A pro-life, anti-abortion group has come to campus in the past to raise awareness about abortion, but this was the first year a student group came to counter its protest.
Feminists for Action assembled with hand-written posters proclaiming their pro-choice beliefs at the Scramble Light Oct. 20 to ensure students were getting the full message about abortion.
“People get fed propaganda with what they hand out,” said Alyssa VanSkyock, a senior history and women studies major. “I feel like they have the right to say what they feel, but they’re only giving one side of the story."
Feminists for Action want to make sure people are getting the full story. When VanSkyock and others saw Facebook posts about the pro-life group, they decided to stand in silence with pro-choice signs to express their disagreement.
“We’ve got our signs, and we’ll stand here and say, ‘Hey, we don’t agree with this, this isn’t what we want,’” VanSkyock said. “We feel [women] deserve more of a say in our body and to have our rights, if not acknowledged then respected.”
Shawn Meyer, one of the members of the pro-life group, travels to different campuses in hopes of sharing information and having “productive dialogue with folks.”
“Our mission is to raise awareness and to help people understand exactly what abortion does and what it accomplishes,” Meyer said. “We propose that abortion unjustly ends the life of an innocent human being and we want people to understand that.”
Judy Bruns has been involved in the pro-life movement since the 1970s. The abortion debate is a personal issue for Bruns because she became pregnant before marriage.
“I praise God that abortion was not legalized by the Supreme Court until two years later because I could not picture life without [my daughter] now,” Bruns said.
Bruns said she and her fellow pro-lifers try to be polite with those who pass by and thought the afternoon went well. She said she was impressed with the demeanor of the students passing by.
Kylie Yapp, a junior legal studies major, was one of many students who came across the displays of photos of aborted fetuses.
“It’s really graphic and not something I wanted to see at the Scramble Light, but I guess they have a legal right to show it,” Yapp said. “I didn’t know that’s what it looked like when an abortion happens, so it’s definitely important to show people both sides of the story.”
In response to the graphic images, Facebook user Kylie Kuehl suggested on a post to the Progressive Student Alliance that there should be a petition to the university to ban graphic images like the ones in the photos.
“That’s inexcusable that they would be allowed to have a ‘warning’ sign six inches before the image 20x the size of the warning,” Kuehl said.
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