A typical scene at our UNC GAP. (Click to enlarge.)

by Mick Hunt

Earlier this month, a woman verbally and physically abused Created Equal (CE) staffers who were showing abortion victim photos in Columbus, Ohio.  The incident was caught on tape and received extensive news coverage, including an interview on the Sean Hannity show (link here).

The attacker repeatedly called CE staffers misogynist and racist.  If you are engaged in important work like CE and CBR, it won’t be long before someone says those things about you … if you are white and male.

But when women and people of minority races express pro-life views, it proves the issues of race and gender to be irrelevant to the argument.

The pro-life movement has a number of prominent African-American leaders like Dr. Alveda King (niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.) and Rev. Clenard Childress (a CBR director).  To help complete the picture, however, I’d like to share a few black voices.  These are stories written by staff and volunteers who helped with our recent GAPs in North Carolina, but they might have come from any state.

UNC-Chapel Hill  (March 31-April 1, 2014)

p A black female student told me her brother was supposed to be aborted, but her mother went through with the pregnancy and her brother turned out fine.  She was glad we were showing the truth.

p I gave a brochure to a black man and asked if he would like to know how we make the genocide comparison.  He took the brochure and said emphatically, “It is genocide!”

p A black male student said, “I thought it was OK until maybe 3 months, until I saw these pictures.  I had no idea!”

p Black male psychology student said, “Human fetus = person.”

p Conversation with an older black female:  Q: Would you like some information?  A: No, because I agree with you.

p Tony, a black student, was staring at the signs, listening to the crazy NARAL woman, and asked her, pointing to the signs, “How is that hate?” (This was in response to a comment she had made repeatedly.)  She said, “I’ve had an abortion, and I’m not ashamed of it, but their signs are trying to shame me for my choice.”  Tony was not buying any of it.  I was standing right there, so we began talking, along with two other black women.  Tony said, among other things, “It seems like anything pro-God, pro-morality, pro-creation, etc. gets stifled on this campus.  It’s ironic that they try to profess tolerance, and yet with their appeal to the Dean, they are trying to shut you up, and take away your rights.  That’s what is hate.  If we don’t have the First Amendment, we don’t have anything.  Them trying to get you guys off campus, we might as well be back in the 50’s.  It’s just like the racist saying, ‘Get in the back, n***’”

North Carolina State University (April 2-3, 2014)

p A black female student was raised in a pro-life church and family; she didn’t know about the NCSU Students for Life group and immediately signed up.  She came back to volunteer the next day.  Her Bishop came as well and we encouraged him as a black pro-life pastor.  Four of our folks went to his church on Friday to support their work.

Next time: African-American performance artist Shawn Welcome’s poem “Civil War.”

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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.

Masked male students at UNC try to distract and misdirect people from images of aborted children with banner, drums, and absurd ad hominems.

“Pro-choice” NCSU students tried to block the view of GAP until campus police stopped them.

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.