Marie Bastone is one of our favorite GAP volunteers. Here she is at the University of Massachusetts.

Marie Bastone, one of our favorite GAP volunteers, e-mailed me about her experience at UConn and UMass.

I had a stimulating & challenging 4 days with GAP.  UConn s were out vigorously protesting the display with some students coming quietly to say that appreciated that we were there.  The next 2 days at UMass at Lowell almost made the gang at UConn look like lambs.

On the morning of Day 2 at UMass, one Asian student very, very respectfully and humbly came to say that he was a pro-life,  pre-med major who volunteered at a nursing and pediatric clinic.  He said he had thought hard about the pictures and their message and took it home with him the previous night.   This morning,  asking his peers to listen to what he had to say, he got down on his knees and begged us to please take down the pictures, because they had hurt one female student who had been sexually assaulted.  The kids cheered.

In response, Frank Diorio got down on his knees and beautifully and eloquently begged this young man to consider how the pictures save lives.  This student listened with his head down, eyes closed and nodded quietly …

I can almost hear Frank telling this young man how a second assault (abortion) can never undo the first one.  Many women who are raped and then abort will tell you that they now regret their abortions, and that healing from the abortion was more difficult than healing from the rape.  This is because they had no control over the rape, but the abortion was an act of barbarity that they themselves consented to.  Marie went on …

I myself had some serious exchanges with students.  The funny thing is that the ones who were most hostile and resistant were the ones who kept coming back, both days and both morning and afternoon.  There was some intense emotional shouting and rage.  It was interesting, and, as always, a privilege.

Actually, Marie, the privilege is ours.  We can’t wait to do it with you.  For those who can’t come do this in person, why not help another way?  Would you be willing to support this work at $100/month, $50/month, or $25/month?  Whatever you can do will make a huge difference in the lives of mothers and children.

A crowd gathers at the University of Massachusetts as Bryan McKinney (blue baseball cap) explains how the systematic killing of 1.2 million unwanted preborn children every year amounts to genocide.

The Spring 2012 I-95 Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) tour made its final stop last week at the University of Massachusetts (UMass).  We are indebted to Bill Cotter of Operation Rescue: Boston for filing this report:

Students wandered by all day, with a dozen to as many as fifty students gathered at any one time to look at the posters and debate with the GAP staffers.

Reason was in recession while conditioned reflex responses abounded: “What about rape?” “What if the woman lives in poverty?” “It’s not genocide!” “Perverts!”

Sometimes it bordered on the hysterical. “It’s not 24 weeks!” shrieked one woman in response to a poster of a 24-week abortion. Meaning what? That an older (or younger) abortion would not be OK? Why? Why not?

While the insults and hyper-emotional defenses of abortion suggest a society on its last legs (which may be true) they may also be symptoms of people being redeemed. The strength of the GAP exhibit can be summed up in one word: truth.  And truth is more than facts.  Truth is a Person … a victorious, conquered-sin-and-death Person … who has been known to incite shrieks and hysteria in people afflicted with Darkness.

When the exhibit is long gone from the campus, and emotions have quieted, the images will remain burned into the minds of observers, relentlessly bringing to light the self-evident truth about our national sin. The blessed ones will yield to that truth. The rest will remain at war.