Fletcher's Blog

Training prepares students to articulate and respectfully defend the pro-life position.

CBR Southeast announces a new page on Facebook that will focus on our pro-life apologetics training.

Our Pro Life Training Academy (PLTA) is an ourtreach primarily to Christian/pro-life college and high-school students, but even experienced activists will benefit from the training.

Pro-life youth are a critical group because they are the future leaders of the movement. More immediately, they wield enormous influence on their peers, particularly when they are trained and equipped.

Please go “Like” our new page at www.facebook.com/ProLifeTraining.

A full-day seminar prepares the student to articulate and respectfully defend the pro-life position, even before hostile audiences. Role-playing exercises allow the student to practice for real-life encounters.  For students ready to take the next step, CBR’s Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) provides a unique opportunity for on-the-job training (www.facebook.com/ProLifeOnCampus).

In addition to the training pro-life advocates, the PLTA unites pro-lifers behind common goals of education, training, and outreach. Community pro-life advocates host, promote, and participate in the training. Target audiences include college pro-life groups, Church youth groups, Christian high schools, pro-life agencies, and pro-life volunteers.

CBR and the local community stakeholders work jointly to fund community-wide training.

Appalachian State students plan their pro-life year

Please forward this link to every pro-life student you know.

CBR / Pro Life on Campus and the Students for Life of America (SFLA) announce the 5th Annual Pro-Life Student Leadership Conference, to be held on September 10-11, 2010 in Knoxville, Tennessee.  The theme for this years conference is Sharpening Your Focus to Cultivate a Pro-Life Campus.  For more information, click here.

This Conference is about how to make your student pro-life group more effective on your campus.  We show you how to:

1. select projects that work,
2. recruit members to grow,
3. raise money to pay for projects,
4. assert your First Amendment rights when they are threatened, and
5. maximize media exposure.

Put them all together, and you have a comprehensive pro-life action plan for your campus.

In short, we give you the entire tool-box you need to make a huge and ongoing impact on your campus. If you do the things we teach, you will be the most talked-about student group on campus within a year, and number 2 won’t even be close.  And we back that up with a money-back guarantee.  Who else does that?  And who else offers a conference for only $10, and that includes housing and meals?!

 You can get more information and register here.  Deadline for reserving free housing is August 28, so call now.

You have heard of Lila Rose of Live Action.  You may have seen her under-cover videos that show how Planned Parenthood employees cover up the illegal sexual abuse of children.

In this video, Ms. Rose describes how CBR employs the exact same strategy that was used by other successful reformers in history, including the movements to stop the slave trade in England, to abolish slavery here, to end abusive child labor here, and to galvanize the civil rights movement in the 1950s.

Ms. Rose reports from Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley during our GAP presentation last October.

Besides college campuses, what other venues are appropriate for abortion pictures?  Please comment!

Free money if you "Like" our Facebook page!

Great news.  If you act now, we can get $5,000 free money!  We need your help, but it won’t cost you a thing.

An anonymous donor has pledged $1,000 if we can get up to 1,000 pro-life fans on our fan page by August 31.  We already have 300 fans; we need 700 more.  Please do two things for us:

1. Simply go to our fan page (click here) and “Like” the page.
2. E-mail all your pro-life friends.  Ask them to “Like” the page and invite their pro-life friends to do the same.

But there’s more!  This donor has pledged another $1,000 for every additional 1,000 pro-life fans we can get by August 31, up to $5,000 for 5,000 fans!  Please do this.  It won’t cost you a thing, but it will mean so much to our work to save babies and moms on campus!  Let’s get 5,000 fans by August 31!

Here’s the Facebook link: www.facebook.com/ProLifeOnCampus

To add your own contribution to save babies and moms, click here!  (For your online donation to CBR/ProLifeOnCampus before August 31, you will receive a free pro-life gift!)

Medallion emphasized to Londoners the humanity of the Black slave in 1787.

My talk last night at the Atlanta Right to Life was very well received, I think.  The subject was “Learning From the Past: How We Can Win.”  This is a similar talk to the one I gave to a group of pro-life Georgia Legislators a couple of years ago and the talk I gave to a group of pro-life Congressmen in DC.

This was a fairly easy audience.  We’ve been working with these folks to display abortion images for many years (GAP, RCC, etc.), so they are very familiar with the need to educate the public.  I didn’t need to convince them so much as to help solidify in their minds the connection between our work to educate the public using horrifying images and the work of other social reformers in history who achieved success using the same strategy.  Examples:

• The anti-slave-trade movement in England (William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson) used images to show the humanity of the Black slave and the inhumanity of the slave trade.
• Abolistionists in this country used similar images, and later used photographs, to expose the injustice of slavery.
• Lewis Hine, who was concerned about abusive child labor practices, took pictures of children working in coal mines and textile mills and turned them into a traveling display.
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “America will not stop racism until America sees racism.”  He arranged for video and photos of Black men and women being attacked with dogs and water cannons to be shown on TV and in magazines.

Horrifying photos of racial violence showed the ugly truth of racism and changed America's heart.

You can download my slides by clicking here.  It is a fairly large file (38 MB); it might take 10 minutes or so to download.  Just save it to a file; a pop-up window will ask you where to file it and will tell you how long it will take to download the file.

Please take a look at the slides and leave your comment on this post!

 

I was honored to be invited to address the Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Right to Life next week.  Here’s the announcement that went out to their members and other pro-lifers in the area:

You are invited to come and hear a presentation by Fletcher Armstrong PhD, Southeast Director of The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, entitled, “Lessons From the Past, Learning How to Win,” sponsored by the Atlanta Chapter Georgia Right to Life.  CBR is well know for Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), which is the world’s first large-scale abortion photo outreach to college students. Fletcher will explain how this and other CBR projects are effective because they are modeled upon the most successful social reform movements in history, including the movements to end the slave trade in England, slavery in America, abusive child labor in the early 20th Century, and racial injustice in the 1960s.

When: Thursday, July 22, 2010 7:00 PM

Where: Cathedral of Christ the King, Hyland Center

Some comments about GAP:

• “I saw minds and hearts changed right before my eyes. I believe in GAP and its ability to effect change.” (Tanya Comer, President, [University of] Georgia Pro-Life)
• “There is no doubt in my mind that GAP is the most effective pro-life project that any pro-life club can bring to their school.” (President, Students for Life, U of New Hampshire).
• “It is saving babies like nothing the pro-life movement has ever undertaken and is worthy of our heartiest support.” (Fr. Frank Pavone, Director, Priests for Life)
• “I’ve been doing this my whole adult life. And yet I have never heard a more compelling way of presenting the pro-life message.” (Hon. Trent Franks, U.S. House of Representatives)

If you know people in Atlanta, please let them know about this event.  Thanks!  I’m scheduled to speak in Athens on the evening of Wednesday, July 21.  I will link to my slides for both of these talks sometime next week.

If I can speak to your pro-life group or event, use the feedback form on our website to let us know.

ProLifeOnCampus Logo

You may have been wondering about the Pro Life on Campus logo.  This logo tells the simple story of what we are doing with our campus outreach project (GAP) at CBR:

Winning Hearts … Changing Minds … Saving Lives

These achievements are represented by the three icons that you see:

• The first is a heart, representing emotion.  Any salesman will tell you that the first step toward achieving behavior change is to touch the emotions of your audience.  They have to care about it; they have to think it’s important.  When people see our display, they are suddenly aware of a victim they had been taught to ignore (the defenseless baby) and an injustice they had been taught to trivialize.
• Next is a head, representing reason.  Using our display to start the conversation, we are able to engage the minds of students.  As pro-choice students and others repeat back the mantra of a pro-death culture, we ask questions to clarify the confusion in their minds.  We help them see that their justifications for abortion are no more compelling that the justifications given by the purveyors of slavery, the Holocaust, and the many other forms of systematic injustice.  They have been taught to hate these other forms of injustice; reason demands they hate abortion in the same way.
• Next is the baby’s hand, representing lives saved.  The first time I saw CBR’s campus outreach project was at the University of Tennessee in 1998.  We know of 9 babies lives that were saved.  One of them is now featured in a GAP sign that is shown all over the world.  Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life says this project is “saving babies like nothing the pro-life movement has ever seen.”

The text on the logo, Pro Life on Campus, points people to our website, www.ProLifeOnCampus.com.  So now you know!

To win hearts, change minds, and save lives, we need your help!  If you click here and give $5 or more, I’ll send you a Precious Feet lapel pin!

"Wow, I think God really sent you to me."

We’ve been saying it for years.  Now, national pro-choice leaders agree.

The president of the pro-life student group at the U of California recently said, “Berkeley Students for Life hosted the most high-impact pro-life event our university has ever seen ….”  It was our Pro Life on Campus GAP display.  A public health class turned into a 2-hour discussion of abortion.  A professor told us said how “compelling” he thought our abortion pictures were.  A female student exclaimed, “Wow, I think [God] really sent you to me.  I say that because I’m pregnant.  I was actually considering abortion.”  We see these kinds of astounding reactions on every campus we visit.  That’s why the president of Students for Life at the U of New Hampshire told us,

“There is no doubt in my mind that GAP is the most effective pro-life project that any pro-life club can bring to their school.”

How effective?  Five years after CBR’s 1998 launch of GAP—it was the world’s first, large-scale, abortion photo outreach to students—the pro-abortion New York Times reported a shockingly pro-life opinion shift among students.  The article “Surprise Mom: I’m Anti-Abortion” (March 30, 2003) reported that the “… most commonly cited reason for the increasingly conservative views of young people is their receptiveness to the way anti-abortion campaigners have reframed the national debate on the contentious topic, shifting the emphasis from a woman’s rights to the rights of the fetus.”  It was our photos that “shifted the emphasis.”

Five years later, the Los Angeles Times published an even stronger affirmation of the power of CBR’s abortion photos.  “Abortion’s battle of messages” (January 22, 2008) was authored by Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman, two of the abortion industry’s most strident proponents of “reproductive choice.”  Ms. Kissling was president of “Catholics for Choice” and Ms. Michaelman was president of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL – now “NARAL Pro-Choice America).  The authors made a startling admission:  “Advocates of choice have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus.”  Meaning the “fetus” they deceitfully dismissed as a blob of cells.  Even more amazingly, they concede that

“in recent years, the antiabortion movement [meaning CBR] successfully put the nitty-gritty details [meaning pictures] of abortion procedures on public display [meaning university campus exhibits], increasing the belief that abortion is serious business and that some societal involvement is appropriate.”

These pictures are precisely why our success with students continues to build.  Just last month, Newsweek published an article (”Saint Sarah”) that quoted a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  That study revealed that 70% of “young, white evangelicals” want more restrictions on abortion, compared with only 55% in the “older generation.”

The one thing that pro-choicers and pro-lifers agree upon: Young attitudes are changing and the reason is our abortion photos!

Every year, we get far more requests for assistance than we can possibly handle, because we lack sufficient funds to visit more college campuses.  We struggle even to keep our current projects funded.  To make matters worse, this tough economy is increasing pressures to kill babies at the same time it is decreasing our ability to save them.  On behalf of babies and moms, we need your help.

I’m asking you to look at last month’s check register and/or credit card bills and see if you can’t find a place to cut ten (or even five) dollars you could begin sending to CBR on a monthly basis.  Only $10 a month will take our Pro Life on Campus display to 240 college students every year.  If you can afford cable TV ($40/month), an equal check to CBR will take our display to nearly 1,000 students every year.  Think about that.  Please act now.

Your willingness to live a little more modestly could enable you to give a little more generously.  The result could be a baby’s chance to live any life at all. Please save a baby’s life right now!

UW sophomore and GAP organizer Marc Snyder debates with a fellow student over issues raised by the organization's display in Red Square. (Photo from the Daily of the University of Washington)

CBR is at the University of Washington with our Genocide Awareness Project.  You can read the story in the student paper here.

I’m always amazed at some of the incoherent responses to GAP that I read in student newspapers.  I’m slow to blame the students who are quoted, however, for several reasons.  First, I can tell you from experience that journalists don’t always get the quotes right.  I’ve been badly misquoted in the past, not out of malice, but because of a lack of journalistic experience and skill.  Second, as any car salesman will tell you, so many people resort to emotions rather than reason.  (That’s one reason we must use pictures, in addition to reason, to present the pro-life message.)  Third, so many of these students have suffered from lack of diversity all their lives.  The university has exposed them to the full range of political thought in America, from far left to extreme far left.  They’ve never been required to read “right-wing” documents like the US Constitution, the Federalist Papers, or anything else that might lead them to question leftist thought.  They are encouraged to read only left-leaning publications like Newsweek, NY Times, or even the far-left Huffington Post.

At the bottom of the story, there is opportunity for readers to comment.  For commenter Benny, click here for an article detailing when the medical community (and even pro-choice philosophers) say that human life begins.

I had to laugh at the suggestion that we pay for our campus work with the proceeds of lawsuits.  (Who say’s pro-life work can’t be fun?!)  I can assure you that we get zero funding from lawsuits.  We need your help, now as much as ever.  If only 20 people support our work as faithfully as you support cable TV, we can visit one additional campus every year.  If you are not supporting our work monthly, please sign up for a monthly amount equal to your cable TV bill!  According to Fr. Pavone, you will be saving lives like nothing the pro-life movement has ever seen!

ProLifeOnCampus at Cal State Long Beach

CBR displayed the Genocide Awareness Project for two days at California State University at Long Beach for two days in May.  The photo to the right appeared on the front page of the student newspaper.  You can’t buy that kind of advertising!

What about rape? It’s one of the most popular questions they ask us. The question is often an attempt to prove that pro-lifers are either (a) insensitive “fetus lovers” who don’t care about women, or (b) ethically inconsistent, allowing abortion in some cases but not in others.  I’ve just written an article about it on our website.  Click here to check it out.

By the way, my answer consists of 6 steps, and I’m looking for an acronym that will help us all remember the 6 steps in the correct order.  (For example, SLED helps us remember size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependancy.)  Let me know if you think of anything!

If you are a college student or new graduate and you would like to spend your summer on pro-life activism, please contact the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform.  We would love to speak with you.  If you would like to sponsor a student for the summer, please contact us and let us know.

Here’s the latest on our brave U of Calgary students who have now been found “guilty” of exercising their rights of free speech, while being denied the right of legal representation.  Depriving people their right of free speech, threatening to deny them the education for which they have qualified, and denying them legal representation (due process) is contemptable behavior by government officials that would be disallowed by any American court; but Canada is a country with the same contempt for disfavored speech that is commonly found in countries ruled by Asian Communist regimes.  Freedom-loving people all over the globe should be encouraged and inspired by these students.

In America, CBR defends the rights of students to conduct pro-life activities on campus, but we can’t do it without your help.  Please help us keep this from happening in America by supporting our work (click here).

Here’s the press release from the Canadian CBR:

CALGARY – The University of Calgary has notified eight members of the Campus Pro-Life (CPL) student group that they have been found guilty of a major violation under the Non-Academic Misconduct Policy regarding a pro-life display held last month. The verdict comes one week after the students each attended individual, closed-door hearings with an Associate Vice-Provost during which legal representatives were disallowed.
The verdict is “a formal written warning” that if the students “fail to comply with directives of Campus Security staff in the future” it will “result in more severe sanctions,” said Acting Associate Vice-Provost Meghan Houghton, who was the sole decision-maker in the guilty verdict.
“We are going to challenge this verdict,” stated Alanna Campbell, CPL President. “We did not break a single University bylaw or regulation and so we will defend ourselves accordingly. We will also not cease exercising our rights to free speech just because they’re threatening us.
I’d rather be expelled as a principled person than graduate a coward.”
Last month, after having set up a pro-life display on campus for the ninth time since 2006, members of the group were notified that they were being charged with a ‘Major Violation’ under Section 4.10 of the University of Calgary’s Non-Academic Misconduct Policy for “failure to comply with a Campus Security officer or University official in legitimate pursuit of his/her duties” when asked to turn their signs inward or leave campus.
In Houghton’s decision, she referenced the university’s demand that the students failed to comply with: “Signs that welcomed viewers and signs that identified your group as an anti-abortion display could remain outward facing but signs with the actual content of your display… must face away from walkways… or any other areas in which persons on campus would have little choice but to look at your display.”
“That’s blatant content-based discrimination,” said Peter Csillag, CPL Vice-President (Internal). “Why weren’t abortion advocates, or Falun Gong supporters, forced to place their messages inwards when they protested on campus? You can’t have debate if everyone is pointed inwards on themselves. As far as I’m concerned, this verdict against us pro-lifers is not legitimate, and it reveals U of C to be an institute of censorship and double standards—not of higher learning.”
In 2006 and 2007, during the first four displays of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on campus, the University defended the students’ right to expression under the Charter, but in 2008 the University reversed its policy without explanation.
“This recent hearing and result is just another step in a long history of intimidation and censorship and if they think we’ll step down as the result of it then they’re sorely mistaken,” stated Cameron Wilson, CPL Vice-President (External).

If you are a pro-life student or pro-life group in America who is being denied equal access to your campus, its grounds, its facilities, etc. based on the content of your message, please contact us at CBR.  We can help you assess your situation and arrange for legal help, if needed.  Always obey the directives of your campus administration and police, because it is better to be a plaintiff in a civil rights action than to have to defend yourself against a trespassing charge.  But contact us immediately so that we begin the process of asserting your First-Amendment rights.

Please help us defend the rights of American students by supporting our work (click here).

The University of Calgary is moving ahead with proceedings against eight pro-life students who are being charged with tresspassing on their own campus.  Despite the fact that these proceedings could deprive these students of the same rights enjoyed by every other student on campus, they are being denied even the most basic right of legal representation.

It should be emphasized that if any public university in the USA were to attempt such blatant censorship and discrimination, they would be immediately be defending themselves in a Federal civil rights action.  And that university would lose.  As you pray for these students, you might also thank God that you live in a country where your most basic rights are protected by law, including the right of free speech and assembly.  Let’s work and sacrifice to keep it that way.  Here is the latest from the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform:

UNIVERSITY PROCEEDS TODAY WITH INDIVIDUAL, CLOSED-DOOR HEARINGS FOR PRO-LIFE STUDENTS, DISALLOWS LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES
The University of Calgary is proceeding with individual non-academic misconduct hearings, which include the possibility of expulsion, for eight members of the Campus Pro-Life (CPL) student group regarding a pro-life display held earlier this month. The University administration notified students that “legal representatives are not suitable Advisors and are not welcome” at the individual, closed-door hearings, scheduled for April 28th and April 30th.
“This feels like a show trial where they’ve already convicted us unjustly and now want to punish us unjustly,” said Alanna Campbell, CPL President.
Earlier this month, after having set up a pro-life display on campus for the ninth time since 2006, members of the group were notified that they were being charged with a ‘Major Violation’ under Section 4.10 of the University of Calgary’s Non-Academic Misconduct Policy for “failure to comply with a Campus Security officer or University official in legitimate pursuit of his/her duties.” In 2006 and 2007, during the first four displays of the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on campus, the University defended the students’ right to expression under the Charter, but in 2008 the University reversed its policy without explanation.
Two hearings will be held on April 28th, at 1:00pm and 1:30pm. The remaining six are scheduled throughout the day on Friday, April 30th with the first at 9:30am.
“We’ve never received an explanation for why the University reversed their position, nor have we received any explanation as to what a security official’s legitimate duties actually include,” stated Vice-President Peter Csillag.
The group’s pro-life display, called the Genocide Awareness Project, has been held on the University of Calgary grounds without incident eight times since 2006. The display compares abortion to past historical atrocities, such as the Rwandan genocide and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
“In exercising our freedom of expression rights, there is not a single University of Calgary bylaw or regulation broken,” said CPL Secretary Cristina Perri, “Obviously we’re going to challenge or appeal any adverse decision that comes from these or future hearings.”
In 2009, the University charged six students with trespassing in relation to the display, but the Crown Prosecutor stayed these charges prior to a trial scheduled for November of 2009.
In a statement to media on April 18th following notification of the Non-Academic Misconduct charges, CPL Vice-President (External) Cameron Wilson stated the Club’s position, “Our message to the University is this: do unto us whatever you desire, punish us however you wish; but our convictions shall not change, and we shall not alter our actions based on intimidation.”
For further information, contact Club President Alanna Campbell at (403) 690-5217, Vice-President (Internal) Peter Csillag at (403) 465-1777, or lawyer John Carpay of the Canadian Constitution Foundation at (403) 619-8014.

CBR recently took our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) to the University of Delaware.  This was our second visit to this campus.  Click here to read the story in the student newspaper.