The Frontline Battle For Life & Truth On Campus

Recently, I spent a day with the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform on the Campus of The University of Tennessee Knoxville to educate college students about abortion through the Genocide Awareness Project. The Genocide Awareness Project (or GAP) uses graphic images of abortions overlayed with justification arguments. It sets them side by side with violent images of various historical genocides and their justification arguments. The conclusive point of this project is: Abortion equals genocide. On college campuses, genocide is generally considered the greatest of evils. Hence, the effectiveness of the GAP approach.

I spoke with the Progressive Student Alliance, who had come out to protest our GAP signs. They claimed to be on the side of the oppressed classes who "must" resist the power of the wealthy landowners. I tried to point out to them that the baby in the womb is the oppressed class. But the young man I was speaking with told me he didn't want to debate and returned to distributing his cardboard signs which read "cut your nuts off." He passed me off to his friend, who spoke with me for a significant amount of time. We argued about world views and the Bible a good deal. It is incredible how quickly the topic of abortion leads to discussions about Jesus and the Bible. The subject of abortion exposes your worldview—the graphic images of the display force conversations into dealing with reality over fantasy.

Several times during the day, students asked me to define a human. I do not possess a scientific answer to this question because it does not exist. Humans are not merely material to be labeled and placed in a lab somewhere. Humans have souls. I argued that human life begins at conception. One young man was not satisfied with my answer, saying that it only presented subjective evidence. He said I could not claim that a "clump of cells" in the womb is human. I pointed to one of the photos, which shows an aborted baby in a doctor's hand. The rib cage, the legs, and the posterior of the baby are clearly visible, but the head is missing. I said, "You are telling me that this isn't a baby? Don't you see the rib cage and the legs? You don't see the missing head?" The young man replied, "It isn't alive! It's not growing!" I replied that it was before someone took its head off. This point is an objective truth: Babies live until you kill them. This "clump of cells" in the womb can ever only be a human being, be it dead or alive.

My twelve-year-old son, Justice, came with me to the display. Many college

students yelled at me that I was "brainwashing" my son and that I should "let him make his own decisions." In other words, if I didn't let my son see these abortion photos, he would be freer to make up his own mind. For whatever reason, these college students seemed to believe that knowledge is ignorance. On his own accord, Justice responded, "I wanted to come! I want to stand up for babies!" He did this a few times, with various profound responses, and the college students could never offer a reply. Many students also said that my son should be in school and not see these terrible pictures. I replied that I agreed that nobody should have to see these terrible abortion photos, which is why we display them. Why do we sanction something so awful? Besides, my son was getting an excellent education about life and people on the spot.

I argued for a long time with a young man who was very effeminate and wearing shorts made for a 4-year-old girl. He was very agitated at the signs that displayed abortion as another form of genocide. He kept arguing that the baby in the womb is not a baby. I kept pointing out that he dehumanized the Genocide victim like so many others had done in the Holocaust. "Oh, so you are calling me a racist!?" He replied. I explained to him that Margret Sanger was an open racist. He seemed genuinely surprised by this fact. After a while, I think the arguments started to sink in. After trying several different arguments that failed, his anger began to subside. During this conversation, I was also helped by a young (and very calm) Catholic student who countered the agitated man's arguments. The effeminate man argued that an unborn baby is not yet a human when connected to the mother and is a physical drain on her body and a potential future drain on her finances. The baby, at that point, the man argued, is "just a parasite." The Catholic student pointed out that his brother, who has Down-Syndrome, is a physical and financial drain on his family, but that doesn't make him a parasite or less than human. This personal statement brought the argument home, and the agitated student began to back off. We don't expect our arguments to have an immediate impact, necessarily. Truth has a way of quietly but persistently presenting itself to our souls. When we are intentional about speaking the truth, our efforts amplify the voice of truth.

There is so much more you could say about this one day in Knoxville. It was another rich day of truth in a sea of lies. The protestors thought they had a good day, harassing us for four straight hours, but I think that what satan intended for evil, God used for good. All of those protestors had four hours to emblazon the images of abortion into their minds forever. Soon, their protest will be against the evil of abortion and not the heralds of truth.

God bless CBR.