Fletcher and Jane

^{GAP Leaves Carolina Pro-Aborts Pining for the Good 'Ole Days}

On April 6-7, we were hosted at the University of North Carolina (UNC) by the UNC Carolina Students for Life (CSL).  Special thanks to Stephanie Evans and Mary McPherson for their excellent leadership of the UNC CSL and to Kitty Felden, Catherine Baron, and Betty Rogosich for organizing local community support.
 
UNC CSL, another GAP success story.  When we took GAP to UNC in 2001, there was no student pro-life group.  But some of the UNC students who saw GAP decided to start just such a group.  In this short time, they have become perhaps the most successful campus pro-life group we have ever seen.
 
For one thing, CSL is getting student fee money to fund their activities.  Why?  Because UNC wants to fund a pro-life group?  Hardly.  It’s because CSL is forcing UNC to abide by the Southworth decision of the US Supreme Court, which requires universities to observe “viewpoint neutrality” when distributing fee money among student groups.  The Court decision means nothing until conservative groups, backed by the credible threat of legal action, insist on their equal share.
 
Additionally, in 2004, CSL forced the UNC Carolina Women’s Center (CWC) to abandon its tax-funded PR campaign for the abortion industry.  Now, the CWC must provide pro-life links on its website (e.g., links to the local crisis pregnancy center and to abstinence education groups).  Also, if the CWC sponsors any program where abortion is on the agenda, the pro-life position must be given equal time and attention.  The earth has moved.  This all started because God granted us the privilege of taking GAP to UNC in 2001.  Thank you for doing your part to make it possible!
 
Conservative mentors are key.  Essential ingredients for any student group to be effective over the long haul are continuity and experience provided by a local mentor who does not graduate and move on.  At UNC, Joey Stansbury of the John William Pope Center (www.popecenter.org) fills that role.  Joey works with pro-life and other conservative student groups all over North Carolina, helping them to understand and assert their legal rights.  Joey is playing a key role in CSL’s success.
 
Day 1 — The Photo Menace.  Polk Place is an excellent GAP venue.  Almost everyone walks across Polk Place several times a day.  We had huge crowds during each class change.  Soon, the whole campus was talking about GAP.
 

No other place at UNC gets this amount of foot traffic.

Day 2 — Revenge of the Pro-Aborts.  The pro-aborts staged a protest on Day 2.  Why?  According to the organizers, because GAP “does not represent [our] views.”  Apparently, the expression of diverse viewpoints cannot be tolerated.  About 300 surrounded the GAP display and turned their backs on the pictures to symbolize their disdain for the truth.  But CSL was ready.  They prepared nearly 20 pro-life signs (e.g., “Face the Truth, Choose Life” and “Face It, Abortion Kills”) and walked out among the pro-aborts!  They placed themselves strategically among the crowd so as to be in every possible photograph and to dominate most scenes.
 
At one place, the pro-aborts were 10 deep.  They stayed about 10 minutes and were dismissed.  Their leaders exhorted them not to speak to us—perhaps they feared that the common folk might be contaminated by our divergent views—but many actually stayed around to talk.  This gave us an enormous opportunity to reach out to students who most needed to see the truth.  Of course, we took every opportunity to direct their attention to the abortion pictures.
 

On Day 2, 300 pro-aborts came out to turn their backs on the display.	Pro-lifers infiltrate the ranks, exhorting the others to “Face the Truth, Choose Life.”

All humans are valuable.  Mick Hunt of Life Advocates (Asheville, NC) has a gentle but straightforward way of speaking with students.  He spoke for about an hour with two of the protesters.  They asked thoughtful questions about such things as overpopulation and back alley abortions.  When one of them spoke about how she once considered suicide, she didn’t notice the tears in Mick’s eyes as he told her that she is a beautiful human being.  This contradicts the culture’s message that our value is based on the degree to which we are “wanted” by others.  People who don’t feel wanted often conclude that they are not valuable.  With hurting people, a gentle attitude is just as important as intellectual arguments.

	Seke Ballard, a leader in student government at UNC, was so impressed by the GAP display that he immediately volunteered to help explain the genocide comparison to his fellow students.

But the Polk Place exhibit was not safe. UNC is a mostly liberal campus, and many students here have been in liberal situations and taken liberal actions. These photographs were extreme and put many female students’ mental and emotional well-being in jeopardy. … If a person believes in their opinion so strongly that they believe that it is their right to put someone else’s emotional health at risk, then they are wrong.

On the Carolina Review website (www.unc.edu/cr/), on the blog page, Brian posted this response:

I don't know what you think, but this is the dumbest argument against GAP I have heard yet. … T-shirts that say “I love pro-choice boys” put my emotional health at risk by forcing me to acknowledge the moral depths to which our culture has fallen.  Yet no one cares about my “emotional health.”

Richness trumps moral clarity?  Senior philosophy major Aaron Silverman wrote a letter to the editor of DTH:

There is a much richer story that needs to be told before we can draw moral conclusions about the pictures.  Ignorance of that story is the ultimate failing of these anti-abortion attempts to grab people’s attention.  Learn the stories of why people get abortions ...

“Rich stories” can be woven about many people convicted of murder, but does that make their victims’ lives any less worthy of consideration?  Even though a jury may have sympathy for an abused child turned murderer, does that absolve them of the responsibility to see that justice is done on behalf of the victim(s)?  Pro-aborts try to focus solely on the mother, but our abortion photos make the plight of victimized unborn children real.
 
A call to action.  One grown man was spurred to action by the pictures,  “It’s time to talk to my daughter, my nieces.”  An important task for all of us.  We should talk to our sons and our nephews, as well.
 
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!