Angry students shout down pro-life display at Florida State U

by Rebecca Millette

TALLAHASSEE, Florida, February 23, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A mob of protesters tried to shout down the recent pro-life Genocide Awareness Project exhibited by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform on campus at Florida State University. 

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) is a traveling photo-mural exhibit that compares abortion to historical genocides, such as that which took place in Rwanda.  Set up and facilitated by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), GAP visits university campuses across the United States and Canada to show students the modern day genocide of abortion. 

At Florida State University (FSU) hostile crowds of pro-abortion students shouted “my body, my choice” while members of CBR tried to answer questions during an open microphone session.  However, despite the attempts to silence them, CBR succeeded in hearing and responding to dozens of questions from students.

One male student thanked CBR for their presence.  “If me and my ex had seen this two years ago,” he told them, “we would not have done what we did.”

To the crowd of protesters he commented: “How can you guys, honestly, stand here holding these signs saying ‘Get out!’ when you’re doing the same thing: you’re holding up signs, holding up images about, against this… claiming your free speech yet you’re denying them their free speech? How can you do that? How can you deny one person their free speech while exerting yours?”

Alex Holzbach, a student member of the College Republicans, who invited CBR to FSU, said, “We don’t support killing fetus’ because science has determined that they are human beings and we wanna protect the human beings right to life” according to WCTV.

In an address to students, Mike Harrington, executive director for CBR, explained the idea behind GAP. “[Genocide] is the systematic destruction of an individual class of human beings,” Harrington said, according to the FSView, an independent FSU student newspaper. “In this case, it’s the singling out or victimizing of pre-born children because of their age. Abortion is genocide simply because it’s killing the very young and singling them out for extermination.” 

One FSU “pro-choice” student said, “I think the pro-life people could have gone about this a different way to express their opinion without having these falsified disgusting images on our campus.”

Another student criticized the brutal depictions of the GAP, calling them “offensive” and “manipulative.”  How, he asked, could CBR compare pictures of genocide in Rwanda to the severed head image of an American abortion?

Stephanie Gray responded by describing her own encounter with a Rwandan woman, most of whose family was killed during the genocide.  The woman, said Gray, pointed to the abortion image and responded, “That’s worse, because at least my family could try to run away.”

“Successful social reformers have always used images of injustice to make their point,” said Harrington in defence of their tactics. “Whether it be civil-rights activists, anti-war protesters, anti-child labor activists - all throughout history, these types of images have been central to outlawing injustice. So, what we’re doing is nothing new.”

“The reason why people get all worked up about it is because it takes the veil off of what many consider to be a constitutional right. It shows what’s being chosen and, because of that, people get very upset. It’s very hard to defend abortion in light of the photographic evidence.”