Posts Tagged ‘GAP’
Thoughtful students encourage us at UNC
by Mick Hunt
In an earlier post, I gave examples of “pro-choice” meanness at UNC. But there’s more to the story. In spite of the intolerance we witnessed among the hard-core leftists, there were many thoughtful students with open minds whose responses encourage us to continue in this difficult work. Here are a few stories and comments you will enjoy:
A young man protested in front of our GAP display. He said that he was strongly pro-choice, although he would not want his girlfriend or wife to have an abortion. After a lengthy dialogue with one of our volunteers, he looked at the pictures for about 20 minutes, saying very little. Then he said, “You have some compelling arguments. Although I’m pro-choice, that doesn’t mean I always will be. You’ve dissected this complex issue and made it very difficult for me to be pro-choice.”
A campus groundskeeper said that even though he was pro-choice, our display had an impact on him. After hearing why we compare abortion to other forms of genocide, he said he still didn’t agree. However, we had gotten him to think about it.
A young man said he didn’t get the genocide comparison because abortion isn’t based on race or nationality. We explained to him how the Cambodian genocide was based on level of education. He said, “Thank you. I guess I had a very narrow view of what genocide is.”
Two young men wanted to talk and learn about abortion and our display. Afterward one said, “Thank you for a calm conversation. These emotional issues so often end in ad hominem attacks.”
Katie was taught by her mother at a young age that if she ever got pregnant before she finished college, and was not married, she would have to have an abortion. She looked sadly at the display, almost crying. She said, “Before seeing your display, if I had gotten pregnant, I would have had an abortion. I never really thought what abortion did to a baby or even if it really was a baby. But no more. Now I know the truth. I have a post-abortive friend and I am going back to talk with her and provide resources to move her toward healing.”
And lastly, a woman sent the following letter to CBR headquarters:
Dear Genocide Awareness Project,
From 2005-2009 I was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On multiple occasions I saw your anti-abortion presentation and was shocked to see the dismembered little bodies. I was pro-choice when I was in college, mostly out of selfishness and lack of knowledge about the development of a fetus. I am now officially pro-life after having my first daughter and finally realizing WHAT is going on when a baby is developing in the womb. My SIX WEEK baby had a HEART BEAT … and we are allowed to kill them?
I will not give you my whole story, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for what you do. I am sure that you get much more argumentative and accusatory feedback than positive feedback. Please let me tell you that when I hear my baby’s heartbeat (and I tracked her growth) I remembered your posters on campus and finally understood what you were fighting for. … I’m only sorry it took me so long.
THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DO. Your project made a difference in my life.
E. W.
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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.
GAP encourages pro-life students at UNC
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.
Pro-Choice Meanness at UNC
by Mick Hunt
“Leftists claim to be the voices of tolerance and diversity; however, the universities they control are the most intolerant and monolithic institutions in American life. Their notion of diversity is to cover the range from extreme leftist to downright nasty leftist.” (FAB)
In my experience UNC offered the largest reaction against GAP when we previously appeared in 2005. (But see the positive article on our 2005 GAP on page 13 of the Carolina Journal.)
Then, some 200 students and faculty members surrounded the display with their backs turned away from it, symbolically rejecting its truths, while additionally preventing others from seeing it for themselves. Had they kept this up for longer than 10-15 minutes, police might have taken action, as would have CBR. As it was, we took advantage of the situation by placing our handmade signs throughout their midst, signs that said, “Face the Truth. Choose Life.” After their protest broke up, many of the students stayed to talk with us and view the display.
This past spring (March 31 & April 1) the “pro-choice” response was different. The drum beating and dancing—that sort of thing—we’ve seen the like of it before, but this time our opponents offered something more alarming: Meanness.
I’ll list incidents that I personally witnessed.
A visiting alumnus shouted at CBR’s Georgia State Project Director Lincoln Brandenburg, called him a number of coarse names and shook his finger in Lincoln’s face. Later, without provocation, he challenged me to a fight and offered to hit me across the head with a baseball bat. When I reported this to campus police, they said I need to fill out a warrant for his arrest. I told them they needed to stand closer to him in case he tried to hurt someone.
Two male students stood along a busy sidewalk, wearing black wetsuits (supposedly condoms) while holding signs featuring explicit, hard pornography and an absurd, filthy “scientifically inaccurate” slogan.
A black female Planned Parenthood representative mocked a black male student for being a “30 year old undergrad.” (He responded by saying he had served two tours in Iraq.)
When one of the co-presidents of the student organization that hosted us was standing in front of our display while holding a CBR “Choice” sign, a group of “pro-choice” students surrounded her to pose for mocking pictures, like she was some sort of inanimate object. This was so insulting and I felt bad for her. She is from Asheville and I know her family.
The worse incident of all is described by Edie Benchabbat, CBR Project Director for North Carolina:
“Emily is co-president of the pro-life club at UNC-CH. She was holding a choice sign and the pro-aborts surrounded her and scared her. Someone from CBR noticed and came to her aid. I was on the other side of the quad so didn’t know what happened. I walked back to get more brochures and noticed her sitting down on the ground behind our display with knees bent and hunched over. She was trembling and crying. I went to her and held her to make her feel safe. She told me what happened. We prayed together. 2 other women joined me and we prayed for her. After 20 minutes, she was settled and ready to go out again with someone around her.”
The meanness I’ve described is only one aspect of doing GAP, probably the hardest part. GAP is always intense, but not often as bad as this. UNC has been the worst that I remember. It wasn’t only the specific incidents, but the entire atmosphere. In summary, we should never believe that it will be easy being a part of transforming our culture into one that values and respects the lives of preborn children.
Next time: Changing lives at the University of North Carolina.
Mick Hunt (Meredith Eugene Hunt) is a FAB contributor. He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the southeast and elsewhere.
The Essence of “Pro-Choice” Rhetoric: Misdirection (Part 2)
by Mick Hunt
In Part 1, I wrote about how abortion clinic escorts use misdirection and distraction, which are among the tools of stage illusionists as a way of controlling the audience’s attention. These same tools are also at the heart of “pro-choice” rhetoric.
Ad-hominem attacks against pro-lifers are obvious, and a trained debater won’t be sidetracked by them, but virtually every women-centered question or statement is also misdirection. The real issue is not whether we should care about women. Everyone knows we should. The real issue is about caring for pre-natal children.
My answer to many questions is, “We should treat pre-natal children the same as we should treat born children.” Or, “Whatever problem you pose with a pregnancy and a pre-natal child, we should find a solution that is, in principle, no different than if the child were born.”
To a large extent, even the scientific debate over when human life begins is misdirection and distraction. My philosopher-carpenter friend, John S., wrote recently in a letter to a state official, “Questions like ‘when does life begin’ or ‘what is a person’ are exercises in playing dumb. We know when life begins—it begins at conception (fertilization). We know what a person is—it’s a human being.”
The answer then is not so much in talking about abortion, but in acting as if abortion is murder. The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) is a powerful appropriate indirect response to the gravity of abortion. It’s really not debate, but a presentation of facts through imagery. GAP is a statement of the obvious to people who are distracted. Any contribution to debate we make has more to do with interpreting the images for people who are confused.
GAP creates problems for abortion-choice supporters. In the face of evidence of the gruesome violence, “pro-choice” rhetorical engagement is a losing proposition. GAP compels either acquiescence, active resistance, or a dilution of our effort. Since the activists don’t intend to quit, they must issue propaganda and organize protests. They spread propaganda through social media and campus publications.
We see resistance in most schools, but I’d like to focus for now on the campus of the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, and at North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh.
At Chapel Hill, abortion supporting students lined up in front of the GAP display with signs and helium balloons. A couple of masked male students tapped on snare drums for endless hours. A Planned Parenthood representative stood on a wall overlooking the scene and shouted meaningless patter about condoms and filing complaints with the Dean of Students. At NC State, the abortion “counter protest” took a further step by attempting to block the view of the GAP display and form a complete wall of bodies and signs.
The portrayal of the victims of abortion through GAP helps distracted and misdirected people attend to the real issue of abortion. And if GAP is so effective that abortion supporters must turn out in force to distract people from seeing the images, then shouldn’t we do GAP even more often?
Mick Hunt (Meredith Eugene Hunt) is a FAB contributor. He has helped organize more than 50 Genocide Awareness Projects (GAPs) all over the southeast and elsewhere.
Pray for more students at Michigan State University
Pray for students who need healing. A young woman walked past, then turned around and came back. She asked of Ohio volunteer Laurice Baddour, “What would you do in the case of rape, and you had no other choice but to have an abortion?” Laurice: “Were you raped and had an abortion?” “Yes, when I was young.” (She is still so young!) So they talked. Laurice shared with her our “Ask the Victim” handout, told her that there are resources for healing, and said that maybe one day she will have regrets and want to access some of these resources. She walked away abruptly, but as she left Laurice said “Please know I truly care about you and am here for you.” She looked back, listened, then sadly and quietly walked away. Such women often suffer great pain and are unable to engage in civil conversation. God had prepared her heart for a seed of truth. Pray that this seed will grow and produce the fruit of healing.
The whole family needs healing. Missie was looking at the photos, at a distance, crying. Massachusetts volunteer Marie went to see what she could do. “My boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend (Susan) just had an abortion and we are all devastated and angry at her. We all would have helped her and she didn’t let us.” Missie took information on Rachel’s Vineyard and promised to give it to Susan as soon as her own emotions had calmed down. She believes Susan will be hurting sooner rather than later.
Pray for students at Michigan State University
Let us follow Paul’s example of praying for the lost.
Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. (Romans 10:1)
Pray for students who believe lies. As is always the case, pro-aborts asserted that the pre-born aren’t human. Honest students, even those neutral on abortion, were surprised that pro-aborts would base their arguments on something so blatantly false. (When Does Human Life Begin?) Pray that these students will come out of denial.
Pray for students who know the truth but lack courage to face it. Virginia volunteer Bryan McKinney spoke with two female students for a good bit of time. She answered the usual questions. Both young women were quiet for a long time and looked up at the pictures of children who had been decapitated and dismembered. The next day, Bryan saw one of the women standing with the pro-abortion protesters. When their eyes met, the young woman looked away. She knew what she was doing was wrong. Pray that this student will have courage to accept the truth.
Students talk about GAP at Oakland University
Here are just some random comments made by passersby at Oakland University:
“It’s crazy; can I take a picture?”
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“I appreciate what you are doing.”
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“I want to punch you in the face.”
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“I am disturbed; I don’t know what to think.”
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“They are freaking terrible.”
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“You should have been aborted.”
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“That’s really blunt.”
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“Thank you.”
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“It’s just really disturbing.”
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“You guys are just disgusting.”
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“It’s all God’s creation…I don’t know how people can say this is normal, but we have a pretty crazy humanity right now.”
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“Not allowing abortion legally won’t stop it.”
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“I am glad you are doing this and I pray it gets changed in your country.” (Muslim woman)
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“If my girlfriend gets pregnant, she’s going to have an abortion.” [CBR: “That doesn’t sound like ‘choice’ to me.”] “I don’t care. I would make sure she had an abortion.”
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“[Abortion is a] very bad thing; I think it is a loss.”
A glimmer of real diversity at Oakland University
At every university, they basically tax conservative and neutral students (through exorbitant student activity fees) to subsidize left-wing student activism on campus. They take in millions of dollars in mandatory fees every year, with almost none of it going to conservative events/projects, but huge amounts going to left-wing propaganda events/projects. A local example is $20,000 of student activity money spent on (Perverted) Sex Week at the University of Tennessee, but that is only the tip of the iceberg.
But occasionally, they do throw us a bone. At Oakland University (OU), the Students for Life (SFL) applied for and received the funding necessary to pay for GAP. This happens rarely … very rarely.
As conservatives, we need to be coaching our students to apply for and get money for conservative activities, just like the leftists do. (We actually pay professors to coach leftist students how to apply for and get this money, but nobody is coaching our students.) When they apply for money and don’t get it, we should go to court and sue universities over and over again until they are forced to level the playing field.
They keep proving our point!
GAP highlights many ways in which abortion is comparable (although not identical) to other forms of historical genocide. One similarity is the language used to justify the killing.
For example, pro-abortion protester Lauren Catoni was quoted in the Oakland Post (the OU student newspaper), “It’s actually horrifying that they’re comparing this to genocide because genocide is a widespread movement to eliminate people and abortion is a medical procedure people have when they need it.”
Perpetrators of genocide almost never “eliminate people.” No, they exercise their “choice” because they “need” to. Perhaps Ms. Catoni should complete her sentence: Genocide is a widespread movement to eliminate people and abortion is a widespread medical procedure people have when they need to eliminate people they don’t want.
Are they as smart, yet weak and helpless, as they think?
At Virginia Tech, a male student asked what should a couple do if they can’t financially provide for a child. We talked about community resources and adoption options. We talked about adopted children who are thankful to be alive. He was visibly moved, we wondered if he is the father of a pregnant woman’s child.
It occurred to me that our culture is telling young people two contradictory things.
First, they hear a steady stream of flattering remarks about how smart they are. Stuff like, “You are the smartest group of students ever to attend this university.” Teenagers already believe they are much smarter than everybody else. That’s part of being a teenager, but this generation believes they are smarter than George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
On the other hand, they believe themselves to be so weak and helpless, they can’t possibly take care of themselves, much less take care of their own children. It has never occurred to them that parents less well-educated and less wealthy than themselves have been raising children for thousands of years.
This kind of thinking is the staple of the political party who promises to (1) provide for their every need, and (2) preserve their the right to kill their own children. If people figure out that they are plenty strong enough to take care of themselves and their children, the party of dependency and death would become less relevant.
“Almost did that to my son … Thank you” and more at Virginia Tech
Here are a few stories from GAP at Virginia Tech.
Almost did that to my son. A 40+ year old housekeeping staff was crying as she stared at the 22-week abortion picture. When asked if she was OK, she replied “I almost did that to my now 27-year old son. Thank you for being here. I will take a brochure back to women I work with.”
Pro-choice support for GAP. Even pro-choice students sometimes agree that women can have real choice only if they are fully informed. One pro-choice female student said, “Talking to you has helped me realize that pro-lifers are not what I thought they were. I was so angry because my roommate was angry about this display and so I had to come out to see for myself. I am so glad I talked with you. You are much friendlier than your pictures. Education on this topic is so important and even though I am still pro-choice, I want women to have all the information available to them.”
Another pro-choice endorsement. A female student: “I know why you do this; I just don’t like it.”
Too big, too horrific to ignore. The purpose of GAP is to force people to think about abortion when they would rather think about anything else. Our opponents admit that GAP works. One pro-abortion student told us, “Because of social networking across campuses, this message has not only reached Virginia Tech, but has gone far beyond. Facebook is abuzz about abortion and people on this campus plus many others are talking about abortion now.”
Bad emotions? A male student commented about the sadness of giving up a child for adoption. We told him that parents might very well feel sad to give up a child, but that is a much better emotion than the sadness and memory of killing their own child.
Wanted vs. unwanted at George Mason University
I love this photo of Students for Life President Anna Maher on her knees in conversation with Aviva, a handicapped student at George Mason University.
Aviva (not her real name) started out by saying that a woman should always have the choice to abort. As Anna worked through the topics of personhood, Aviva began to understand that a human fetus is simply a human child, that babies are being aborted only because they were unwanted. Planned parenthood says “every child a wanted child,” but we know what happens to the unwanted ones. Anna was able to remind her that handicapped people are sometimes killed because they are considered unworthy of life and unwanted (e.g., useless eaters).
She struggled with the fact that pregnancy changes a woman’s body. She was concerned that some women are not able to handle such changes, or they are afraid of such major changes during and after pregnancy. Anna encouraged her to see the body image issues in the context of the larger picture, that negative attitudes towards pregnant bodies are a reflection of a culture that does not embrace Life, but rather demeans pregnancy and labels it is a weakness (as opposed something that women just go through).
As they spoke, Aviva’s heart began to soften to the Truth. They talked for almost an hour. Occasionally, Anna would stand up, because her knees were hurting from kneeling on the concrete. A little voice kept telling her, “Get back down on your knees.” So she did. Anna says it was definitely the Holy Spirit trying to teach her something.
Old Man Winter pays GAP a visit at George Mason University
GAP was such a draw at George Mason University (GAP), even Old Man Winter came out to see it! He brought freezing temperatures, rain, snow, and winds gusting at more than 20 mph. Yuck. He made it hard to stand outside for very long, but we were determined to expose abortion in all its grisly reality.
Assisted by a dozen local volunteers, we endured miserable weather for three straight days (March 24- 26), too thrilled to be striking a blow on behalf of the preborn to worry about physical discomfort. (OK, the Day 1 photo at right doesn’t look so bad, but it was very cold. And it got much colder, rainier, snowier, and windier over the next 2 days.)
As always happens when GAP comes to town, the campus was saturated with literature, and conversations on the ethics of abortion could be heard continuously in the area surrounding the display and in classrooms all over. CBR’s truth truck circled the campus, ensuring that no student could miss the message.
GAP prompts thought like nothing else can. People who otherwise never think about abortion are forced to confront the issue and try to reason out what they think of decapitating and dismembering little human beings. With the image of abortion’s helpless victims staring them right in the face, it is hard to argue for the primacy of “choice”. Of course, this doesn’t stop many from trying.
About 10 or so pro-abortion protesters showed up with their own signs to “refute” the logic of the GAP display. Their presence always works to our advantage. Where else do we get the chance to engage hard-core pro-aborts, on our terms, for a protracted period of time? The enthusiasm of many young abortion supporters tends to wane under continuous exposure to powerful pro-life arguments.
And no argument is more powerful than the picture of a little human being who has been decapitated and dismembered.
[Story submitted by Jonathan Darnel of CBR Maryland.]
Genocide Awareness Project returns to University at Buffalo; First Amendment restored
In stark contrast to last year’s visit, the First Amendment was thoroughly upheld at the University at Buffalo (UB) this time around. CBR returned to UB to deploy our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on April 28-29.
FAB readers will recall the chaos that ensued on our first visit (stories here, here, here, and here). As a result of university-sanctioned censorship, CBR filed a federal lawsuit against UB for permitting an unruly mob of pro-abortion protesters to purposely disrupt our peaceful, pro-life demonstration (link to stories here and here).
For those keeping score, this was only the second time in the history of GAP that CBR has been forced to file a lawsuit against a public university. Usually, the knowledge of our willingness to defend speech rights is enough to ensure their enforcement.
The UB has a long history of obstructing pro-life speech. When the UB Students for Life organized in 2010-2011, UB stalled their application for 9 months, until the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) forced UB to give the Students for Life the same access to UB spaces/facilities that all the left-wing students enjoy. Story here: Recent Victory for Pro-Life Speech. Later, UB students vandalized a Cemetery of the Innocents display, not once, but twice. Stories here: Second Round of Discrimination and Vandalism at University of Buffalo Continues.
It was clear that sometime during the past year, the University at Buffalo “got religion,” as we say here in the South. They were determined to prevent the kind of censorship that they allowed last year, and they did.
The area surrounding GAP was constantly abuzz with pro-life vs pro-abortion conversation, sometimes passionate and emotional, other times calm and intellectual, but always productive.
On Day 2, high winds and rain prevented us from constructing the full display, but volunteers made do with a smaller set-up and aggressive literature distribution. Click to read our brochure, How Can You Compare Abortion to Genocide?.
Media:
- Students for Life bring anti-abortion display to campus for second year
- Graphic images are necessary to anti-abortion movement
Pro Life on Campus at Oakland University (Michigan)
Next stop for this Spring’s massive Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) tour was Oakland University (OU) in Auburn Hills, Michigan, a northern suburb of Detroit.
Like most suburban universities, OU is relatively new (established 1957) and is growing by leaps and bounds. Students are more likely to commute and less likely to be involved in student activism. The OU Students for Life (SFL) are a refreshing exception to that rule.
Under the leadership of Michelle Anderson, the OU SFL has become a force on OU’s campus. They have hosted a number of big events on campus, including an appearance by Rebecca Kiessling and a major debate with the pro-abortion club. And now, they have hosted GAP.
Media Coverage:
- Two-day project shocks campus, draws protest
- Graphic Image
- WARNING GRAPHIC: Genocide On Campus (see video at bottom of page)
More to come.