I respect and support people’s freedoms of speech and expression, even when it comes to extreme organizations whose ideas I may not agree with.
However, the anti-abortion activists at the Genocide Awareness Project make their point by spewing inaccurate knowledge to evoke emotional reactions out of onlookers. Long Beach State should not allow people on campus who are attempting to brainwash students with radical, graphic and offensive imagery.
These anti-abortion activists are using their platform, or rather misusing CSULB’s platform, to stir emotions, not to discuss the issues.
GAP simply used fear-mongering to scare viewers into inaccurately correlating abortion with genocide. Rather than civilly stating their opinions, the anti-abortion activists resorted to frightening people with offensive displays.
Rather than educating students, the activists spread misleading information and failed to add to the civil discourse.
Posting wildly offensive signs with photos of abortions and genocide victims is a sleazy way of representing their beliefs.
I do not support GAP’s distortion of reality using gory images. The demonstrators tried to use scare tactics to persuade college students into believing that the right to choose is comparable to genocide.
Regardless, it only makes matters worse to graphically portray abortion imagery juxtaposed with pictures showing victims of genocides.
Especially considering the fact that the group appeared on campus with their harsh posters on Yom Kippur, the Holocaust comparisons are extremely uncalled for.
It is ironic that the demonstrators are perfectly willing to post offensive signs and tell students that it is not moral to have an abortion, while simultaneously being unwilling to listen to valid disagreements coming from the crowd.
For instance, one of the activists expressed her belief that it is our moral duty to save all lives possible, stating that abortion was a human equality issue.
When a student argued that the two are separate issues, the activist called her out for not caring about human equality, and for having different morals.
Instead of actively participating in a civil discussion, members of the anti-abortion group passed out incendiary, offensive, pamphlets.
One demonstrator told students to email him if they disagree with the information in the pamphlet, however, he wouldn’t listen to the complaints directly in front of him. Why demonstrate if you aren’t going to open a dialogue?
I disagree with GAP’s method of activism because the group members had a specific agenda they were determined to spread, and they were only open to listening to people who were in line with this anti-abortion agenda.
While it is certainly true that people involved on both sides of arguments are immovable in their beliefs, the students participating in the event were there to express opinions while seeing and hearing what GAP had to offer.
The anti-abortion demonstrators only further entrenched people in their original beliefs, rather than opening up a civil discussion.
Nothing of value was gained.
The beauty of academic life is that real student-learners have the right to listen, discern and act accordingly. Student’s also have the right not to listen. These rights are the responsibility of the student-learner. Censorship should not come into play here. If you don’t like the message, don’t listen. Work against the message and bring another point of view. Don’t be lazy to simply “let’s make it so the group I don’t like can’t come back.” Doesn’t the approach of not letting them come back go against everything academic life is supposed to do?
When I talked to students at the GAP display, they made their arguments using science. They asked, when does life begin? Does this happen when a unique set of DNA is created? When the fetus can feel pain? Is it when a heartbeat is detected?
These are good questions and need a careful examination of the science behind human development.