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Genocide Awareness Project visits campus |
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Thursday, 24 April 2008 |
by BRITTANY PENLAND
Intern News Reporter
The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s (CBR) mural display created controversy Wednesday on Sanford Mall.
The Genocide Awareness Project, sponsored by the newly founded Appalachian State University club, “ZOE: Appstate Students for Life,” set up 17 panels with two to three pictures on each board.
“ZOE promotes the sanctity of life in all facets; this includes genocide, war, and in this case, abortion,” ZOE president and senior elementary education major Seth C. Wingate said.
 Graduate history student Katrin Deil (c) stands with pro-choice students to protest the Genocide Awareness Project on Sandford Mall Wednesday. Photo by Alisha Park
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Visuals shown in the walk-around depict graphic images of aborted
fetuses alongside World War II, Ku Klux Klan, and Sept. 11 genocide
photographs.
“I think this is an unfair argument that abortion is [compared] to
genocide. It is an unfair display of what abortion actually is,”
Jessica E. Pack said. “Men and women have fought so hard for abortion
rights and for this to be displayed this way on a college campus is
unjust.”
CBR volunteer and onsite manager Mick Hunt contacted Appalachian in
2005 with hopes of displaying The Genocide Awareness Project and needed
a university club to host the organization.
“We hope to increase awareness and let students ask questions, or start
a dialogue,” ZOE advisor and social work assistant professor Dr. Tiffany
Y. Christian said. “Reactions will be all over the place and they will
be extreme.”
Christian stated ZOE officially became a club March 5 and decided to sponsor The Genocide Awareness Project on campus.
The Genocide Awareness Project began in 1990 and has been touring college campuses since 1998, Hunt said.
“Obviously genocide and abortion are important, but the comparison and
such graphic images are skewed and unfair to those who do make the
personal choice for abortion,” sophomore sociology and family
development major Megan E. Lane said.
 A truck brandishing the image of a fetus circles Boone Wedenesday afternooon. Photo by Derek DeSha
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Hunt stated the organization wants to convey the truth about abortion
to the 19 to 24-year-old age group because this group is more likely to
go to an abortion clinic.
Expressing her views and suggesting advice to students about The
Genocide Awareness Project, Christian said, “...Don’t be judgmental or
approach [the murals] with preconceived notions that hamper you from
going to see them.”
“We can’t have an apathetic generation, especially on a university
campus, because it is a meshing of completely different world views,”
Wingate said. “College students tend to be more politically charged and
a [college campus] is breeding ground for good conversation and debate.”
Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock informed Appalachian students Tuesday via e-mail about the project’s graphic nature.
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Yes, abortion is bad. You can still be pro-choice and think that abortion is terrible. Hauling around a bunch of visceral, macabre images only confirms what most of us over the age of 16 already know about abortion. Could I convince anyone to commit suicide with 5' x 8' blowups of elderly men and women crippled by disease and ravaged by age? "This is the price of 'choice'-choose suicide". Most people would consider this reasoning faulty if not moronic, and rightfully so. Not to mention the crass nature of displaying enormous images of mutilated fetuses being in plain view of young children at the Child Development Center. Really hit that one out of the park there, pro-lifers.
I mean, really: driving a truck around town with an enormous image of an aborted fetus on the side? What were they trying to accomplish with that? It sounds like something a left-leaning satirical publication such as The Onion would dream up to satirize Christian conservatives, or barring that some kind of bizarre performance art.
A lot of modern social conservatives want a school system where kids are taught abstinence rather than how to use a condom or what birth control is and does. They want a society where unwanted pregnancies don't exist and abortion is not practiced, but they're trying to accomplish this with ineffective, regressive tactics.
You don't stop unwanted pregnancies by keeping teenagers in the dark about contraception and you don't stop abortion by banning it, much the same way that you don't stop gun crimes by banning guns. It's the same principle.