Abortion posters spark debates
Published: November 2, 2010
Students and Justice For All volunteers debated abortion rights Monday on the South Oval’s lawn in response to large posters depicting fetuses and anti-abortion text.
Justice For All volunteers, invited by the OU Pro-Life Ambassadors student group, arrived on campus at 7 a.m. Monday to assemble the posters that asked questions like “When are we human?” and “What is genocide?”
Conversations and debates took place near the exhibit during the afternoon, with both Justice For All volunteers and abortion-rights advocates engaging passers-by in debates.
“My first reaction was that it’s very hard to look at, but we need the full truth,” said Lindsay Rodman, exhibit volunteer. The Justice For All volunteers took polls and guided students through the photos, while sharing their views on abortion.
“I don’t pay $12,000 a year to walk by that,” said Molly Oakley-Rattler, women’s and gender studies senior. “I don’t think anyone should have to walk by that.”
Oakley-Rattler took part in a protest against the Justice For All displays, along with more than 30 students, supported by the Women’s and Gender Studies Association. Students who did not agree with the display’s message blew kazoos to show their opposition. Advocates of abortion rights carried posters criticizing the images and handed out candy and condoms.
“We want to give the opportunity to share perspective,” said Maureen McKinley, group intern. “Our main goal is to start dialogue.”
Student members of Pro-Life Ambassadors also took part in the discussion. The group also set up a poll, asking passers-by whether they thought abortion should remain legal.
“I think it helps raise awareness about the choices people are making,” said Zac Trosper, University College freshman.
Protesters organized a documentary screening of “The Assassination of Dr. Tiller” Monday night. A “pro-choice picnic” will take place 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. today on the South Oval’s lawn.
However, some students think attempts to start a dialogue between the two sides of the debate were largely ineffective.
“We’re arguing legalities; they are arguing morality,” said Nina Fiorucci, University College freshman and abortion-rights advocate. “It’s not very constructive.”
Representatives from Norman’s Eden Clinic offered support to women who had abortions. The clinic’s display featured small fetus molds during different stages of pregnancy.
Justice For All last visited OU in 2008 and will return today, Nov. 10 and 11.
Comments
toastergirl 1 year, 3 months ago
Molly, my tax dollars should not go towards abortions. But they probably will.
RitaJoseph 1 year, 3 months ago
The question "When are we human?" was answered by Eleanor Roosevelt and the international members of her drafting committee that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Right from the beginning of modern international human rights law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized the child's right 'to special safeguards and care, including legal protection before as well as after birth'.
More recently, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has explicitly condemned selective abortion (on the ground of sex, ethnic origin, social and cultural status, or disability) as a 'serious violation' of the rights of the child.
From first knowledge of pregnancy, we know that a child has been conceived, is already alive, not just potentially alive. Medical science can confirm the real presence, of a small genetically unique human life, growing and being protected and nurtured in his/her mother's womb. We can identify the child's father, and whether the child is a son or a daughter.
Clearly, pro-abortion university students do find it hard to walk past visual evidence of the violence against these unborn children. These pictures show real victims of acts of violence perpetrated with impunity behind the closed doors of abortion facilities. The trurh is confronting.
BeatrixComet 1 year, 3 months ago
The picture tag line makes no sense. Abortion-rights advocates blew kazoos. Anti-abortion advocates set up the visuals to support their anti-abortion stance.
ATG2012 1 year, 3 months ago
Taking away the legal right for a woman to have a safe clinical abortion will not stop people from terminating unwanted fetuses. Regardless of any law, people who desire to terminate their pregnancy will find the means to do so. Why not provide the mother a safe medical environment to get an abortion instead of forcing mothers who desire to have an abortion to perform them at home without licensed medical supervision? I have decided that all pro-life protests are funded by the companies that manufacture the wire hangers and boxing gloves that are used to abort fetuses at home.
ou_citizen 1 year, 3 months ago
It seems that both sides yesterday claimed that the unborn is a human and is living. The gender-studies students, while not blowing cazoos in people's ears, did claim that the mother has a right to kill her children if she wants so long as they're inside her body because she has complete controll over her body and any of her children's bodies insider her as well.
It's like we have a new matriarchal version of the master/salve relationship. Is this the type of education that Oklahoma's tax dollars are paying for? Is it too late to take back the product and ask for a refund?
Steve000B 1 year, 3 months ago
I wish people would listen to both sides and think about this issue more carefully. There's a GREAT debate about abortion here (unbiased, BOTH sides giving their views): http://abortion.procon.org
Rhology 1 year, 3 months ago
ATG2012 said:
--Taking away the legal right for a woman to have a safe clinical abortion will not stop people from terminating unwanted fetuses.--
That's a great argument! Let's apply it more widely! Taking away the legal right for a woman to be protected from rape will not stop people from raping women. Taking away the legal right for a 40-year-old person to have the right to life, not infringed upon without due process of law, will not stop people from murder. Making it illegal to steal from poor people will not stop people from stealing from poor people.
--I have decided that all pro-life protests are funded by the companies that manufacture the wire hangers and boxing gloves that are used to abort fetuses at home.--
That is just idiocy.
ou_citizen:
--It's like we have a new matriarchal version of the master/salve relationship. Is this the type of education that Oklahoma's tax dollars are paying for?--
Yes, unfortunately. "Women/gender studies" is barely-disguised code for "radical left-wing indoctrination into emoting and irrational argumentation".
mythman 1 year, 3 months ago
Once I hear the scientific evidence of the exact moment when a soul enters the body of a fetus, I will support legal prohibition of abortion. Until then, the question is religious, and should be not be determined by the government.
FP 1 year, 3 months ago
A fetus is not autonomous and has not the same rights as a viable human being -- which it becomes when it comes out of a woman's womb upon being born.
Taking away the right of a woman to make her own decisions about her body is tantamount to tyrrany and is unacceptable in the pluralistic, secular society outlined in Amendment I of the United States Constitution (yes, pluralistic and secular, despite what that goon David Barton and his "Wallbuilders" people indoctrinate otherwise -- this is the group that goaded that Texas education board to remove Thomas Jefferson from that state's social studies curriculum).
I will add, especially to those of you who are disenfranchised because you're in Oklahoma but you're a liberal -- GO VOTE TODAY (assuming you are registered in OK to do so). When you stay home from the polls, that's fewer opportunities to get rid of the radical right-wing element that has taken over the Oklahoma State Legislature that passes things like that ultrasound law that further hinders -- and degrades -- women seeking to have autonomy over their bodies.
TheJeff 1 year, 3 months ago
"Until then, the question is religious, and should be not be determined by the government."
Mythman, Do you believe that born people have souls? Why do unborn people need souls to be humans and have human rights if you don't require born persons to have souls in order to have their rights?
bgr 1 year, 3 months ago
Freedom of Speech means that we must listen to those with whom we disagree. Therefore, those of us who claim to be "pro-life" must make sure that those support any type of abortion must be given their rigt to speak. Thus, the students must "walk by" the posters that contain messages with which they disagree. Indeed, the main purpose of a college education is to help us listen to all views so that we can make our own decisions.
soonerboomers 1 year, 3 months ago
Your tax dollars should go towards abortion, if they are to go towards any medical procedure.
phoenix07 1 year, 3 months ago
"All murderers will be punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."-Voltaire
I love living in a country where we all have the right to voice our opinion on matters such as this.
However, the surveyors said their purpose was to start a discussion. This is mine:
I think the pictures are highly offensive, and they make me embarrassed to support some agendas of the pro-life movement.
I don't want to see giant pictures mutilated anything on my campus. Are you trying to SHAME women into being pro-life? Really?
What about education? Letting them know they have a choice?
It seems like the last gasping breath of a desperate movement that has lost all other means of articulating a legitimate argument and are forced to resort to this insanity.
I feel like it undermines the fundamentally noble cause of trying to stop women from having abortions because it simply pisses people off...pro-life, pro-choice, and the undecideds.
Now, even though you may have a very good perspective on the subject with a really valid arguments and legitimate points--many will not here you because you are not able to be an example of the dignity and respect which you seems to be advocating all people have the right to.HHmmm....
And finally, do we really want the governmnet making such intimate choices in our lives when some might say it is responsible for the murders of millions? Only for them it happens in large numbers, to the sound of trumpets, and in the name of freedom....
Freedom, huh? MMMmmm...okay. Well, lucky for you, that freedom that many people were murdered for, including our own soldiers, gave you the right to put up those billboards. What an irony, huh?
mythman 1 year, 3 months ago
TheJeff,
I'm looking for a way to draw a definite line. If born and unborn people are scientifically proven to have "souls," that would be one. Until then, the line is blurry, and there are many different ideas of when something becomes "human." Drawing such arbitrary lines is dangerous when the results take rights away from others.
Chirpit 1 year, 3 months ago
I don't support protesting abortion with gory images of naked, posed, dismembered fetuses. We pay tuition... this group does not.
There were VERY FEW if ANY OU Pro-Life Ambassadors or OU students in general behind those metal gates. They were all high-schoolers and adults who weren't even OU alumni!
This shouldn't be on out campus unless there is a significant involvement by OU students. It's too big (literally) to allow a minority to push into our faces, especially when some of us have studies we should be concentrating on instead of being visually and emotionally raped. I don't know about anyone else, but I've had a hard time concentrating in class since these people appeared on campus on Monday.
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