Julie and Emily Ascik, Co-Presidents of Carolina Students for Life.  (They both are wearing glasses. Click to enlarge.)

by Mick Hunt

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) changes lives among our audience—students, staff, and faculty of our nation’s largest public universities.  And it also changes the pro-life student leaders who host the project, by making them stronger.

In an earlier post, I gave examples of “pro-choice” meanness at UNC, including an account written by CBR Project Director Edie Benchabbat, who described how some UNC students attempted to dehumanize a pro-life student leader, one of the co-presidents of Carolina Students for Life, and how she felt bullied.  Edie also reflected on how we encourage pro-life students for the long term. She wrote about the UNC incident:

Now I look at our role in a different way.  So many pro-life students and adults felt intimidated by the pro abortion-choicers and whispered as they walked by, “Thank you!”  We bring a strength to our students.  We give them the foundation to stand up for the unborn.  They may go out alone sometimes, but I think the level of their impact and the level of confidence in coming face-to-face with evil is stronger with us.  I see us as spiritual, physical, and emotional bodyguards so the pro-life students will blossom into strong advocates for the pre-born children.

And if you think the pro-life UNC student leaders were discouraged by the ill treatment they received, consider what Julie and Emily Ascik, the co-presidents of Carolina Students for Life, wrote after GAP in their letter recommending the project for other universities:

It really is scary and was scary for us to bring the GAP Project to our very liberal, very pro-choice campus.  But it was also probably very scary for Martin Luther King and William Wilberforce to speak up about their causes, especially towards the beginning when they were alone in their stance and when people were afraid their tactics would offend people.  Abortion IS horrible and seeing the pictures of it is horrible, but we must make sure other people know what is happening thousands of times daily in our society.  As William Wilberforce once said, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

We actually rejoiced when some UNC students staged a counter-protest; it meant they were thinking about abortion.  Contrary to what most people think, having people talking about abortion, even if they are angry and insulting, is a good and productive thing to do.  Yes, it hurts when they say hate-filled and incorrect things to and about you, but as Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Next time, I’ll share some UNC stories about how GAP changed our audience.

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Mick (Meredith Eugene) Hunt is a regular FAB contributor.  He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the Southeast and elsewhere.

Tags: abortion pictures, GAP, Genocide Awareness Project, University of North Carolina

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2014 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Campus Debate (GAP). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.