It should be noted that despite the suppression of freedom in places like North Korea, Canada, Iran, etc., pro-lifers in freedom-loving countries like the United States and Russia have routinely displayed GAP without government interference.

The university said that while the students could not display their signs in The Tory Quad, a busy outdoor location on campus, it welcomed them to erect their signs in Porter Hall, an indoor room.

Ruth Lobo, president of Carleton Lifeline responded: “They are trying to sound reasonable by providing an alternate location, but what they aren’t saying is that Porter Hall is a closed room that few students pass by or even know where it is,” she said.

Club vice-president James Shaw added, “Telling us we can protest but in a back room no one goes to, is like telling black people they are welcome to ride the bus as long as they sit at the back.”

The university has reportedly been saying that student groups aren’t typically allowed to have displays in the Quad. Lobo asked, “If the Quad isn’t bookable, why advertise it as bookable space for student groups? More importantly, the university has never communicated to us that this is its reason for denying us the space. We’re only hearing about it through media who call us for a response.”

Refusing to tolerate censorship, the students proceeded to walk to Tory Quad with their signs. Part-way to their destination, they were stopped by authorities, eventually amounting to at least 3 campus security personnel and at least 9 police officers. Four Carleton students were eventually handcuffed and arrested by Ottawa police and charged with trespass.

Shaw commented, “I find it disgusting that Ottawa police allowed themselves to be hired as thugs to do the university’s dirty work. Shame on them for participating in Carleton’s censorship of its tuition-paying students.”

For more information contact Ruth Lobo or James Shaw at 613-600-4791 (cell).

Please pray that God will protect and deliver these brave students.

Note: Here at PloC, we don’t ask you to get arrested. We only ask you to give $10 a month.  If 1,000 people give $10 a month, we can grow from 6 GAPs a year to 20 GAPs a year.

Other stories at Life Site News,  National Post, Canada NewsWire, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun, Maclean’s on Campus, and National Post.

Andy Stephenson and Kathryn Sloane of Worthing, West Sussex, display CBR abortion photo.

Andy Stephenson and Kathryn Sloane of CBR UK were arrested for displaying an abortion photo outside a publicly-funded abortion clinic in Brighton, England. The story (link here) appeared in the London Telegraph, along with this photo (right).  This is the first time a major British newspaper (with a global readership, we might add) has published a photo of a first-trimester abortion. It is sure to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

The richest element of the story is not only the fact that the complainants who called the police were the abortion clinic staff, but also that these abortionists were “concerned” that aborting mothers “… entering the clinic felt traumatised and upset” by photos which showed them what the clinic was about to do to their babies!  They make this incriminating admission without a hint of ironic awareness.

Even more paradoxically, Ann Furedi, the abortion clinic director “… said she fully supported the right of pro-life activists to demonstrate against abortion clinics” but only so long as they don’t show mothers the evil atrocities Ms. Furedi is committing inside the clinic.  She condones a pro-life presence which allows aborting mothers to feel good about what they are about to do but condemns “… actions that are designed to distress people who are accessing legal, medical services.”  Abortion can only thrive in secrecy because secrecy allows everyone to pretend that the baby isn’t really a baby and abortion isn’t really a vicious act of violence.

I am stunned.  This is the best and most encouraging pro-life story I’ve seen in a long time.  I’m speechless.  Check it out.

Not only are the Midland Catholics for Life doing a GREAT job, one TV station is willing to cover it.

Its right out of the CBR playbook.  Educate people about the horrifying reality of abortion, and do it in such a way that compels the media to cover it.  Create conflict—not uncontrolled conflict, but modulated conflict—that draws attention to the plight of the preborn child.  Media might not like us, but they can’t resist conflict.  Thank you Midland Catholics for Life!

The abortion photos on the billboard came from CBR.  We provide graphic images to pro-life groups all over the world who (1) comply with our non-violence policy condemning all abortion-related violence and refusing to associate with groups or individuals who fail to condemn such violence, and (2) agree not to alter the images.

We give all glory to God, and we are so thankful he is using us in this way.  Please share in our blessing by $upporting our work!

Medallion emphasized to Londoners the humanity of the Black slave in 1787.

My talk last night at the Atlanta Right to Life was very well received, I think.  The subject was “Learning From the Past: How We Can Win.”  This is a similar talk to the one I gave to a group of pro-life Georgia Legislators a couple of years ago and the talk I gave to a group of pro-life Congressmen in DC.

This was a fairly easy audience.  We’ve been working with these folks to display abortion images for many years (GAP, RCC, etc.), so they are very familiar with the need to educate the public.  I didn’t need to convince them so much as to help solidify in their minds the connection between our work to educate the public using horrifying images and the work of other social reformers in history who achieved success using the same strategy.  Examples:

• The anti-slave-trade movement in England (William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson) used images to show the humanity of the Black slave and the inhumanity of the slave trade.
• Abolistionists in this country used similar images, and later used photographs, to expose the injustice of slavery.
• Lewis Hine, who was concerned about abusive child labor practices, took pictures of children working in coal mines and textile mills and turned them into a traveling display.
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “America will not stop racism until America sees racism.”  He arranged for video and photos of Black men and women being attacked with dogs and water cannons to be shown on TV and in magazines.

Horrifying photos of racial violence showed the ugly truth of racism and changed America's heart.

You can download my slides by clicking here.  It is a fairly large file (38 MB); it might take 10 minutes or so to download.  Just save it to a file; a pop-up window will ask you where to file it and will tell you how long it will take to download the file.

Please take a look at the slides and leave your comment on this post!

 

Tennessee Woman's Suffrage Memorial on Market Square. Note GAP display in background.

When we were on Market Square in Knoxville last week, we were stunned but pleased to see that the City of Knoxville had put up a monument to the pro-life position.  It wasn’t just pro-life, it was pro-family and pro-God.  It was awesome!

In fact, the pro-life monument has been there since 2006, but we enjoyed pretending that the City of Knoxville put it up just to endorse our message.

You all know about the pro-life convictions of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Perhaps we could add Lizzie Crozier French (1851-1926) to that list.  She was the founder of the Knoxville Equal Suffrage Association.  She wrote these words that appeared on the monument:

Thanks be to God that in giving Woman the crown of motherhood He made her the giver not the taker of life.  Woman has no greater claim to the rights of the ballot than that she is the producer not a destroyer of life.

Young people learning the truth of abortion.

We displayed our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on Market Sqauare in Knoxville.  Here are comments from passersby:

“This is really plain. I have cancer and cannot have children. Why don’t these folks give birth and let people like me adopt?” (young couple from Kentucky)

“We have both seen the destruction of societies from the kind of ‘real’ genocide (the kind most people identify with). But abortion is no less a genocide. We are destroying our own children for selfish reasons. We have seen what a society is like when life is not valued and we do not want America to become like China.” (travelers recently returned from Africa and China)

“China has a one-child policy enforced by the State. America has a 2-child policy enforced by the Church. And the pastors’ refusal to talk about contraception, the ‘full quiver’ (God determining family size), and abortion. And the outcome is still the same . . . death to the preborn.” (male passerby)

“Thank you for being brave to put this truth up for all to see.” (male passerby) (Note: we appreciate the thanks and the admiration, but frankly, we’d rather have your help. Thanks and admiration by themselves will not buy new signs, new handouts, truck fuel, nor anything else.)

“It is so wrong that you cut the water off so children can’t play in the water fountains today.” (female restaurant employee)

“The pictures are just awful; you should be ashamed to put them up.” (male passerby)  (Note: When Lewis Hine showed photos of children working under abusive conditions, he said people would look at the photos and get more angry at him for showing the pictures than at the industrial bosses for abusing the children.)

“The people that took info from me were not really interested in talking but extremely engrossed in taking in every detail of the display, some slowly digesting every photo-mural. Polite and very contemplative are two words I would use for the older (than college age) crowd at Market Square. I did notice that there were very many who looked at the display intently from a distance, whether walking by or from the surrounding restaurants. I did speak with one UT college age male who was glad we were there and remembered us from UT. The Deeper Still table had several come by, and a few ask for information about their post-abortion healing ministry.” (CBR volunteer)

That’s what they say.  What do you say?  Please leave your comments!

Market Square GAP

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) has made it’s first appearance on Market Square in Knoxville.  Lord willing, it won’t be our last.

Before we had even set up the signs, a woman walked around the display and studied each one.  She was almost in tears as she asked, “Do you mean to tell me that abortions like this are legal in Knoxville?”  I explained that the first trimester abortions depicted in most of our signs are performed routinely in Knoxville.  Although the 22-week abortion depicted in two of our signs are legal in all 50 states (because of the Doe v Bolton decision), they are not routinely performed here.  She said she had thought all abortions were done on a small blob of tissue, and that we had certainly changed her mind.  I know she will be talking about the signs to her friends as well.

All day long, it was a steady stream of people passing the display.  Almost every one of them stared at the signs and studied them intently.  It was clear the signs were doing their work in the minds of all who saw them.

What do you think about Urban GAP?  Please comment!

CBR and LEARN at NAACP

You may know about the NAACP Convention going on in Kansas City this week.  What you won’t see on the news are CBR’s abortion photos on display outside the Convention Center.  The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and Pastor Clenard Childress of BlackGenocide.org are in Kansas City asking “Why No Outrage?” about the destruction of Black children by abortion.

“NAACP Security” issued bogus demands that Pastor Childress move the signs away from the sidewalk adjacent to the Convention Center, but he promptly ignored them.  He told them that “only the Kansas City police have any authority to ask us to move.”

Pastor Childress told us that

This was our most effective NAACP picket to date.  We were ideally positioned for maximum exposure to delegates at the main entrances to the Convention Center.  When thousands of delegates rushed out, along with young visitors just brought in to hear First Lady Michelle Obama, they flooded all around our people and our graphic signs.  As I looked over our team, for the first time in all the years we have been doing this, everyone was simultaneously engaged in dialogue with Convention attendees.

Great job!  One of the Convention attendees encouraged us:

We know who you all are.  We’ve seen you here before.  …  Why are you still outside with your message?  Why haven’t they invited you in?

Fat chance of that.  Another Conventioneer:

If a bunch of white people brought these signs to our Convention, I would not have come up and spoken to them.  Thank you for coming.

ProLifeOnCampus Logo

You may have been wondering about the Pro Life on Campus logo.  This logo tells the simple story of what we are doing with our campus outreach project (GAP) at CBR:

Winning Hearts … Changing Minds … Saving Lives

These achievements are represented by the three icons that you see:

• The first is a heart, representing emotion.  Any salesman will tell you that the first step toward achieving behavior change is to touch the emotions of your audience.  They have to care about it; they have to think it’s important.  When people see our display, they are suddenly aware of a victim they had been taught to ignore (the defenseless baby) and an injustice they had been taught to trivialize.
• Next is a head, representing reason.  Using our display to start the conversation, we are able to engage the minds of students.  As pro-choice students and others repeat back the mantra of a pro-death culture, we ask questions to clarify the confusion in their minds.  We help them see that their justifications for abortion are no more compelling that the justifications given by the purveyors of slavery, the Holocaust, and the many other forms of systematic injustice.  They have been taught to hate these other forms of injustice; reason demands they hate abortion in the same way.
• Next is the baby’s hand, representing lives saved.  The first time I saw CBR’s campus outreach project was at the University of Tennessee in 1998.  We know of 9 babies lives that were saved.  One of them is now featured in a GAP sign that is shown all over the world.  Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life says this project is “saving babies like nothing the pro-life movement has ever seen.”

The text on the logo, Pro Life on Campus, points people to our website, www.ProLifeOnCampus.com.  So now you know!

To win hearts, change minds, and save lives, we need your help!  If you click here and give $5 or more, I’ll send you a Precious Feet lapel pin!

CBR at 2009 NAACP Convention

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and Pastor Clenard Childress of BlackGenocide.org are planning several days of outreach using CBR’s GAP signs and truth trucks at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) national convention in Kansas City, MO on July 12-13. Bill Calvin of CBR commented:

“With 33% of all abortions performed on black women – that is black genocide. With over half of all pregnancies to black women ending in abortion – that is black genocide. When African-Americans make up 13% of the population but continue to kill babies at such an astounding rate it is way past time to confront the leadership of the NAACP in their complicity in black genocide.”

I’ll have updates from the field.  We can’t do this without you.  Your gift of $50 pays for one hand-held sign!  Click here to stand with us.  By the way, I’m running a special this month.  Give any amount online, and I would love to send you a Precious Feet lapel pin!

GAP sign for NAACP Convention reveals racism behind Roe v Wade. (Click to enlarge.)

"Wow, I think God really sent you to me."

We’ve been saying it for years.  Now, national pro-choice leaders agree.

The president of the pro-life student group at the U of California recently said, “Berkeley Students for Life hosted the most high-impact pro-life event our university has ever seen ….”  It was our Pro Life on Campus GAP display.  A public health class turned into a 2-hour discussion of abortion.  A professor told us said how “compelling” he thought our abortion pictures were.  A female student exclaimed, “Wow, I think [God] really sent you to me.  I say that because I’m pregnant.  I was actually considering abortion.”  We see these kinds of astounding reactions on every campus we visit.  That’s why the president of Students for Life at the U of New Hampshire told us,

“There is no doubt in my mind that GAP is the most effective pro-life project that any pro-life club can bring to their school.”

How effective?  Five years after CBR’s 1998 launch of GAP—it was the world’s first, large-scale, abortion photo outreach to students—the pro-abortion New York Times reported a shockingly pro-life opinion shift among students.  The article “Surprise Mom: I’m Anti-Abortion” (March 30, 2003) reported that the “… most commonly cited reason for the increasingly conservative views of young people is their receptiveness to the way anti-abortion campaigners have reframed the national debate on the contentious topic, shifting the emphasis from a woman’s rights to the rights of the fetus.”  It was our photos that “shifted the emphasis.”

Five years later, the Los Angeles Times published an even stronger affirmation of the power of CBR’s abortion photos.  “Abortion’s battle of messages” (January 22, 2008) was authored by Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman, two of the abortion industry’s most strident proponents of “reproductive choice.”  Ms. Kissling was president of “Catholics for Choice” and Ms. Michaelman was president of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL – now “NARAL Pro-Choice America).  The authors made a startling admission:  “Advocates of choice have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus.”  Meaning the “fetus” they deceitfully dismissed as a blob of cells.  Even more amazingly, they concede that

“in recent years, the antiabortion movement [meaning CBR] successfully put the nitty-gritty details [meaning pictures] of abortion procedures on public display [meaning university campus exhibits], increasing the belief that abortion is serious business and that some societal involvement is appropriate.”

These pictures are precisely why our success with students continues to build.  Just last month, Newsweek published an article (“Saint Sarah”) that quoted a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  That study revealed that 70% of “young, white evangelicals” want more restrictions on abortion, compared with only 55% in the “older generation.”

The one thing that pro-choicers and pro-lifers agree upon: Young attitudes are changing and the reason is our abortion photos!

Every year, we get far more requests for assistance than we can possibly handle, because we lack sufficient funds to visit more college campuses.  We struggle even to keep our current projects funded.  To make matters worse, this tough economy is increasing pressures to kill babies at the same time it is decreasing our ability to save them.  On behalf of babies and moms, we need your help.

I’m asking you to look at last month’s check register and/or credit card bills and see if you can’t find a place to cut ten (or even five) dollars you could begin sending to CBR on a monthly basis.  Only $10 a month will take our Pro Life on Campus display to 240 college students every year.  If you can afford cable TV ($40/month), an equal check to CBR will take our display to nearly 1,000 students every year.  Think about that.  Please act now.

Your willingness to live a little more modestly could enable you to give a little more generously.  The result could be a baby’s chance to live any life at all. Please save a baby’s life right now!

40 Days for Life at Cherry Street Abortion Clinic

Been wanting to do something about abortion in Knoxville?  Believe in the power of prayer?  Got an hour?  If so, then I’ve got a deal for you!  Pro-lifers from all over Knoxville are praying at the new Planned Parenthood abortion clinic every Friday, and they want you to come and stand with them.  The new clinic is on Cherry Street, just a few blocks south of I-40.  It’s easy to help:

1. Click here.
2. Sign in with your name and phone number.  It’s easy.
3. Pick an hour and sign up.
4. Show up.  Parking is available just across the street at Trinity Tabernacle Church of God, 2615 Washington Avenue.

 I’ve heard it said that 80% of life is just showing up.  If you’ve never been a part of pro-life activism, this is an easy way to get started!  Here’s the link: www.40daysknoxville.com/vigil/

Truth truck redefined | pro-life pictures on display

Here’s an idea from our Florida Operations.  It only takes a few minutes to convert an old VW van to a life saving education project, suitable for any outdoor pro-life event.  Or even a drive down the road!  Mike Schrimsher tells us how to do it:

We used 3 “S” hooks (like are used at each end of a bungie cord) to hang the signs from the rain gutter on each side of the van and removed the center aluminum post from each sign because it created an awkward pivot point. Other than the 6 hooks at the top, there were only 4 points of contact with the van, the 2 side posts on each sign and we used foam pipe insulation as a cushion to prevent scratches from rubbing at those spots. We could have also used rubber-coated hooks to cushion the contact points in the rain gutters. Maybe next time. We completed the process with one long bungie cord stretched under the van and attached to the center of both bottom sign rails and 4 short bungie cords were used to attach each bottom sign corner to the underside of the van. The sign did not begin to budge at all, even at 45-50 mph.
The best part was it only took about 5 minutes to assemble and take down the whole contraption and everything fits inside the vehicle. It’s like the VW van and 4×8 GAP signs were made for each other.