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A medical student walked by with two classmates and exclaimed "this is very powerful!"
Many people could be observed peering out of doorways and windows to see the display, even during set-up.
Lois made some progress with an anti-vivisectionist who was drawn to one of our animal cruelty versus abortion signs.
Paul Kulas spent considerable time with the vice president of the Pro-Choice Club. She claimed to be a Catholic but was not well informed about abortion and was highly selective about the church teachings she embraced. The conversation was frustrating but he felt by the end it had been time well spent.
A female student rushed out of the question and answer period during my "debate" with the university community and shouted "even if he makes abortion seem unthinkable, it will always be a women's right!" How's that for logic?
Two black and one Middle-Eastern student came up to view the display because they said it was the "buzz" in the student union building.
A passer-by expressed the opinion that there was no moral difference between a man and an ant. When one of our volunteers voiced dismay that this man, as a student, was being taught that kind of thing, he said "no, I'm an instructor."
After a long conversation, James Paul finally got one of the homosexual protesters to admit that he really didn't know whether abortion was right or wrong. That's got to count as progress.
A lesbian advised me that our discussions had been "deeply disturbing" to her and that the whole week had been a "nightmare." Now, that's real progress.
A reporter for the student newspaper told us "off the record" that GAP had had a "huge impact."
Scott Klusendorf, formerly with our staff, spent a day with us at OSU and in one of innumerable debates, engaged a female student who said the fetus wasn't human because it lacked requisite "human experience." Scott asked her whether a newborn baby lacked humanity because it had no more "human experience" than a fetus? She finally left in frustration but not before a crowd of onlookers noted the many lapses in her logic.
A professor of medicine walked over from the medical school, still in his white lab coat, and after carefully examining each GAP sign, he surprised us by offering a large financial donation.
A male student admitted to David Lee and Lois that his girlfriend was struggling with the memory of having aborted another man's child. They were able to give him post-abortion literature and counseling referrals for his girlfriend and to convince him of the importance of abstinence as well as the spiritual basis for post-abortion healing and the practice of sexual restraint.
Despite the fact that none of our signs or literature express any spiritual content and our answers to questions are invariably secular unless students plainly invite a spiritual discussion, the pro-aborts displayed immense hostility toward Christianity and seemed to believe that associating us with the church would discredit our message. When a self-described anarchist from Antioch College began to lose a theological debate with David Lee and Jim Spencer, her pro-abort friend quickly dragged her away from the exchange. This "flight response" was a reaction we would see time and again when students began to lose arguments. But whether students left on their own or were pulled away, they all took with them vivid recollections of the pictures.
Another student from Antioch left a crowd of pro-aborts trying to block GAP signs from the view of passers-by and began a conversation with me during which I was able to persuade him that we sincerely shared many of his other concerns. I talked him into approaching David Lee and after a time, he apologized to both of us for speaking harshly. Thereafter he left and never rejoined the pro-abort demonstration. I am not sure we changed his mind about abortion but he clearly rethought his impression of our project and our motives in organizing it.
"PRO-LIFE MODERATES" COVER-UP TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION
Finally, there appeared a "pro-life" letter so dumb, I'm ashamed to admit that its author and I shared a common major; political science. As an act of Christian charity, I will not further embarrass this young man by mentioning his name but I will quote his letter in full, because he speaks for most of our misguided movement. His missive was published by The Lantern, Friday, October 23, 1998, in the Reader's Forum:
A great atrocity has occurred in the pro-life movement, and it is displayed prominently for all to see. Yes, I'm referring to the graphic photographs of aborted fetus [sic] in the middle of our Oval. Yes, I am a supporter of the pro-life movement, for intellectual and philosophical reasons. As a pro-lifer, I would like to be the first to condemn what I feel is a blatant lack of couth, diplomacy and a campaign that I feel is truly counterproductive towards the pro-life view.
The logic for this display of graphic photos is to compare different forms of genocide in history then equate them with abortion. I agree with this perspective, and I do believe that abortion is a murderous act. However, if there's one thing that my history classes have taught me, it's that issues don't get solved over night, and pushing too hard on one side only leads to counter productivity.
As Abraham Lincoln was frequent [sic] at saying, 'You can win more flies with honey then [sic] you can with gull [sic].' In layman's terms this means when you try to cram your viewpoint down peoples' throats, they simply get defensive. This is counter productive, in that defensive people don't listen to other viewpoints, don't understand other viewpoints, and ultimately launch their own extreme campaigns.
In conclusion, I urge that if the Genocide Awareness Project truly cares about the pro-life movement, they will stop this travesty and work to further the movement, not make pro-lifers look like extremist wackos who kill abortion doctors for a living.
Phew. He is pro-life and agrees with our genocide comparison but thinks that if we make it by using the only convincing medium (pictures) available to us, the tactic will fail because it is "uncouth," lacking in "diplomacy" and is not "sweet" enough. This he believes amounts to "pushing" so "hard" that viewers will become too "defensive" to be converted and we will only end up looking like assassins. Phew again.
There is nothing "couth" about torturing babies to death so there is no "couth" way to teach about the practice. "Diplomacy" is sensitivity to the wishes of others and it is useful only up to the point that those others wish (demand?) that you stop troubling them with life saving truth. As for "sweetness," see "couth" above. Question: Will the baby known to have been saved by GAP at OSU think we "pushed too hard" if his mother tells him or her why they are still alive? And regarding the concern that we look like assassins when we expose injustice, racists routinely attempted to discredit Martin Luther King by associating his peaceful protest with the violence of the Black Panthers. Pro-aborts do the same thing to us. That's called changing the subject and "pro-life moderates" let pro-aborts get away with it all the time.
If only this student "pro-life moderate" were alone in his confusion.
IGNORANCE AND DENIAL
America is able to tolerate and even commit first trimester abortion (the period of pregnancy during which 90% of "terminations" are committed) by denying who this baby is and what abortion does to him. Most people vaguely understand but don't fully appreciate the wonder of prenatal development or the wickedness of abortion - and they want to keep it that way. How better to keep your options open than to keep your mind closed. But this pretense becomes nearly impossible while staring at pictures of aborted babies.
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