As students placed white roses into a vase, the faint sound of a former Students for Life member's infant daughter crying could be heard in the background during the annual Rose Ceremony Wednesday.
"That was really uplifting, and it gave me a push to keep doing what I'm doing because those are the things that makes me feel I am doing the right thing," Michelle Runyon, co-president of the Students for Life Organization said.
The group is an anti-abortion student organization, with 40 to 50 members, that has been active for five years, Runyon said.
"Our main goal is to educate ourselves and everyone on campus that there are alternate ways other than abortion," Runyon said. "We are not religiously based, and we are not forcing anyone to change their beliefs."
Runyon, who has been with the Students for Life for three years, gave abortion information during the rose placement for each year since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in the United States. Each year 1.6 million abortions are performed in the United States, and in 1999, 248 abortions were performed in Delaware County, Runyon said. For people born after 1973, one-third of their generation has been aborted, she said.
The organization only spent a couple days working the kinks out of the ceremony, John Gerritsen, member of Students for Life, said.
"Since we do this every year, there isn't too much we have to change," Gerritsen said. "Most everything is already set up so we don't have to worry about anything."
The goal of the organization's events, such as the Rose Ceremony, is not to change people's attitudes about abortion; it wants to show that abortion is not the only solution, Runyon said.
"I would never personally do it, but I have to respect and honor someone's choice," Runyon said. "I can't make the choice for someone, so all I can do is just let them know there are other options."
As people filed out of the ceremony, Runyon left them with one lasting thought, "a person is a person no matter how small."
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