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University of Tennessee
The Genocide Awareness Project was on campus at the University of Tennessee on April 13 and 14, 2005.
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Day after day, huge crowds of students gathered around Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) signs for hours of well-informed debate. Many students were devastated to see who the first trimester fetus actually is and what abortion actually does to him -- realities which words alone could never convey. The crowds continued to grow as word of the exhibit spread day by day. But some students (and more than a few faculty members) went to extraordinary lengths to remain in denial. Though avoidance is intellectually dishonest, we respect the rights of those who choose to indulge it.
Frequently, the photo panels stimulated large groups of students to begin debating one another. CBR staff would then step back until involvement again seemed helpful. Constructive dialogue with open-minded students deeply disturbed pro-aborts who then pressured the university administration (unsuccessfully) to force CBR off campus. If they were really "pro-choice," would they work so fascistically to suppress any point of view not their own? To their enormous credit, the university administration rejected juvenile, pro-abortion, faculty and student demands that CBR be censored. The Chancellor, Dean of Students and campus police were scrupulously fair in protecting our First Amendment rights. David Lee, CBR Director of Operations (on the left) engages students in the foreground while numerous discussions take place throughout the crowds surrounding our display.
CBR staffers Paul Kulas (at left) and Terry Stewart (center) argue the issues with skeptics while other students consider the competing points of view. Most students who opposed our point of view (and even our presence) did so with civility. Only a relative few spit, threw food or cursed us. An extremely professional police force erected steel barricades from the very beginning and were always visibly present in large enough numbers to deter the small minority of students who required external control. These precautions paid huge dividends in preserving an environment conducive to learning. Jewish pro-lifer Shmulik Oppenheim (left) drew constant attention from students interested in his comparison of abortion and the Holocaust. An anthropology major, who on Monday rejected the comparison of abortion with any form of genocide, was so totally converted by Wednesday that he asked us for GAP brochures to take to his friends.
Jewish pro-lifer H. Michael Weiner (center) was very helpful with students who were inclined to change the subject. He was firm but unfailingly polite in keeping them focused on the topics we came to discuss. A female grad student stepped out of a crowd like this one to ask CBR staffer Lois Cunningham how she could help two classmates who had had abortions. Lois shared her long experience as a post-abortion counselor and gave the grad student compassion-filled literature for her friends. While we work to reverse Roe vs. Wade, feminists labor to repeal the First Amendment. But the right to free speech is more important than the right to kill babies. Pro-aborts say our signs are inconsequential because "everyone already knows what babies and abortions look like." If so, then why are the pro-aborts so desperate to get our pictures out of sight and why do passersby look so stricken when they see them?

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CBR condemns all abortion related violence and will not associate with groups or individuals who fail to condemn such violence.
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