Posted on 03/12/2003 8:53:58 AM PST by churchillbuff
Anti-abortion group Teens For Life attracts attention with display on Quad
Campus NOW counter-demonstrates against ‘gross misrepresentation’ of abortion By Hilary Costa Aggie Staff Writer
March 11, 2003 - Melissa Lindsley is a 15-year-old 10th-grader from Sacramento and has been a member of the nonprofit group Teens For Life for the past three years.
To the anti-abortion movement, she is a courageous young woman justly fighting abortion. For the abortion rights movement at UC Davis, she represents a misinformed point of view that unintentionally fuels anger and Planned Parenthood fundraising efforts.
When not being home-schooled, Melissa volunteers for the anti-abortion organization that her sister started six years ago, bringing poster-size images of aborted fetuses and acts of international genocide to high school and college campuses across California. Beginning Monday morning and ending this afternoon, Melissa and some of the 70 members of Teens For Life are presenting their message on the UCD Quad.
“Abortion is murder; it kills innocent human beings,” Melissa said. “Once people see that abortion is wrong, they know it and are going to take a stand against it.”
Images displayed on a four-sided, paneled series of poster boards, copyrighted by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, include graphic photographs of fetuses purportedly aborted at various stages of pregnancy, from eight weeks to the second trimester.
Depictions of Ku Klux Klan lynchings, bodies of Jews murdered during the Holocaust, and the mass graves of Rwandan murder victims are featured. The group’s members say abortion is another form of genocide, comparable to these historical examples of mass killing.
To counter the display, the UCD Campus National Organization for Women set up a table nearby with informational fliers and boxes to collect money for the nonprofit organization Planned Parenthood, which is a major target of the Teens For Life display. By 2:30 p.m. Monday, they had collected $415.
Volunteers also carried signs reading “Keep Abortion Legal” to protest the presentation.
“We appreciate [Teens For Life] coming here because people get angry and donate money to Planned Parenthood,” said Campus NOW volunteer and UCD senior Marina del Calvo.
She said the comparison of abortion to genocide is “a gross misrepresentation.”
“Connecting racist issues to abortion is wrong,” del Calvo said. “To compare it to Nazism and to organizations like the KKK is wrong.”
Del Calvo also said it violates the UCD Principles of Community, because it “offends a lot of groups on campus.”
UCD fifth-year senior Lee Weissmann said he was personally offended by the connection between mass murder and legal abortion.
“I understand they have the right to speak because of the First Amendment,” Weissmann said. “[But] a woman’s right to choose is not the same as genocide, period.”
While passing out informational brochures from a tent set up near the Quad presentation, Teens For Life members Monica Lindsley, 17, and Vanessa Ponce, 15, were approached by students seeking information and thanking them for their presentation.
One student, senior Lauren Bria, stopped to give Monica and Vanessa a donation for the organization.
“It takes a lot of courage to do what you’re doing,” Bria told the girls.
Vanessa said her first encounter with abortion caused her to take an anti-abortion stance. She said her father, a pastor, took her to an abortion clinic when she was “very young.”
“I cried the first time I saw a picture [of an aborted fetus],” Vanessa said. “I knew it was a baby. I wanted to do something to stop [abortion].”
Most new members join Teens For Life after seeing one of their church or school presentations, according to Melissa. Members range in age from 12 to 26 years of age, she said, and about half are male. The group’s parent organization is the Christian-affiliated Soul-Net.
According to Davis College Republicans member Joe Fitzmorris, Teens For Life were invited by the Young Conservatives Foundation
This buffoon has obviously never read the writings of Margaret Sanger.
Another example of the leftist weirdos NOT standing up for free speech, but censorship. I guess when you've bought the lie that children are a choice, the truth getting up in your face can be a little disconcerting. Good.
Correct. It's the killing of unwanted babies that is the same as genocide.
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