Fletcher and Jane

^{GAP:  A Rocky Top Experience}

Like many of our volunteers, this was the first GAP experience for Carolyn Evans of Knoxville.  But now she can’t wait to do it again!  (Just like we planned!)

New display.  It was the first deployment of our new set of GAP signs, the display we built over the summer.  The new display is a huge improvement over the signs we had been sharing with our sister office since 2001.

• The new display with all the necessary equipment is more compact, so it will all fit on one truck (instead of two).
• The newer signs have sharper images.
• The new display can be set up more quickly and with fewer people.
  
• The signs will stay here in Knoxville, so we can use them anytime we want.
  
• By training local volunteers to perform key tasks, the cost of deployment will be cut in half.
  

New construction volunteers.  With the new display, we can do more GAPs every year—we could do as many as 8 just this spring—but we are more dependent on local volunteers to help us do them.  Many thanks to the men of the West Hills Presbyterian Church and others who came out in a big way.

New Debate Team volunteers.  It was the best Debate Team ever.  We recruited a team of nearly 20 women to hand out literature and talk to students.  We try to put women in this role because many pro-aborts will try to change the subject if too many men are present.  They try to claim that if a man talks about abortion, his arguments can’t possibly be valid, so we use women to the highest degree possible.  At this GAP, almost all of our Debate Team were women, whereas the pro-abort protesters were almost all male.  Go figure!

Anyway, our volunteers at UTK were superb.  In the main, they were

• mothers of college-age children, so they knew how to relate to this age group,
  
• long-time CBR supporters, so they knew how to discuss abortion intelligently and with conviction,
  
• either currently or formerly volunteers at crisis pregnancy centers, so they knew how to speak with compassion.
  

Our location adjacent to the new pedestrian mall insured heavy foot-traffic both days we were on campus.

It was awesome to see.  One Professor of Rhetoric, a female, told one of them, “I can’t help but agree.  Your arguments are too good, and you are very good at it!”  Here is what four of our dedicated volunteers had to say about the experience:

I would encourage anyone to do this.  Yes, it’s hard, but it is enlightening for them and us.  Gives you new ways to pray for our world.  I know it’s ugly and I hate the pictures, but I’m sorry to say it’s necessary to change people’s hearts, just like seeing race riots in our living rooms in the 60's changed the conscience of the nation.  You know I’ll do it again and travel to do it.
 
This is a very effective way of reaching students.  I may not feel equipped to be out here with the public, but God is gracious with all our efforts on behalf of the unborn.
 
I would encourage anyone with a heart for the unborn and for God to do this.  It is taking action.  It is putting truth out there in its rawest form for all to see.  I think GAP is well organized and the format is well thought-out and balanced.
 
It is the most fun you’ll ever have building a culture of life—changing hearts and minds, saving lives and souls.  If you can’t join us behind the barricades, then by all means, send all the money you can.

The voice of tolerance.  One of the most absurd responses to GAP that we have seen in quite a while was an editorial that appeared in The Daily Beacon, written by Thomas Walker.  His column contained not one reasoned argument against our position that all human beings are valuable and deserve equal protection, no matter how young and helpless.  His main rhetorical devices were to misrepresent our positions, to change the subject, and to call us names.  What else is new?

Advisory Board member Dr. Andy Douglass helps Fletcher answer important medical and ethical questions from students at the University of Tennessee.

Walker said that “the only people [he] talked to were white middle class people who'd never once adopted a child, even though that's their alternative.”  He is wrong on both counts.  Several of the GAP volunteers are raising adopted children.  Further, our alternative to abortion is not adoption, per se.    Our alternative is simply to refrain from violence.  Don’t kill a human being.  Don’t use violence to solve a difficult life problem.  Is that so hard to understand?

He went on to ask, “who among them, who among that vile and stupid bunch, was so base and so insensitive to the actualities of abortion to steal a fetus, cut off its hands and its feet, and manipulate them and position them on coinage to show just how small they are? Who among them is that twisted and perverse?”  Walker cared little about facts.  CBR has never stolen a fetus or mutilated a fetus in any way.  We legally obtained the pictures from abortion clinics.

Note the absurdity of Walker’s assertion.  As a pro-abort, he thinks it is completely acceptable for an abortionist to take a fetus from his mother’s womb, cut off his limbs, lay his parts out on a table, and then flush him down the sewer.  But once that fetus is dead, it is totally “insensitive” and “twisted” and “perverse” for us to photograph that same fetus that Mr. Walker advocates killing in the first place!  The fetus that had no value when alive has now become sacred in death?  There may be some logic in there someplace, but we don’t see it.

When someone can’t make a reasoned case for his position, it is common for him to resort to name-calling.  Walker’s names for us included racist, anti-Semitic, uppity white people, ignorant, vile, stupid, twisted, perverse, and dumb.  Is this what the political left means when they lecture us about “tolerance?”  Do they not see the hypocrisy?

Quote of the month.  Of course, there were many African-Americans that disputed Mr. Walker’s assertion that we are racists.  One African-American young woman told us that she had read our booklet on why abortion is genocide and concluded that we were right.  She said, “A lot of people say the fetus is potential life.  I would say it is a life with great potential.”  We couldn’t have said it better.

Converting the neutral.  Another African-American, this one a male, will never be the same, “I had been a fence-sitter on the abortion issue before seeing the pictures.  But after seeing the pictures, I now believe abortion is awful and can never be a pro-choice person or a fence-sitter anymore.”  Here is somebody who was apparently a morally upright person, but also a functioning pro-abort.  He just needed the facts to inform his opinion, and we were happy to supply.

Long-term impact of GAP.  A total of 80 students signed up to be members of the Pro-Life Collegians.  They have already started having meetings and are planning big things   for the Spring, including another GAP!  Super!

Thank you!  Thanks to all of you for your prayers and financial support.  You are making a huge difference in the lives of others, including the preborn and the already born!

To arrange your automatic monthly bank draft to support our work:

1. Download and print the Electronic Gift Transfer Authorization:
http://www.abortionno.org/...GiftTransferSE.pdf
2. Fill out the form.  Make sure you designate the gift for "CBR Southeast"
3. Enclose a voided check or deposit slip bearing the account number of the account we should draft.
4. Mail the Transfer Authorization form and a voided check (or deposit slip) to CBR Southeast, P.O. Box 20115, Knoxville, TN 37940.

Please pray that God will raise up others to help you support this life-saving work!