Free speech board at Florida International University

CBR’s Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) tour of Florida universities continued at Florida International University (FIU) on February 21-22.  Media coverage was sparse and slow in coming, but here it is:

• Student newspaper.

Here’s a surprising comment by Oren Reich, an FIU law student:

I’m pro-choice, but think the exhibit was honest, compelling and non-offensive. Comparisons to genocide are appropriate considering their beliefs, and gory imagery is appropriate as well, just as I would use it for an anti-war demonstration.

Winning hearts, changing minds, and saving lives at Florida State University

CBR’s Florida GAP tour continues.  Wednesday and Thursday, GAP made it’s 3rd appearance at Florida State University.

Media:  FSU Student Newspaper

Pro Life on Campus at University of West Florida

Monday and Tuesday of this week, we had our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) at the University of West Florida.  This is part of a tour of 4 Florida universities being sponsored by CBR Southeast, CBR Midwest, and CBR Florida.

Media:

1. The Voyager (story)
2. The Voyager (editorial)

On my way to Pensacola

On my way to Pensacola.  Sunday, we are doing our Pro Life Training Academy in preparation for GAP at the University of West Florida Monday and Tuesday.  I’ll won’t be able to stay for the GAP, however, because of our big Celebrating Life event in Knoxville Monday night.

Speaking of Celebrating Life, we’re sold out!  How about that!  Hope to see you there!

Pro-aborts: CBR tactics are "really effective."

We have many endorsements from college students, pro-life activists, political leaders, and others who have seen our work in action.  But this piece amounts to the strongest endorsement we have ever gotten.

Freedom of (hate) speech: Confronting the rise of anti-choice activities on Canadian campuses was written by a pro-abortion activist in Canada who laments the effectiveness of our Canadian CBR affiliate.  She is so frustrated by the effectiveness of our work, she believes only censorship and bully tactics can ensure our defeat.

The more sophisticated of our opponents know that any open admission of our effectiveness will only make our fundraising and recruiting efforts more effective.  That is what makes the candor in this article so remarkable.  Military intelligence officials who interrogate prisoners of war usually focus their questions on determining what their captors believe to be the most effective tactics being employed against them and why.  Our abortion adversaries just volunteered that information and we didn’t even need to water-board them!

Some excerpts:

These on-campus battles are the new front line of pro-choice activism in Canada.  But with anti-choicers setting the terms of debate, how can pro-choice activists respond?  [Note their admission that CBR is setting the terms of the debate, which is exactly what we want to do.]

But one thing that they have been really effective at doing is coming up with messaging that affects the popular discourse, which I think is a really dangerous thing because it will eventually seep into the legislature and the courts.  [Another admission that CBR is "really effective."  Note the recognition that our work on campus will transform culture.]

Anti-choice groups are using the free speech argument to win the public relations battle …  [The author believes we are winning.  That's important, because winning is how the killing stops.]

These presentations and displays have provoked a pro-choice response in a way the activities of other anti-choice groups have not.  [That's because the activities of other pro-life groups, in the view of the author, are not effective and need not be countered.]

With anti-choicers setting the terms of debate, pro-choice advocates have had to grapple with the utility of confronting these groups head-on …  [To this author, "confronting these groups head-on" means shouting us down and running us off the stage.]

A new generation of anti-choice groups is establishing a reputation for itself on Canadian campuses, with increasingly visible tactics that many pro-choice activists call discriminatory, harassing and hateful.  [Note the significance of "harassing" and "hateful" labels, which could allow pro-life speech to be censored under Canadian law.]

The university administration is barraged with phone calls and emails calling for the event to be shut down on the grounds that it amounts to harassment and is offensive to women …  Shortly after the event begins, a group of about 10 women and their allies enter the room, chanting and blocking the projector with the intent of disrupting the presentation.  [The context of this passage is an explicit endorsement of censorship and bully tactics.]

… the CCBR legally constitute hate speech by inciting hatred towards those women who have or support the right to have abortions, and should thus be restricted in order to prevent the harassment of women.  [Note the call for censorship.]

Unfortunately, it seems that the freedom of expression of protesters is not taken as seriously at McGill as hateful speech …  [Note the dismay over lack of censorship.]

PLTA Faculty Member Toby Tatum at UGa.

It’s Sunday afternoon and we are conducting our Pro Life Training Academy (PLTA) at the University of Georgia (UGa).  We are encouraged by the students and community members who are attending this training.

PLTA students learn how to articulate and respectfully defend the pro-life position.  On Wednesday and Thursday, PLTA students will have a unique opportunity for on-the-job training by helping staff our GAP display at Tate Plaza in the heart of the UGa campus.

In addition to training pro-life advocates, the PLTA seeks to unite pro-lifers behind common goals of education, training, and outreach.  We appreciate so much the efforts of the Georgia Right to Life, Athens Area Right to Life, UGa Students for Life, the Athens Pregnancy Center, and the University Church (in Athens) to make this event a huge success!

For more information, go to www.facebook.com/ProLifeTraining.

Samuel Armas shaking the doctor's hand

Great time at the Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) REACH fundraising dinner last night in Atlanta.  I’m in Georgia this week laying the groundwork for our Pro Life Training Academy (PLTA) and Pro Life on Campus (GAP) events at the University of Georgia and Kennesaw State University in November.  GRTL is partnering with CBR on all of this work.  GRTL President Dan Becker featured our cooperative efforts in his remarks last night.

Samuel Armas shaking my hand

Also in attendance was Samuel Armas and his family.  You may remember when Samuel exploded on the national scene back in 1999, when he reached out of his mother’s womb and grabbed the finger of his surgeon.  The photo became an instant sensation.

Now Samuel is 10 years old.  He and his parents were in attendance last night, and I was thrilled to shake Samuel’s hand.  (Wouldn’t you know it, I shook the wrong hand—the un-famous one—but what the heck.)  Fox News recently ran a story on Samuel, who is now 10 years old!

"Choice" signs greet Obama ralliers.

Pro lifers use CBR’s “Choice” signs to greet Pres. Obama’s ralliers at Ohio State University.  You can do this at a campus near you!  Click here to buy 4 “Choice” signs and display them all you want!

If you can’t do this yourself, then please help us do it with your gift of $10 a month (click here).  Your $10 will help take our bigger Pro Life on Campus display to 20 major universities next year.  One-time gifts (click here) buy new signs and even a large-screen TV for outdoor use.

Many students who see these signs are hard-core pro-choicers, but not all.  Many young people hear only one view on campus, but these pictures tell the whole story.  Many will change their minds.

Gregg Cunningham

In response to the arrest of brave pro-life students at Carleton University in Canada, we got an e-mail from a pro-life, Christian Carleton student.  She objected to the work of the arrested students on the grounds that showing photos of abortion is neither loving nor compassionate.  She wrote, in part:

If you can honestly say that you are upholding the greatest commandment, to love your neighbour, by holding up those graphic images then we clearly have a different interpretaion of this great commandement.

CBR Executive Director Gregg Cunningham responded:

Your references to Christian “love” are badly muddled.  Ephesians 5:11 commands us to “Expose the deeds of darkness.”

We aren’t calling women who abort “murders” and I challenge you to find one sign or document of ours which makes that accusation.  Women who abort invariably know they are doing something wrong, but they seldom know how wrong.  They are lied to about who their baby is and what abortion will do to both mother, and child and in that sense they are also victims of abortion.  Abortionists, however, are physicians.  They know exactly what they are doing.  They are unambiguous murders.

Nothing could be more cruel or un-Christ-like than for pro-lifers to help abortionists trick mothers by hiding the horror of the abortions into which they are being deceptively drawn.  That is a dark perversion of mercy which cannot fairly be called compassion.

That pretty well sums it up!

SLED, before and after birth.

Here’s a great video from our friends at the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.  Stephanie Gray presents medical information on the beginning of life. She also describes why it is illogical to hold the poistion that preborn children may be killed because they are smaller, less developed, more dependent, and/or simply living in a different environment than the rest of us.

7-week embryo

In recent weeks, we are seeing a kind of science denial by abortion advocates in Missouri that is normally the prevue of Darwinists.  The state legislature has recently passed a bill that actually recognizes the scientific fact that life begins at conception.

Senate Bill 793, which adds new regulations to the state’s 24-hour informed consent law for abortions, states that “the life of each human being begins at conception.”  It also declares that “abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”  (Source 1)  (Source 2)

As you can imagine, that law didn’t sit too well with pro-aborts.  So, taking a page out of the Darwinist playbook, they claimed that the scientific evidence (confirmed by many medical textbooks on prenatal development) isn’t really science at all.  It is religion.  I’m not kidding.

But of course, what else could they say?  After all, they can’t admit that the facts are true.  The implications of the facts are so horrifying, they must be denied, no matter what.

(Click here for a paper that summarizes statements from medical school textbooks, scientists, and even pro-abortion philosophers, all confirming that life begins at conception.)

People deny science when it challenges their own religion or some other deeply-held belief.  Did you watch “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”?  If you didn’t, shame on you.  BTW, if every child in your church doesn’t see it once a year, then shame on you.  (Yes, I said you.)

Anyway, in this movie, the great Darwinist Richard Dawkins is interviewed by intelligent design (ID) proponent Ben Stein.  The idea of an intelligent Designer/Creator is so horrifying to Dawkins, any evidence for it must be denied or ignored, no matter what.  Darwinists must pretend that such evidence isn’t really science at all.  It is religion.

But Dawkins has a problem because Darwinism can’t begin to explain how highly complex cells got here in the first place.  Cells are vastly more complex than was ever imagined, and Darwinism just doesn’t explain it.  So Dawkins has to speculate.  In a moment of candor not likely to be repeated anytime soon, he suggests that one possible explanation might be that space aliens planted cellular life here on Earth.  I’m not lying; watch the movie.

Lemme get this straight.  According to Dawkins, it’s entirely plausible that we all evolved from the protozoa that came from the bowels of some space alien who stopped off at Planet Earth for a potty break on his way to the Delta Quadrant.  But it’s NOT plausible that we were created by a Creator God.  Riiiiight.

And they say this stuff with a straight face.

Dr. Frank Joseph

FAB is indebted to Dr. Frank Joseph for this excellent essay.  Please comment below!

Debating Abortion on the political stage: Carly Fioriana blew it

Carly Fiorina had a golden opportunity to blow Barbara Boxer out of the water in their California senatorial debate, but she blew it.

An abortion question was asked by a member of the panel, and of course, Boxer went according to script. Said Boxer (paraphrasing and making it short), “I am for a woman’s right to choose.” Never saying the word abortion. “Women shouldn’t have to go to jail if Roe v Wade is overturned, and that’s what Fiorina wants.”

To begin with, this is a lie. Women would not go to jail. They didn’t before Roe and they won’t if Roe is overturned. Democrats just have to lie, just like they did in the 1960s when they said that 5,000 - 10,000 women died every year from back-alley, coat-hanger abortions. Even NARAL founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson now admints that it was a willful lie. The year before Roe, only 39 such deaths were reported to the CDC. Anyhow, only the person who kills the child (the abortion doctor) would be breaking the law and put in jail if Roe is overturned.

Fiorina did not call Boxer on this lie. She did say she is pro-life, but she never mentioned that Boxer not only supports the killing of unborn children, she supports this killing for the entire nine months of pregnancy. She even supports partial-birth abortions, which 75% of the American people oppose. According to polls, more people identify themselves as pro-life than pro-choice (to kill unborn children).

They each had 2 minutes for their final summations. In her statement, Boxer again brought up a woman’s “right to choose” and again falsely stated women would go to jail if Fiorina had her way and Roe was overturned. She kept pounding on that issue.

It seems that when Democrats are in a debate, they go for the throat. Maybe Republicans just don’t want to hurt the feelings of Democrats. I think they just don’t get it.

Fiorina should have mentioned that Boxer lied about women going to jail if Roe is overturned. She should have also said that women who do not have their child killed would decrease their risk of getting breast cancer and decrease their risk of drug and alcohol abuse as well as suicides.

She could have even mentioned that abortions increase the risk of premature babies in subsequent pregnancies, resulting in low birth weights. Such children are more prone to develop physical and mental problems, including cerebral palsy.

She could also have said that she favor’s a woman’s reproductive rights, but when reproduction is over, that is where she draws the line. She could have mentioned that Boxer even supported killing babies while they are being born, at which time they would suffer excruciating pain. As Boxer repeated over and over again what little ammunition she had, Fiorina should have mentioned this over and over again. Sometimes, you have to fight fire with fire.

Shirley Moore

We are indebted to Shirley Moore of Knoxville for this excellent essay.

They were accused of disturbing the peace in the churches, a peace [William Lloyd] Garrison did not believe they were entitled to enjoy.

Are you an extremist?

Extremists, self-righteous, judgmental, violent (or the cause of violence). These terms, familiar to pro-lifers, were also applied to the 19th Century abolitionists, and most particularly to William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator. He renewed an anti-slavery movement that had languished during the first part of the 19th Century and agitated against slavery from 1829 until it was abolished at the time of the Civil War.

Because he challenged the core morality of the US and because he never lost sight of the moral issues (the sanctity of life, the equality of the races, and the obligation of Christians to oppose slavery), he was hated, mocked in newspapers, and persecuted throughout his life. However, he had a loving family and loyal circle of friends.

After a century and half, at least one book has given him his just due: All On Fire by Henry Mayer. Mayer is a veteran of the 60s-era Civil Rights Movement. Few books have been written about Garrison because the image of him as a “holier-than-thou nut” has persisted to this day. He put justice above peace and has never been forgiven by the culture he challenged.

As many pro-lifers experience today, the churches of the 19th Century despised abolitionists. They were perhaps “too” Christian for the men and women in the pews. They were accused of disturbing the peace in the churches, a peace Garrison did not believe they were entitled to enjoy. Like many pro-lifers, they were “outsiders” in their own congregations and parishes.

Sometimes, being effective and being liked are incompatible.  In social reform movements, this is almost always the case.  Which will  you choose?

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.

Check out this video on media fraud at the annual March for Life in Washington, DC.  Look for the CBR truth truck!