From the left

When asked by the editor of The Northerner to write a response to the Genocide Awareness Project and their presence on campus, many things came to mind. Five hundred words is too small to vocalize the disgust and shame I feel at this sham of an organization. It is far too little a space to give voice to those who had no warning, or a chance to respond to the GAP’s horrific presence. Instead, they were expected to cope with the horrendous falsifications the pro-life group presented as fact.

The display that was sponsored by Northern Right to Life and the faculty group Advocates for Life is hate propaganda against women and a racist insult to ethnic minorities who have been real victims of genocide.

Students for Choice, with less than 24 hours of notice, did their best to cope with the onslaught of outrage. They comforted students, gave a positive outlet for anger, corrected the GAP’s lies and misrepresentations and referred students to counseling. The display was especially traumatic for women who recently had abortions, often creating tremendous anxiety, guilt and anger.

Why? Because of the tacit message that women who have abortions are murderers comparable to Nazis.

However, some Jewish students were also offended by GAP’s self-serving exploitation of the Holocaust. SFC member Ryan Williams said he felt that, as a Jewish student who has met with numerous Holocaust survivors, the display was tasteless, disrespectful and uncalled for. He said that to take the deaths of the millions of people and use it for political gain was appalling and offensive.

SFC and volunteers gathered over 350 signatures stating that NRTL and GAP did nothing to educate people about how to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, NRTL sought only to spread false and hatemongering information against women. Signatories also declared that the display was disruptive to the university’s setting. That, coupled with countless calls of complaints to the Deans Office, it can be asked logically who was helped by the decision to bring this group to NKU.

Certainly not the numerous people who were devastated to see their teachers walking around supporting a display that called them Nazis and Klan members. Not the students who were unable to attend classes due to the emotional distress the display caused. Not the woman who, upon receiving a pamphlet from a NRTL member, became so upset she threw it down and began to cry as she walked away, while the pro-life advocates behind her shrugged and laughed at her emotions.

I have to ask: Is this really the free speech that we all, myself included, fought so hard for? The right to free speech shouldn’t include the right to hate speech, or comparing classmates to Nazis or the KKK.

Do we really want the GAP to come back next year, insulting our fellow students? Do we support these emotionally damaging tactics? This goes beyond the question of whether or not you consider yourself pro-life. This comes down to what kind of honor, morals and ethics you support.

Personally, I’ll stay pro-choice, with my fields of flowers, and messages of support. Students for Choice is looking to the future, toward helping women on this campus by instilling programs to support survivors of rape and domestic violence. We seek to resore the reproductive health clinics on campus and to being a resource for all members of the campus community to be supported, educated, and empowered, unconditionally, in their choices and lives. That is the promise we make to you. We are here for you, last week, this week, and in the future.

Alex Kindell President of SFC

From the right

The Genocide Awareness Project was the most successful event Northern Right to Life has ever held.

Fifteen thousand students, professors and staff looked abortion victims in the face for the first time.

They found that fetuses have faces like yours and mine. They smile, suck their thumb and open their eyes. They have fingers, toes, nails and hair. They learn and love and think and feel.

Legalized abortion began as almost every genocidal movement in history – with the government or ruling class taking away the personhood of the victim class.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade took personhood away from the unborn child, just as Scott v. Sandford declared blacks “a subordinate and inferior class of beings” in 1857.

Thirty-five years later, an estimated 48 million unborn children have been slaughtered by abortion on demand.

But is it genocide? Is it the “deliberate and systematic destruction of a national, racial, religious, political, ethnic, or other group as defined by the exterminators as undesirable?” (Webster’s New World Encyclopedia)

The government-sanctioned abortion procedure itself is obviously systematic and government sanctioned. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, received $254.4 million in taxpayer-funded government grants and contracts in the 2002-2003 fiscal year alone according to the Planned Parenthood Annual Report.

But do the unwanted, unborn children constitute an undesirable group?

In my discussions with dozens of students over the past week, abortion was justified because the unborn child, if allowed to live, would inhibit the lifestyle, or “women’s rights” of the mother. The solution to these undesirable outcomes is abortion.

The pictures in GAP were disgusting and disturbing – most of all because they’re true. Every picture was a real photo of an unborn child massacred to the god of “Choice” and “Reproductive Freedom” – Orwellian newspeak for infanticide.

We need to see the pictures and see them often – just as we need to see photos of the Holocaust and racist lynchings – so that we learn from history and recognize atrocities in our midst.

Pro-choice activists scream that we shouldn’t impose our morality on others, but the Holocaust was wrong, and in memory of those six million Jews, I feel morally obligated to stop the crying injustice of genocide wherever I see it.

Their memory compels the members of Northern Right to Life to take a stand today. So that when our grandchildren one day ask what we did to stop the genocide of unborn children, we can answer without shame – we did something! We spoke up for the defenseless.

If a society is measured by how it treats its weakest members, it is my fervent hope that ours will one day recognize, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Last week students, faculty and staff saw the work of today’s most important civil right’s movement – the pro-life movement.

They saw the disgusting reality of abortion, as citizens in the 1960s saw the disgusting reality of racism, and they were given a choice – a choice to see abortion as either the objective wrong of murder or the relative right of convenience.

Forty-eight million are crying out for justice.

The pro-life movement answers that cry and offers hope for the future of our civilization and the inherent goodness of humanity.

Katie Walker President of NRTL

To discuss your thoughts about abortion and the Genocide Awareness Program, check out www.thenortherner.com/messageboard/gap