GSU Abortion Activists’ Epic Fail

Ryan’s articles also appear on LifeNews.com HERE
 

***UPDATE: Georgia State University Students, the day after we posted video of them making a public spectacle of themselves in a public forum, threatened to sue us if we did not remove the YouTube video. Their lawyer’s Cease & Desist letter didn’t deter us at all. If they choose to continue to follow through on their groundless claims of “right to privacy”, the Thomas More Law Center is representing us and will defend our constitutional first amendment rights. Any time abortion activists try to shut down our free speech, we will expose them.

As a public speaker, I have spoken to hundreds of thousands of people over the past few years in various forums: major conferences, churches, social services events, high schools, and colleges. In all but the last venue, audiences may not always agree, but are willing to hear a perspective that may differ from their own. There’s no place like an environment of higher learning…that’s continually threatened by non-liberal ideology. Many college campuses cultivate students that fear being exposed to different points of view. In their myopia, free speech must be crushed as catchy mantras replace critical thinking.

Last night, I spoke at Georgia State University as part of The Radiance Foundation’s TooManyAborted.com awareness efforts. Georgia is the state where The Radiance Foundation, along with the inimitable Catherine Davis (at that time the Minority Director of Georgia Right to Life), launched the first TooManyAborted.com campaign: “Black Children Are An Endangered Species”.  Every billboard campaign since, Planned Parenthood and its radically pro-abortion surrogate, SisterSong, have been desperate to find ways to counter our efforts. They’ve found fertile soil on college campuses where they find, often, some well meaning but incredibly uninformed students to parrot their propaganda.

“Trust Black Women! Trust Black Women!” was the chant that disrupted the planned lecture about abortion, black genocide and Planned Parenthood. For nearly twenty minutes, before the presentation could even begin, the protesters barked the mantra at the racially diverse audience and me, in particular. Thankfully, campus police removed them after they repeatedly refused to allow, or be part of, the conversation. Those who remained were able to discuss the substance of the epidemic of abortion, eugenics, and the impact on the black community.

But, those twenty minutes of protesting were so oddly surreal.

Trust Black Women is a national propaganda effort, launched by Sistersong, to combat the truth of our TooManyAborted.com campaign. When in doubt, you gotta shout.

Last night’s demonstration shows how their strategy is failing.  None of the students could answer a single question about basic abortion statistics. I invited them numerous times to join us and engage in conversation. They refused and continued their singular chant. All but 2 of the protestors were white; neither of these black student activists spoke. However, there were plenty of black women in the audience. Predictably, they weren’t the black women that these pro-abortion activists trusted. They didn’t make the cut.

When a black woman in the audience finally stood up to speak, the student protesters refused to let her say anything. It wasn’t until I pointed out the irony that they were chanting “Trust Black Women” but wouldn’t allow a black woman to speak, that they briefly stopped their nonsense (see embedded video). She calmly affirmed them while pointing out the need to hear both sides. But liberals don’t like depth; they tend to like thin shiny veneers. Conversation requires digging deeper and being exposed to inconvenient truths.

The young black woman tried to reason with them, to no avail, even suggesting that abstinence was a better option. Obviously she didn’t know what was best for her. One of the white female activists, who identified herself as post-abortive and happy, told the black student what she really needed: “You should have access to birth control. Your government should supply you the means to get it…I want more women on birth control. You can’t afford it.”

To my knowledge, she knew nothing about the black student other than the color of her skin. That didn’t stop her from providing the ever-failing solution of birth control and assuming all black women are poor. Has anyone introduced these young adults to the radical concept of self-control?

Catherine Davis, founder of the Georgia-based Restoration Project, was appalled when she heard what liberal students were trying push on black women in the audience. “How dare they suggest that black women need the government to give them birth control,” Davis responded. “What we need is to be free from the stereotypical treatment many liberal white women feel the liberty to foist upon us because they believe we are too ignorant to make decisions for ourselves!”

Had Catherine Davis been there, things definitely would’ve been different in those first few moments. Really different.

Even if one agreed (which we don’t, of course) that a woman has the right to choose abortion, isn’t it a worthy conversation to talk about what results from that “choice”, both individually and societally? Obesity, anorexia, and bulimia are all the resultants of food “choice”. Should we shut down all conversation about those destructive consequences simply because people have the right to eat?  When I tried to engage these protesters to discuss the results of those choices (high abortion rates, poverty, fatherlessness) they could only respond with more chanting.

This attempt at censorship goes way beyond silencing prolife speech. Americans need to be concerned about the dangerous environment our nation’s colleges and universities have become that allow such behavior to quell freedom of expression. Unbeknownst to me, Lance Wheeler, of CampusReform.org, captured the whole bizarre scene on video. He works for The Leadership Institute, which launched the college campus watchdog group to visually document liberal censorship across the country.

The unwillingness of so many “progressives” to engage in dialogue reveals their fear of having their misconceptions challenged. So they shout inane mantras like “Trust Black Women”, tragically depriving themselves of an opportunity to learn and grow.