I have been insanely busy for the past couple weeks, mostly building up to the Cornell Coalition for Life’s big display of the semester. Because of our ridiculously low membership and budget, we can really only do one big thing each semester. This time, we decided to create the Cemetery of the Innocents on Cornell’s Arts Quad.
The display consists of 370 small American flags, each representing 10 abortions for a total of approximately 3,700 abortions in America every day - and that’s the low end of the estimates. Our goal in bringing the Cemetery to Cornell was to raise awareness and give students a better perspective about the actual numbers of abortions every day.
Abortion advocates would like people to believe that they want abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” But only one of those adjectives is honest - legal. Abortion is not safe - for the mother or the child - and it is most definitely not rare. Do they try to make it safe? No, they allow - encourage, excuse, ignore - abortionists to provide their services in the filthiest of the filthiest clinics. Do they try to make it rare? No. They believe that it is a woman’s right to choose in any and all situations, at each and every stage of pregnancy. Rarity is the least of their concerns.
With that in mind, CCFL’s Cemetery was incredibly successful. It was also incredibly stressful to organize, but ultimately it was worth it. A surprising number of students, faculty, and staff made statements like, “You guys are doing a good thing here,” or “This is something this campus really needs to see,” or simply, “Thank you.”
On the other side, I was equally surprised that the pro-abortion crowd didn’t make more of a showing. We had a few immature people rip up our quarter-cards or brochures right after we handed them out, but that’s not really a big deal. The first explosion was around 1PM (the display was from 8AM-4PM). A girl came over and screamed at us for a solid 30 minutes, dropping the f-bomb every other word, asking us insane questions, refusing to let us answer, and then screaming at us for not answering. Eventually she walked away, with the promise that she would bring her own sign back!
Haha, sure enough, at about 2PM she comes back with one of her SAGE (Students Acting for Gender Equality, or more acurately yet less officially Students Against Gestating Embryos) cohorts with a big sloppy sign that reads “These people believe if you are RAPED or a victim of INCEST you should still NOT be able to have a CHOICE.” Her buddy had pieces of paper that said, “We believe women can think independently. Pro-choice does NOT mean pro-murder.” She then proceeds to stand in the middle of our display quite stubbornly. I walked over to her and told her that technically, CCFL had reserved the entire Arts Quad and we had the right to kick her off. However, in the name of dialogue I was willing to let them remain - so long as they moved to another part of the Quad, perhaps across the sidewalk. After a short staredown and one more threat to call the CU Police, she moved. That was about as exciting as it got.
Here are a few pictures of the display:
(the front of the display - I can’t get it on this page without it being huge, clicking it should provide a larger picture)
(sign explaining the display)
(the other side of the display with a sign from the American Life League)
(our SAGE friend)
It was a long day, to say the least.
Update: Haha, I just noticed that they must have originally misspelled “Believe” because the “E” is pretty squished in there. Smooooth. And this is from the girl who during her 30 minute, f-bomb littered rant, asked me and my friends if we went to Cornell. When we said yes and asked why she wanted to know, she said it was because she thought Cornellian women were intelligent, but apparently not! Haha… apparently not.
Sphere: Related Content
World estimations of the number of terminations carried out each year is somewhere between 20 and 88 million.
3,500 per day / 1.3 million per year in America alone.
50% of that 1.3 million claimed failed birth control was to blame.
A further 48% had failed to use any birth control at all.
And 2% had medical reasons.
That means a stagering 98% may have been avoided had an effective birth control been used.
I am a 98% pro-lifer, 2% Pro-choicer, who has no religious convictions at all . I didn’t need the fear of god or anything else to come to my decision, just a good sense of what is right and wrong.
You see we were all once a fetus. Is it beyond the realm of possibilities that when your mother first learned she was carrying you, she may have considered her options? What if she had decided to terminate? Would that have been OK?
You would not exist, if you have children they would not exist, and your (husband or wife) would be married to someone else. You would have been deprived of all your experiences and memories. In this day and age with terminations being so readily available and so many being carried out, if you make it to full term you can consider yourself lucky.
Lucky you had a mother that made the choice of life for you.
Don’t you think they all deserve the same basic human right, LIFE?
At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existence. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.
Though it pains me to say it , there may always be a need for the 2% medical reasons and such, but that’s all.
So how do we get the other 98% to be responsible……………….
How do we get them to be honest with themselves, about when life begins.
Everyone knows life begins at conception, egg+sperm = human being
Sadly many prefer an occasional abortion, over using birth control, they have all kinds of reasons, each of them selfish.
Then there’s the christian impossition,(all a bit talibanish), and their men in high places.(church and state should never entwine) their stance against b/c has only added to the numbers.
Sanity must provale, abortions should remain available and safe to the 2% and the rest need to have a good look at themselves and get their act together.
I’d like to see effective birth control made available to all who can’t afford it.
People have to stop using abortion as birth control………….
Haha I was trying to read that sign the lady was holding up and thinking, “Boy, the Cornell Coalition for Life makes horrible protest posters!” It took a while to realize that it was a poster for the other side :).
Quite possibly the most difficult sign to read ever. The first thing I read was “These people raped incest not.”
Ausblog, You say, “I’d like to see effective birth control made available to all who can’t afford it.” Good point. I believe there is a shot that you can get that makes you sterile for 3 or 6 months. It’s free to anyone who wants it in Dallas, and probably elsewhere. I just googled “free birth control” and the first link says anyone in Washington state can get it free as well. Someone needs to get the word out.
Why the majority pro-abortionists should be unappealing to anyone: They cannot approach the opposing side (the majority pro-lifers) with compassion.
Pro-lifers can approach “the other side” in a way that says “I care for you and your child.”
As illustrated by the SAGE/CCFL confrontation, the pro-aborts can only approach in a way that says “I care for me and me alone” which can be loosely translated “I want to be able to have an abortion to hide that I can’t control my hormones and resulting unwise actions”
As far as the health clause of most abortion laws, I would say save the life that can be saved. If both Mom and Baby are going to die, the life that can be saved should be saved.
If the mother has a health problem that does not threaten her life or the life of the baby, abortion would not be acceptable.
If Mom has a fast spreading uterine cancer early on in the pregnancy, she needs to be treated for it and the baby will likely not survive. There are other cases late in pregnancy where the baby might survive and the mother not.
A consistent pro-lifer says save the life that can be saved (see Randy Alcorn’s Why Pro-Life?, Multnomah Pub., 2004, pp. 76-77).
Studies show that two fertile, consenting adults will have only a 3% chance at best of conception. Factors in rape or incest further decrease these chances (Alcorn, p. 78). What an amazing function God has placed in the human body!
You guys did a great job. It appears the display was very though provoking on your campus. Thanks for taking time to speak for those who have no voice.
i understand all points here but the main issue is if not for termanation our life could not survive…the way we no it. poverty is not nice
robbie