It was a rather humdrum morning at George Washington University on Monday, November 15. The students’ dull mood quickly changed into joy or ire, however, after members of TFP Student Action arrived on campus to oppose abortion, the wholesale slaughter of innocent human life.
The TFP’s campaign was impossible to ignore. A tall American flag and TFP banner, bagpipes and drums, flyers and posters, caught the attention of students on “H” Street sidewalks by the Cloyd Heck Marvin Center.
One student stopped to hear the bagpipes, filled out TFP’s survey, and then said: “Thank you so much! I’ve never seen a better, more effective way to promote the pro-life message than you guys being out here like this.” Another added: “While I was in economics class today my professor paused, everyone went silent, and he asked ‘do I hear bagpipes?'”
TFP Student Action displayed two thought-provoking posters. The first quoted a shocking statement by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger: “The most merciful thing the family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” A second sign said: “Abortion sealed the fate of 44 million Americans, the combined populations of Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, South Dakota, Illinois, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.”
The TFP volunteers are grateful to the active and courageous pro-life students at George Washington University who joined the campaign. “Their debating skills are hard to match. They were compelling, logical and persuasive,” observed TFP member Cesar Franco.
Insults are not arguments
Disputing liberal campus territory is challenging. Liberal academia teaches students to pretend abortion is fine. So when the unjustifiable sin of abortion is exposed, strange reactions result. A consistent trait among those who favor abortion seemed to be incoherence. Base language, vulgar gestures, and personal insults were also quite common. One man was offered a TFP flyer, 10 Reasons Why Abortion is Evil. He refused, saying, “You filthy Fascist trash!”
When John Mahoney, 18, addressed a pedestrian: “Would you like a flyer, ma’am? Protect the unborn.” She snapped back: “I’m against the unborn. I’m against God.”
One George Washington University student received a TFP flyer, then wrote an e-mail to the TFP’s web site: “I try to understand your point of view but I find it impossible. Things are not as black and white as you preach and it disgusts me as a Christian that you spout this type of hate for others. A particular passage truly struck me – ‘how can such slaughter, [abortion] numerically on par with Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia, be tolerated…?'” Then she made an historical blunder: “The holocaust! The Catholic Church did not even RECOGNIZE that this horror was happening.”
The daily abortion toll in America is nearly 4,000 – far greater than the number of lives tragically lost on September 11 – yet so many attempt to sweep this fact under the rug. What will it take to turn back the tide of abortion? The answer is as long as the Faith remains dead in souls, we will never wipe out the moral rot of sexual immorality, which is the contaminated soil where the abortion movement grows and flourishes.