Nothing makes for a great morning on campus like seeing massive pictures of bloody fetuses, piles of emaciated Holocaust victims, and lynching victims. Such a scene greeted students Wednesday thanks to the Genocide Awareness Project, a controversial national effort that tours campuses equating abortion with genocide.
We agree with opponents of GAP that the project’s shock value outweighs its merit as a persuasive tool.
Freedom of speech on campus is invaluable, and we applaud all individuals involved for exercising their rights peacefully. We also support a woman’s right to make choices about her own body, and we realize that neither poignant editorials nor giant, gory displays, realistically, will convince people to change their stances on abortion.
The vulgar nature of this particular display, however, is clearly demonstrated by the presence of College Republicans at the protest against GAP. College Republicans Chairman Anthony Warren reserved the amphitheater for the group, apparently without the knowledge of other group members. Although Republicans often oppose abortion, apparently these scenes were too stomach-churning and morally offensive to justify.
We must also compare this display to those used by other causes. When groups have protested the war in Iraq, a few individuals have held pictures of decaying corpses and charred Iraqi citizens. Yet they have generally exhibited more respect for the dead.
Moreover, the pictures are not effective because they do not address the core of the abortion debate. Abortion is not legal because U.S. citizens enjoy the idea of dead babies; abortion is legal because state and federal law has evolved to honor the privacy rights of women and their ability to determine whether to terminate a pregnancy in its early stages.
Regarding privacy, we certainly hope that the mothers of the fetuses pictured in the photographs, if they are truly aborted fetuses and not the results of miscarriages, consented to the use of these images.
We are compelled to point out that although scientists have long researched links between induced abortions and breast cancer – another GAP scare tactic – a review of relevant
literature by more than 100 experts organized by the National Cancer Institute in February 2003 “concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s
subsequent risk of developing breast cancer,” according to the NCI Web site.
We must also question the validity of GAP’s claims. According to its Web site, “almost 4,000 times a day, we are a nation that responds to the difficult circumstances of ‘unwanted’ pregnancy with violence rather than compassion.” However, Centers for Disease Control statistics show that about 2,300 abortions were performed per day on average in 2002. That is still a regrettable number, and it demonstrates the need for continued education about contraceptive methods wisely promoted by groups such as Planned Parenthood.
The protesters should be especially ashamed of themselves for deciding to flood students with pictorial reminders of such events as the Holocaust. Historical genocides are, for many students, painful events that have affected their families.
In the interest of creating a campus where multiple viewpoints are debated in a mature fashion, abortion opponents should denounce shock tactics and concentrate their efforts on civil dialogue with students.