  This is just as important as human trafficking!”

What does God think about this? CBR volunteers David Harbin and Todd Childers discuss with a passerby.

Some were not so happy to see us, and they told us so!  An Atlanta police officer even rolled down his patrol car window and blared through a bullhorn, “You people are doing a great job scaring folks with these disgusting pictures!”  His negativity was a positive sign … that he needed to see our message!  We pray that his disgust with the exposers of abortion will be transformed into compassion for the victims of abortion.

The most common response we saw was no response.  Many of the young students of Passion had not thought much about abortion before.  It is likely that many of them internalized their thoughts, rather than speak with us.  And that’s OK.  They will remember the images of abortion victims long after the conference.  God will use what they saw to work in their hearts over time.

Sadly though, many of these young Christians were noticeably apathetic about the injustice they were seeing.  One young man, when asked what he thought about the display, replied with disgust, “I’m on my way to dinner right now!”  Many tried to ignore us, declining or throwing away our literature.  Our volunteers were grieved to tears by the scores of Laodicean responses.  How could so many Christians be “neither hot nor cold” about the killing of innocent preborn children?

Was our outreach at Passion effective?  Thousands of Christian’s eyes were opened to the injustice.  The empathetic were galvanized.  The apathetic can no longer trivialize.  And at least one baby was saved (see Passion Part 2).  Decide for yourself, but your humble corespondant would say it was definitely effective!

“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know.” – William Wilberforce

See Passion Part 3 for one of our most encouraging responses!

Submitted by: Lincoln Brandenburg

We handed out nearly 4,000 brochures in Atlanta. The photo on one of them would save a baby in Nashville.

CBR volunteer Julie Thomas reports on a baby saved at the Passion Conference in Atlanta:

Photo in Atlanta Saves a Baby in Nashville

Two young women saw the abortion pictures on display.  They took a flyer as they walked on by.  But then they stopped.  Why?

Something made them turn around.  They looked at each other.  What was it?  Was it the big bold statement on my sweatshirt?  “I regret my abortion.”  Was it the 10-week abortion photo?  I would soon find out.

Every time CBR displays abortion photos, babies’ lives are saved.  But each story is different.  So it was with this one.  These two ladies needed help, but not for themselves.  Their friend “Susie,” a med school student at Vanderbilt, was 7 weeks pregnant.  She was a Christian and had told her mother and boyfriend that she was pregnant.  The boyfriend had convinced her to have an abortion.  Her mother would support her, no matter what decision she made.  That baby’s life was hanging in the balance.

Now these two angels went to work.  Using cell phones, they took photos of the abortion pictures on display and texted them to Susie back in Nashville.  One of them called Susie and brokered a 4-way conference call, right there on the sidewalk.  This went on for several minutes.  I talked about  my abortion regret.  Then the two girls and I prayed for the young mother.  She said she would text in a few minutes and hung up.  We prayed again.  Susie texted back, “Go ahead and start planning a baby shower for me.  I’m keeping the baby.”

Wow!  Praise the Lord!  All the time!

What other victories did God give our team?  The story continues in Passion Part 3!

Nearly every attendee saw one of our photos and was offered an explanation of why we displayed abortion photos at the Passion Conference.

Picture this:  20,000 Christian young people, all gathered under one roof.  Worshiping, praying and hearing the Word from Louie Gigglio, John Piper, Francis Chan, and others.  This is the Passion Conference, an annual gathering in Atlanta.

Passion challenges young people to raise awareness of modern-day slavery, an evil that beggars the imagination.  For weeks after the conference, attendees use social media, bracelets, and bumper stickers to “shine a light” on slavery.

But there is a victim whose voice has not been heard at Passion.  It is the voice of preborn children.  Here is the irony: It is unlikely that any Passion attendee will ever be tempted to buy a slave, but many of them will certainly be tempted to kill their own children (or know someone who will be).  According to the Guttmacher Institute, 1 in 5 abortions are performed on evangelical or born-again Christians.

What could happen if these young people were as fired up to “shine a light” on the killing of preborn people as they are about the enslavement of born people?  While most of them can do little to actually free human slaves, they can do much to stop the killing of preborn children in their own churches and communities.

With this vision in mind, CBR staff conducted an all-day outreach on the sidewalks near Philips Arena, where Passion 2014 took place.  Displaying “Choice” signs at nearly every entrance to Philips Arena, nearly all of the 20,000 attendees would see our signs during the day.  We gave out nearly 4,000 of our new “Why This? Why Here?” brochure, which exhorts Christians to take a stand.

How did Passion attendees respond?  See “Passion Part 2” to find out!

Members of Operation Outcry and Georgia Right to Life helped CBR reach thousands of Christian students at Passion 2014.

Submitted by: Lincoln Brandenburg, CBR Georgia Project Director

You could say that … but probably not 3 times really fast!

Anyway, great story in World Magazine on the Battle for Babies at Biola.  Link to World Magazine story here.  Link to original video here.

Excerpts:

She always considered herself pro-life, but after watching a video of an actual abortion earlier this year, she realized its horror and decided to do something about it.

***

[CBR Executive Director Gregg] Cunningham, pointing to social reforms such as slavery, child labor, and the civil rights movement, says public opinion changes only after people see images depicting the reality of the injustices. He says Christians have been overly concerned with not offending people, and he says schools like Biola help “Planned Parenthood hide the horror of abortion. … We’re losing ground until Christian colleges are willing to get serious and provide systematic leadership in defense of life.”

***

But when the fall semester begins on August 28, CBR is planning to greet returning students with large abortion posters at every campus entrance, along with aerial images pulled by planes flying over the university. Cunningham’s goal is for Christian schools to be radically pro-life, with programs and majors devoted to training activists: “It’s not going to happen until some china gets broken. We don’t wish it to be that way, but some china will get broken.”

For more, link to full story here.

Christian leaders, including the pro-life ones, have 10 people/day coming at them with some kind of agenda.  We pro-lifers are just another one of the 10.  For just that one day.  By the end of the week, we are forgotten and so are the children and moms we represent.  Unless we can create the kind of tension/conflict that forces many more pro-life Christian leaders to think about abortion — and hopefully act to end it — babies and moms will continue to be ignored.

Please pray that God will open doors for the kind of constructive tension/conflict that brings growth.  And pray that God will raise up Christians with the courage to walk through those doors.  To help create more growth-inducing tension at Christian schools, link here.

Diana Jimenez

Even while Biola University was doing its best to suppress the truth of abortion on campus, a baby’s life was saved by the one student with the courage to break the rules.

The following was posted at ArmsOfAudio.com:

There are a lot of people bashing Diana right now but first hand I can tell you she did what she was told to do.  I am 20.  A student of Biola and always claimed to be prolife.  I thought that until I got a positive pregnancy test.  This came after a night of partying just outside the campus and had a one night stand with a youth pastor in training.  I was going to go to Planned Parenthood that day and as I walked through campus her signs made me realize there is a human life in my womb ….  In that moment I went to my dorm room got on my knees and asked that I would have the strength to be my baby’s mom.  STOP saying she didn’t follow her stupid rules.  God came through for me because of her.  And Susan Elliot is a tool of the devil.

Letter from Biola University to employees:

Dear Biola Community,

Some of you may have heard about a recent edited video posted on YouTube that has given a false impression of an interaction that took place between a student and campus safety.  A few members of our community are being targeted and threatened by individuals and advocacy groups for pro-life.  Here  is a collection of information that captures Biola’s pro-life conviction.  We believe it helps to articulate Biola’s steadfast commitment to the sanctity of human life, both in its words and actions.

Please know that this is not an issue of pro-life, it’s an issue of treating students fairly and according to stated policies.  The issue here is the student’s behavior and non-adherence of guidelines clearly communicated to her (and all of our students) as defined in the student handbook related to the posting and dissemination of any information around campus.  Since we cannot disclose all the details related to this matter, the one-sided and edited view disseminated online is inaccurate and misrepresents Biola.  This is unfortunate.

Please be in prayer for the individuals in our community that have been unfairly targeted in this video and on the various blog sites.  Please pause today to pray over this matter as a community.  We invite you to pray at your desk or gather with those around you some time this afternoon for an intercessory prayer moment.

If you receive any calls about the situation, please direct them to UCM at extension 4079.  If any of you have questions, university leadership will be available at 2:00 p.m. at the Talbot East Plaza.

Thank you for being in ongoing prayer for our community — particularly that the Lord would help us to respond to this situation with truth, grace and love.

Questions for Biola University:

1. You say the edited video gives a false impression.  Really?  How so?  What would the unedited version tell us that is different?  If you say CBR has borne false witness, then please back up your claim.  Show us the truth of the matter.
2. Did the Biola University Police Chief John Ojeisekhoba not take the aborted-baby photograph from Diana Jemenez’ hands?
3. Did Chief Ojeisekhoba not threaten Ms. Jeminez with arrest and expulsion?
4. Did Biola President Barry Corey not say that we need people with the courage to speak truth into us?
5. Did Dr. Corey not say that we do not need people in our lives who say “peace, peace” when there is no peace?
6. Who among your staff is being targeted?  What do you mean by “targeted?”
7. Who among your staff is being threatened?  What do you mean by “threatened?”  What threats are you talking about?

Biola argues that “we’re all pro-life here” and gushes about what it does concerning abortion (largely half-measures offered as fig leaves) in an effort to avoid any debate over what it refuses to do, and that is to simply expose the whole truth.  Officially, Biola condemns abortion, but the priest and Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan would have condemned street violence.  Yet they refused to do the one thing that would help the poor victim.

Words without meaningful action are as empty as faith without works.  James 2:16 warns that “If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good does it do?”  Biola isn’t doing “nothing” for the unborn, but Biola refuses to do what most needs to be done, exposing the horror and inspiring students to do more than mouth platitudes.

Dr. La Verne Tolbert recently blogged the claim that “Biola University is pro-life.”

CBR Executive Director Gregg Cunningham replied:

Gregg Cunningham response to La Verne Tolbert

Pastor Clenard Childress, my long-time, highly-valued friend, and a man who has served for nearly twenty years on the board of our pro-life Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), just forwarded to me your [blog posting], criticizing what you apparently misunderstand to be our attitudes and activities regarding Biola’s punishment of a nursing student who displayed abortion photos on Biola’s campus.  Because your concerns seem to derive from several mistaken assumptions of fact, I believe it might be helpful I offer you a somewhat different perspective on these issues.

To provide some context for this discussion, the public abortion photo display of which you disapprove saved the life of the child of at least one Biola student.  At ArmsOfAudio.com this young mother posted the following:

There are a lot of people bashing Diana right now but first hand I can tell you she did what she was told to do. I am 20. A student of Biola and always claimed to be prolife. I thought that until I got a positive pregnancy test. This came after a night of partying just outside the campus and had a one night stand with a youth pastor in training. I was going to go to Planned Parenthood that day and as I walked through campus her signs made me realize there is a human life in my womb ….  In that moment I went to my dorm room got on my knees and asked that I would have the strength to be my baby’s mom. STOP saying she didn’t follow her stupid rules. God came through for me because of her. And Susan Elliot is a tool of the devil.

First of all, your excellent pro-life reputation precedes you Dr. Tolbert, and we deeply appreciate all you do to defend unborn life conduct youth ministry.

Your important efforts in the fields of abandonment and adoption are also close to our hearts because my wife and I have adopted three little orphan girls abandoned because of disfiguring birth defects.  We are in the process of adopting a fourth who was abandoned because she was born with cerebral palsy.

We additionally share your devotion to Biola.  My wife is a graduate of Biola’s nursing program.  Our Director of Operations has a science degree from Biola.  Our Director of Administration is a graduate of Biola’s Talbot Theological Seminary.  Our International Director has a degree from Talbot.  We are currently attempting to hire a potential recruit who also has a Biola degree.  One of our student interns intends to enroll at Talbot next year.  The accusation that we are trying to discredit Biola is utterly without basis in fact.  We are merely exposing Biola’s discreditable treatment of a student who broke the rules of man when they conflicted with the laws of God.  We are also urging Biola to do more to inspire and equip its students to enter into full-time pro-life ministry.

Equally baseless is your contention that we are accusing Biola of not being pro-life.  Of course Biola is “pro-life,” but that means little when Biola’s ban on the public display of abortion photos is killing babies just like the one Ms. Jimenez saved when she defied that un-Godly ban.  Biola, along with virtually every other Christian school, is helping Planned Parenthood hide the horror of abortion.  Biola — and the rest Christian higher education — is failing to offer an entire major with courses specifically designed to qualify students for full-time service in pro-life ministry.  Occasional lectures and chapel presentations are no substitute for the sort of serious curricular reform without which the pro-life movement will continue to be hampered by undue reliance on part-time, amateur volunteers to save babies — while the abortion industry employs full-time, paid-staff professionals to kill them.

We appreciate your use of a video which includes brief glimpses of two of our abortion photos.  We wish you would have chosen to show it during the Biola Chapel event at which you recently spoke.  I am certain you are aware, however, that Biola students are not required to attend every chapel presentation, and those who most need to see the horror of abortion are the students who are least likely to attend pro-life lectures.  I know this from personal experience because I have delivered multiple pro-life talks at Biola and they were poorly attended, despite the fact that they were heavily promoted.

We did not create the Biola controversy.  Biola created controversy.  We merely exposed it.  What half of the story which you accuse us of omitting could justify the abusive, vindictive bullying of Biola’s administrators and police?

You say the nursing student had several options and your point seems to be that some of those options would not have broken the rules.  As a black woman, you must certainly be aware that Martin Luther King also had several options which would not have broken the rules in Birmingham, AL in 1963.  But none of the approved options would have advanced the cause of civil rights and none of the Biola nurse’s approved options would have advanced the cause of unborn children.  With all due respect, “panel discussions” never ended any terrible injustice.

Your assertion that “…if graphic images were the solution that would end abortion, abortion would have ended 30 years ago!” could not be more incorrect.  Most pro-life organizations and all Christian colleges and the entire church have worked tirelessly to suppress any widespread display of abortion imagery.  That is why we are losing!

Then you accuse us of “defaming Christians” when all we are doing is forcing a debate Biola is attempting to avoid.  Mature believers should have the intellectual honesty to disagree without personalizing differences as “defamation” Your nearly fanatical loyalty to Biola has sadly blinded you to the University’s guilt in shamefully abusing this student.

You question the student’s use of a video camera despite the fact that this officer was trying to turn off so no one would see him exceed his authority.  Thank God we have a record of his misconduct.  Without it there would be no accountability.  That camera might have deterred even worse abuses.  People who are about to do bad things always want to stop the filming.  On September 23, 1957 as the first black students integrated the Little Rock, Arkansas High School, “ … the mob turned its anger on white journalists on the scene.  Life magazine reporter Paul Welch and two photographers, Grey Villet and Francis Miller, were harassed and beaten.  The photographers’ equipment was smashed to the ground.”  (Eyes On The Prize, America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, Juan Williams, Penguin Books, 1987.)

Here is what really happened at Biola and below the link is my critique of the University’s misconduct:  http://www.jillstanek.com/2013/06/christian-university-retaliates-against-pro-life-student-for-showing-graphic-reality-of-abortion/

Biola is spinning this scandal as reasonable punishment for a student who repeatedly broke the rules.  In Matthew 15:8-9, Christ rebukes religious leaders who teach the rules of man as though they were the laws of God.  Jesus does not love rules more than lives.  In Mark 3:4, Jesus asked rhetorically whether it is lawful to break rules to save lives.  Ms. Jimenez was trying to save the lives of babies, some of whose mothers could only be reached with photos that broke Biola’s rules.  Jesus repeatedly broke rules to save lives by, for instance, healing on the Sabbath.  He criticized legalists who had the hard hearts of Pharisees.  Ephesians 5:11 commands us to expose the “deeds of darkness.”  Diana Jimenez defied the rules of Biola in fidelity to the laws of God.  Lives were almost certainly saved.  May others follow her righteous example.

In Jeremiah 7:1-7 God commanded his prophet to “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house…” (verse 2) for the purpose of confronting His people over the sin of “shedding innocent blood” in the form of child sacrifice (verse 6).  Jeremiah was terribly persecuted and so was Ms. Jimenez.

Susan Elliott, Biola’s director of nursing, ordered the faculty to deny Diana Jimenez routinely granted letters of reference for use in applying for nursing jobs.  Our lawyers are examining Biola’s active attempts to sabotage Ms. Jimenez’s employment prospects because they believe this sort of vindictive cruelty is not only unwarranted, but it is unlawful.  How is it not a scandal for the administration of Christian college to destroy a student’s career … for holding up an abortion photo?  What chilling message does this send to already risk-averse faculty members?

In more than twenty years of pro-life ministry on hundreds of college campuses, I have never seen pagan administrators at any secular school abuse their authority as egregiously as have the supposedly Christian administrators at Biola.  Vengeance of this sort is more commonly associated with cults, such as Scientology, which retaliate against former members who expose embarrassing church practices.

The administration says it bans abortion photos to create a “safe” place for students on campus. “Safe” from what?  The burden of having to avert their gaze if they don’t want to see a picture which will save a classmate’s baby?  Biola is infantilizing its educational experience.  It is robbing students of coping skills and leadership abilities.  Most other Christian colleges are as bad or worse.  That may be why Christian sociologist and pollster George Barna reports that only 6% of Protestant pastors believe they have the gift of leadership.  Barna has fallen out of favor in Evangelical circles for calling attention to surveys which document the awkward fact that lay people increasingly lack biblical world views because Christian leaders increasingly lack biblical world views.

In Luke 16:20-21, the friends of Lazarus carry this poor, sick, disabled vagrant to the gates of a rich man.  They took him there in the hope that the rich man would take pity on their pathetic friend.  The rich man had attempted to create a “safe” place, behind gates, on private property, in which he and his family would not be troubled by disturbing sights such as hungry beggars dying with open wounds.  Depositing Lazarus at the rich man’s gate made his plight impossible to trivialize or ignore.  This in-your-face gesture was an annoying, disruptive, cry for help.  The rich man would have banned it had he been able.  But Jesus seems to have approved.  It was in that spirit that Diana Jimenez carried pictures of aborted babies to the center of her Christian college campus.

By God’s grace, on public university campuses, our Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) has saved countless babies (view the testimonies abortionNO.org) of students who told us that nothing less shocking than our abortion photos would have sufficed to dissuade them from aborting.  None would have come to see our photos had they been displayed at some more obscure location.  Many claimed the Name of Christ but mistakenly underestimated abortion’s evil.  There are no words which are adequate to describe the magnitude of the evil abortion represents.  It must be seen to be fully understood.

Biola teaches that abortion is evil but refuses to prove how evil it actually is.  This lapse causes many Biola students to kill their babies under the mistaken impression that abortion is the lesser-of-two-evils.

Many pro-life activists are now accusing Biola of caring more about the feelings of born children than the lives of unborn children, but the issue of children being traumatized by abortion photos is a red herring.  Ms. Jimenez offered to surround her display with warning signs which would have given adults all the notice required to steer children away from her abortion photos.

When Biola helps Planned Parenthood hide the horror of abortion, savable babies are butchered and vulnerable mothers are abused.  The history of social reform, from the abolition of slavery, to the enactment of prohibitions against child labor, to the civil rights movement, etc., is the history of shocking pictures.  Before the display of pictures, words failed to change many minds on any of these issues. No injustice has ever been reformed by covering it up.  Countless black children saw and were horrified by the photos of Emmitt Till’s mutilated body when they were published in the Detroit Defender and Jet Magazine.  But those photos also inspired Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks to start the civil rights movement with a bus-boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

This university argues that “we’re all pro-life here” and then attempts to minimize this dispute as little more than predictable differences over strategy and tactics.  That’s not true.  Biola’s administration gushes about what it does concerning abortion (largely half-measures offered as fig leaves) in an effort to avoid any debate over what it refuses to do, which is to expose the whole truth.  Biola quotes from its official documents which condemn abortion.  But the priest and Levite who passed by on the other side of the beating in Christ’s Parable of the Good Samaritan would have condemned street violence.  They would have felt pity for victims of street violence.  But they weren’t willing to show pity for victims of street violence.  They refused to take risks and make sacrifices to intervene on behalf of those victims.  Words without meaningful action are as empty as faith without works.  James 2:16 warns that “If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good does it do?”  Biola isn’t doing “nothing” for the unborn, but Biola refuses to do what most needs to be done, which is exposing the horror and inspiring students to fight that horror with their diplomas because doing so would create uncomfortable risk and require painful sacrifice.

Had the Good Samaritan been a Biola grad, he might have preached John 3:16 while the beating victim bled to death.

In 1963, Martin Luther King found himself in a dilemma similar to that with which Diana Jimenez was confronted at Biola.  Like Biola’s administrators, the civil rights leaders in Birmingham, Alabama were insulted by MLK’s contention that they weren’t doing enough.  In reply, they anathematized Dr. King as a disruptive, dangerous outsider and demanded that he stay out of their city.  They resentfully argued that his use of confrontation was counterproductive and that their more diplomatic resort to education and negotiation and litigation was the way forward.  MLK countered that their tepid methods had failed and that invisible violence against blacks needed to be made shockingly visible, or public opinion would never support political reform.

He believed that racists who had been abusing blacks in private needed to be provoked into abusing them in public, where a sympathetic press could make disturbing photographs with which to build support for social reform.  Injustice needed to be dramatized and given a human face and like Ms. Jimenez, he would have to break the rules to save lives.  He understood that blacks would pay a heavy price for these tactics but believed that things had to get worse before they could get better.  And he was willing to pay that price with them.

Birmingham was then America’s most segregated city and it was home to the country’s most violent Klan chapter.  Local racists had coerced the black community into an ugly understanding:  If blacks accepted tolerable abuses, whites would not escalate those abuses to intolerable levels.  MLK’s decision to upset this fragile coalition between the city’s oppressors and its oppressed was opposed by local civil rights leaders, in part, because it was bad for business.  In addition to inviting heightened persecution, it damaged the city’s economy and reputation.  But Dr. King needed horrifying pictures and he was willing to break many rules to get them.  He pushed past local obstructionists whom he derided as civil rights “moderates,” and the outcome was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Richard B. Speed’s review of Mark Kurlansky’s book 1968: The Year That Rocked The World, describes this enormously successful use of civil disobedience and disturbing photos.  In discussing the impact of civil disobedience, Kurlansky relates a telling incident that took place during a 1965 march in Selma, Alabama.  Martin Luther King apparently noticed that Life Magazine photographer, Flip Schulke had put down his camera in order to help a demonstrator injured by the police.  Afterward, according to Kurlansky, King rebuked Schulke, telling him that ‘Your job is to photograph what is happening to us.’

CBR’s job is to photograph what is happening to unborn children and, in the absence of a sympathetic press, to display those photos in the public square.

In his seminal “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King addressed these “moderates,” who were represented by a group of local clergy who had publicly condemned his methods in a newspaper advertisement.  He said “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the … [civil rights] moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action ….’”

Dr. King could have been describing pro-life moderates at Biola.

MLK rejected both the appeasement strategy of civil rights moderates and the violence strategy of black nationalists.  History has vindicated the wisdom of his willingness to advance reform through civil disobedience which broke rules to acquire disturbing photographic documentation of injustice which had to be seen to be fully understood.  He used horrifying pictures for the same reason successful reformers almost always use them.  Injustice which remains invisible tends to become tolerable.  A failure of public imagination is inevitable without visual depictions of indescribable injustice.

The first Biola official to confront Diana Jimenez when she appeared on campus with CBR abortion imagery was the Assistant Director of Public Relations and Internal Communications.  She told Ms. Jimenez “You’re making us look bad!”  Ms. Jimenez replied “You’re worried about saving face but I am worried about saving babies.”  The first person to confront me after I posted CBR’s video, which depicts Ms. Jimenez’s shameful treatment by the Biola administration, was the university’s VP for Communications and Marketing.  Biola sees this dispute as a public relations crisis, not an abortion crisis.  When I recently requested a meeting with Biola’s president, I was initially told I could only discuss these issues with public relations officials.  Biola has become a business and abortion pictures are as bad for business at Biola as MLK’s protest marches were for business in Birmingham.  Biola may be profitable but it is no longer prophetic.

Penn State University tried to cover-up the preventable abuse of born children because exposing that abuse would have been bad for business.  Children, and ultimately the school itself, paid a terrible price for this cynical commercialism.  Many senior Catholic clergy, the Boy Scouts, and numerous other institutions have also swept child abuse under the rug, with equally disastrous consequences.  Christian colleges are doing much the same, for many of the same self-serving reasons, but the victims in these cases are unborn children.  Many of these tragedies would be preventable if Biola had the “courage and conviction” to adopt a “women and children” first policy on abortion.

Biola and a small segment of the Christian community have tried to talk America out of abortion for forty years, and public opinion continues to worsen, particularly early in pregnancy, when 90% of abortions are performed.  For thirty years William Wilberforce tried to end the slave trade with essays and lectures and got exactly nowhere, because slavery was as invisible in England as abortion is at Biola.  When the abolitionists began to use disturbing pictures, public opinion began to shift at the levels required to create the political consensus necessary for reform.  It is unlikely that St. John’s College at Cambridge would have threatened to expel Wilberforce, withhold his diploma, or arrest him, had he exhibited the shocking slavery pictures for whose display his life would be threatened later in his career.

Prior to 1964, even public university students were denied basic expressive rights on campus.  That repressive policy began to change when Mario Savio, a student at U.C. Berkeley, was repeatedly arrested for distributing civil rights literature on his campus.  Many of his classmates were willing to join him in handcuffs and eventually Berkeley’s administration wilted under an avalanche of embarrassing publicity.  The student Free Speech Movement quickly overspread the country, but never made it onto Christian college campuses.

CBR is meeting with our attorneys to develop a legal strategy to compel California’s private colleges to grant their students many of the same expressive rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to students at public universities.  In a case titled Robins v. Pruneyard Shopping Center, the California Constitution has been interpreted by the California Supreme Court (affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court) to extend what amount to First Amendment speech rights to picketers inside large, indoor shopping malls.  The Court’s theory is that large, private commercial spaces have become communities in their own right, maintaining what is essentially a public square in which expanded expressive rights are as appropriate as they would be within the boundaries of municipal corporations.

We believe the same theory can reasonably be extended to private college campuses, which are not only self-contained communities like the towns which surround them, but that are supposedly committed to academic freedom in the marketplace of ideas.  California’s politically liberal court system is obviously hostile to Christian institutions of all kinds.  It could, therefore, be much in Biola’s interest to expand its students’ expressive rights through negotiation rather than litigation.  A negotiated agreement could preserve Biola’s statement of faith as a balanced limit on speech which would no reasonable Christian would find to be consistent with scripture.

In its first week, You Tube has registered more than 12,000 views of our video which contrasts Biola President Barry Corey’s soaring chapel rhetoric with his police chief’s cruel thuggery.  More than 600 comments have been posted on just two social sites and they are running 5-1 against Biola’s expressive rights policies and its harsh (and perhaps unlawful) enforcement of those policies.  That is, indeed, a public relations crisis.

The video is now going viral all over the internet.  We have more videos of this type in production.  The people expressing the greatest anger toward Biola are the kinds of Christians who write donation checks and tuition checks and this is only the beginning.  We are aware of other students whose consciences have been awakened by Ms. Jimenez’s courage and they are prepared to force Biola to arrest them or grant them a level of academic freedom which is limited only by Biola’s statement of faith.

The pro-life movement will continue to lose the abortion wars as long as the church remains essentially on the sidelines.  The church will remain on the sidelines as long as pastors believe that fighting abortion is primarily someone else’s responsibility.  Pastors will remain conscientious objectors in the abortion wars as long as Christian colleges and seminaries refuse to effectively train and inspire their students to fight abortion professionally.

Abortion hides behind its own horror.  Because Christian leaders believe abortion is too terrible to display, Christian lay people underestimate its evil, concluding it is too inconsequential to fight.  Virtually everyone I know who does pro-life work full-time says their first look at abortion photos was the turning point in their professional lives.

Biola is thinking small on abortion. Liberal, secular schools have dedicated entire curricula to preparing feminists to advance the interests of the abortion industry. Not one, single, Christian college offers a major exclusively designed to prepare students to fight abortion as full-time ministry.  While students at secular schools have successfully demanded courses and even majors — in gender studies, and human sexuality, and racial politics, and abortion practice, etc., — Biola students seem blissfully unconcerned that their Christian school (and nearly every other) is trivializing abortion as a sin unworthy of serious academic focus (by which I do not mean occasional lectures or chapel presentations).

In Revelation 3:1-2 we read the words of Christ criticizing the ministry of a church whose agenda wasn’t broad enough:  “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but … I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of God.”  In Revelation 3:13-22, Jesus says, “I know your deeds ….  So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”  Lukewarm almost perfectly describes Biola’s opposition to abortion.  In Matthew 24:12, Jesus told us that we could expect the end times when “the love of most grows cold.”  Biola’s love for the unborn may not have grown “cold” but it has certainly cooled to room-temperature.

Until pro-life ministry employs as many people working full-time to save babies as there are working full-time to kill them, we have no chance to prevail in this struggle.  Biola could lead on this front if its policy makers were visionaries who, to quote Barry Corey, had the “courage and conviction” to replace inadequate words with empowering policies and programs.  The university says it bans abortion photos because their display is disruptive.  I believe that this ban will prove to be more disruptive than any display.

If we cannot persuade Biola to permit the orderly, public display of abortion imagery on campus, we are prepared to display it at entrances to the campus (and over campus with large aerial billboard photos) every time Biola hosts special events.  Biola students are going to see the horror of abortion, either occasionally (and in ways which improve the school’s reputation) or incessantly (and in ways which damage the school’s reputation).  And it is not we will do that damage.  Biola has proven itself quite adept at reputational self-destruction.

None of this might suffice to soften Biola’s heart on abortion, but three years ago, three weeks of CBR aerial billboards and billboard trucks and hand-held abortion photos over and around Notre Dame University’s campus convinced every other Catholic college in the country that inviting Barack Obama to speak would provoke pickets which would be too disruptive to risk.  The President has not delivered a single commencement address at any Catholic college in the intervening years.  Perhaps the tactics on which we relied to dissuade Catholic colleges from doing evil will persuade Evangelical colleges to do good.  In a world of sane journalism, pro-life picketers, relentlessly on the sidewalks of a supposedly pro-life college, would certainly qualify as a man-bites-dog story.

Two of our senior staff members are Biola grads and another has a Talbot degree. We are also attempting to recruit a recent Biola graduate.  One of our student interns intends to enroll in Biola’s Talbot Theological Seminary next year.  We ARE Biola.  We care about Biola.  But if we can’t halt the abortion cover-up at Christian colleges, we will never persuade prospective pastors to use their diplomas to end the bloodiest mass murder in human history.  And if we can’t stop that cover-up at Biola, at which Christian college can it be stopped?

More details are emerging about Biola University’s mistreatment of pro-life student Diana Jimenez.  (Scroll down to see previous stories on FAB.)

Jill Stanek interviewed Jimenez for a story on JillStanek.com.  Excerpts:

“I was pro-life but had no idea what an abortion looked like,” Diana told me today by phone. “Then I actually saw a video of an abortion, and my heart broke in pieces.”

A senior nursing student at Biola, a Christian university in La Mirada, California, Diana promptly launched a pro-life group and invited Gregg Cunningham, executive director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, to speak. After a great deal of energy was expended to publicize, only four students showed up.

***

Diana received permission to host a table with resources about abortion. On May 8 she, with a few representatives from CBR and two fellow students, set up her table after chapel let out, also displaying graphic signs of abortion.

In all, 1,500 students – some hostile – saw the signs before school administrators shut the group down.

“The campus safety officer’s biggest argument was, ‘You didn’t ask for permission,’” said Diana, who didn’t know she needed additional approval to show the signs. “They had a huge concern to not upset students, but it seemed no one gave a rip about the babies who are dying in the millions.”

***

Associate Dean [Matthew] Hooper followed up Diana’s second infraction with a letter threatening that if showed her signs a third time the consequences for “rebelling against authority” would be she couldn’t participate in commencement and would be banned from campus.

Meanwhile, Nurse Ratcheds exist in more than movies. Diana’s dean of nursing decided to take matters into her own hands and mete her own consequence. On May 22, Dr. Susan Elliott wrote a letter to all nursing faculty barring them from writing a letter of employment reference for Diana.

“She took this upon herself without being asked,” said Diana. “This effects my entire vocational career.”

Diana maintains Elliott’s consequence is not within her authority and also not in the Biola handbook. I hope a pro-life attorney helps Dr. Elliott see the error of her ways.

Ironically, Elliott went to Washington, D.C., in March to lobby for conscience protections.

Elliott needs to lobby herself.

“The hypocrisy I’ve seen is also disappointing,” lamented Diana. “When I told Dr. Elliott the punishment was inappropriate, she said I should have thought about that before. Seriously? I’m trying to save lives, and this is what she does?”

***

“Most people on this campus would say they’re pro-life, but they don’t have a strong enough conviction to do anything about it,” said Diana. “You can say you’re a Christian all day long, but where’s the evidence? We are challenged at Biola to say what we believe and what are we going to do about it.

“Four months ago I didn’t know anything about the issue,” Diana concluded. “These last four months have changed my life forever. I can’t believe we’re doing absolutely nothing for these babies or the women.”

Full story here.

Biola University has issued a statement (link here) in defense of their treatment of Biola alumnus Diana Jimenez when she was a student there.  The statement was issued by the Office of University Communications and Marketing.

FAB has previously reported on (a) Biola’s threats of arrest and expulsion (link to story and YouTube video here) and (b) Biola’s subsequent retaliation against Jimenez when efforts to silence her were made public in the YouTube video produced by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (link to story here).

Biola’s release is reprinted in full:

Biola University is aware of a recent video posted online showing a student attempting to display inappropriate, graphic images on campus.

Biola abhors the destruction of innocent life through the brutal practice of abortion on demand, and we support student efforts to raise awareness and advocate for biblical convictions. However, there are numerous ways to go about activism on this issue, especially on our pro-life campus. The public displaying of very graphic, disturbing images — for whatever purpose, even one so in line with Biola’s heart — is not an appropriate venue of student expression on our campus.

At issue in this situation is not Biola’s commitment to biblical fidelity and the pro-life cause, which we steadfastly uphold. Biola has always been and will always be committed to supporting the pro-life movement and accommodating campus dialogue on the subject, and this has been communicated to students. (For more information, please read this overview of some of the ways in which the university advocates for the sanctity of life.)

This issue is about the appropriate free expression of views on these issues on our campus. As outlined in our Student Handbook, all student assemblies and forums are subject to approval by the office of the Dean of Students. In this instance, the student sought approval to display graphic imagery on campus and she was denied. Student Development communicated clearly with the student on the matter, explaining that the photos were not allowed because they would be disruptive to campus activity. Student Development expressed to her that she would be free to share information on this issue on campus through other methods (a table with handouts, a panel discussion, etc.). Even after multiple discussions with Student Development personnel, the student continued to disregard these discussions, chose to violate peaceful assembly policies, baited our Campus Safety officers, filmed when asked to stop, and continued her attempt to display these images on campus. Because she violated our policies and ignored our concerns, Campus Safety intervened. It is unfortunate that the situation has been misrepresented.

We are continually in prayer for our community: faculty, staff and students who care deeply for the needs of our society and who seek earnestly, with respect and integrity, to serve our Lord Jesus with conviction and courage. Thank you for your continued understanding and prayer on this matter.

 Questions for Biola University:

1. You say that displaying disturbing images is not appropriate.  Why is it wrong for Biola students to be disturbed about injustice?  Especially an injustice that brutally destroys innocent human beings?  Especially a brutal, deadly injustice being committed by Biola students against their own children?
2. How can you claim to support efforts to raise awareness about abortion and then work harder than Planned Parenthood to prevent awareness?
3. If you believe abortion to be brutal destruction of innocent life, then what exactly are you doing to stop it’s practice among Biola students?  How does keeping students ignorant of the truth help?
4. Comment:  Yes, showing abortion images on campus is disruptive to at least one campus activity, that of Biola students getting abortions because the full truth of abortion is being withheld from them.
5. Comment:  Showing abortion images on campus is also disruptive to the kind of apathy among Christians that enables abortion to continue.
6. You say that Ms. Jimenez violated “peaceful” assembly policies.  This is an obvious attempt to portray Ms. Jimenez as being not-peaceful.  How was she not peaceful?  Your attempt to deceive is unbecoming to a Christian institution.
7. You say the situation has been misrepresented.  Really?  How so?  Who, specifically, do you claim has misrepresented the truth?
8. Comment:  Yes, it is your commitment to the pro-life cause that is at issue.

Biola University alumnus Diana Jimenez has advised the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) that Susan Elliott, Director of the Biola Nursing Department, has ordered Biola’s nursing faculty to refuse any request for letters of reference for Jimenez as she applies for nursing positions at hospitals and clinics.  This is in retaliation for Jimenez’s display of abortion imagery at Biola University when she was a student there (about a month ago).  (Link to story here.)

In a face-to-face meeting, Jimenez explained to Elliott that this decision could make it impossible for her to find employment as a nurse.  Elliott reportedly replied that Jimenez “should have thought of that” before she broke the rule forbidding the display of abortion photos on campus.  Elliott told Jimenez that her defiance of Biola’s regulations regarding abortion photos “grieved her heart,” but volunteered that she might be willing to reconsider her decision in one year, contingent upon Jimenez’s rehabilitation, by which she assumedly meant Jimenez’s willingness to abandon any and all future abortion photo displays.

Jimenez also told CBR that when Biola President Barry Corry awarded her diploma at Biola’s May 24 graduation ceremony (the same diploma Biola’s Police Chief had threatened to withhold for displaying abortion photos), he smiled and told her, “You will be a fine nurse.”  If Elliott has her way, Jimenez might never become a nurse.

CBR Executive Director Gregg Cunningham released this statement:

Biola has the legal authority to promulgate regulations which create a climate of ignorance that is conducive to the killing of unborn children.  Biola also has a legal right to enforce those regulations in cruel and vindictive ways.  But by what scriptural authority does Biola help Planned Parenthood conceal the inhumanity of abortion?  By what scriptural authority does Biola persecute students who expose the lies which Planned Parenthood is telling the Biola students whose pregnancies it aborts?  Students may be legally obligated to comply with a regulation which promotes evil, but aren’t they spiritually obligated to defy rules which increase the likelihood that unborn children will be tortured to death?

If a child fell into Biola’s swimming pool and a student in street clothes tried to jump in and save him/her, Biola President Barry Corey would have the legal authority to intercept that rescuer and warn that pool regulations prohibit any entry into the water dressed in other than approved swimming attire.  If the rescuer persisted, Dr. Corey has the legal authority to declare him/her a trespasser and threaten to withhold his/her diploma, suspend him/her, expel him/her, sabotage his/her employment prospects, or even arrest him/her.  But would he have the spiritual authority to order that the child be left to drown?  Would the rescuer be accountable to God or Dr. Corey in this case?  If Jesus cares more about obeying rules than saving lies, why did He repeatedly enrage hard-hearted Pharisees by healing on the Sabbath?

The YouTube video posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tILmCEUzio is drawing comments left by parents saying they will now no longer consider Biola as a potential school at which to enroll their children.  That is sad, but perhaps Biola “should have thought about that” before sweeping abortion under the rug and bullying students who try to drag it back out.  Historically, successful social reform is always about the public display of shocking pictures.  In fact, no great injustice has ever been reformed by covering it up.  Abortion isn’t being reformed, precisely because Biola and most of the rest of the Body of Christ is making it invisible, and therefore, tolerable.

In a follow-up e-mail, Cunningham told FAB,

From a consumer protection perspective, parents have a right to know that this is the sort of vindictive cruelty they are risking when they send their children to Biola.

CBR is urging people of conscience to e-mail Biola and ask the Administration to stop abusing its students with repressive restrictions on expressive rights.  Officials can be reached as follows:

• President Barry Corey, michele.hughes@biola.edu
• Dean of Students Danny Paschall, danny.paschall@biola.edu
• Associate Dean of Students Matthew Hooper, matthew.hooper@biola.edu
• Police Chief John Ojeisekhoba, campus.safety@biola.edu

CBR is also urging people to post comments below the YouTube video that depicts Jimenez’s mistreatment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tILmCEUzio).

Biola University, a Christian university in La Mirada, California, has threatened a pro-life student with arrest and expulsion for simply showing abortion to her classmates.  While a Resident Assistant at Biola, Diana Jimenez counseled multiple students who aborted children while at Biola.  When Diana followed the advice of Biola President Barry Corey to “speak truth into us,” she was punished for it!

Please let Biola University know of your concern, disappointment, and/or outrage that they would threaten a pro-life student with arrest and expulsion for simply showing a truth that Biola is covering up.

And please thank God for brave young Christians like Diana Jimenez.  She is my new hero!

Praying to end abortion.

He heard God say, “Don’t worry about it.  I’ve already sent you the money.”

In Tuscaloosa, I asked a few men and women to help bring GAP to the U of Alabama and Auburn U.  During the Q&A, Bill Overstreet, the pastor at Capstone Church, pledged to raise $2,000 by the end of the week.  He said he felt God leading him to pledge that specific amount.

I nodded in joyful thanks, because we needed his help.  But about the “God told me” thing, I’m always skeptical.  People often use it as a shield to deflect criticism, “If you disagree with me, you are fighting with God, because God told me …”  You know the drill.

Also, I’m skeptical because God has given His people more than enough resources to end abortion tomorrow, but too few of His people “feel” God leading them to do anything about it.  Based on the actions of His people, either (a) God doesn’t care about abortion very much at all, or (b) He is calling His people to act and they are ignoring that call.

Anyway, I was thankful that this pastor … or God, as it were … had agreed to help.

The next day, Pastor Overstreet was walking his neighborhood, asking God whom he should approach for help with that $2,000 pledge.  He heard God say, “Don’t worry about it.  I’ve already sent you the money.”

When he returned from his walk, he saw a letter on his desk from a man in Texas who used to be a member at Capstone.  He wrote that he felt led of God to send a check to the church for a special need.  He didn’t know what the need was, but he was sure Pastor Overstreet would know.  Along with the letter was a check for $2,000, the exact amount of the pledge!

Yes, Virginia, there is a God.  And he bears gifts for His people.  And He is calling His people to end abortion.

BTW, we still need another $2,500 to cover our Alabama GAP expenses.  Perhaps you have also heard from God and your check is already in the mail.  Or maybe you’re just behind and need to catch up.  Ever think of that?  Your gift today (click here) will allow us to schedule another GAP.  Thank you so much for answering God’s call.

“Now is a bad time.”

Quote of the week:

I have never heard an abortionist say now is a bad time to kill babies.  But Christian leaders often tell me that now is a bad time to save them.  (Gregg Cunningham, Executive Director, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform)