First American Apparel, Now GAP
Planning on walking near the Heart of CampusTM tomorrow? Curious as to what aborted fetuses look like? You’re in luck!
(Fair warning: pretty much every link in this post points to images which many may find highly disturbing)
On Wednesday and Thursday between 7:30 and 4:00 the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) will be displaying images of aborted fetuses, lynchings, and holocaust victims, amongst other things. Their purpose is to equate the images and consequently point out the genocidal nature of legalized abortion. This assuredly will lead to much hand-wringing, yelling, and other unpleasantries. As one would expect, the Women’s Center will be protesting the event. (Which is unfortunate, since the Women’s Center is implicitly excluding pro-life women from its organization by taking an officially pro-choice stance.) It also means I’ll have to look at pictures of aborted fetuses, people hanging from trees, and holocaust victims every time I go to the EMU the next couple of days. Sigh.
I must say that I do have rather mixed views of GAP’s tactics:
On one hand, even if abortion is genocide, then there’s still no particular reason to directly equate it to the holocaust, lynchings of African-Americans, or other evils. Not to sound like a nitpicking relativist, but something can be unequivically bad without being the same as something else unequivocally bad. If abortion is evil, then can’t it be its own evil? Don’t images of aborted fetuses speak volumes on their own?
And even if an image speaks volumes one way or another, it’s oftentimes inappropriate to push it in unsuspecting people’s faces. There are numerous students who know what an aborted fetus looks like, have an ironclad point of view one way or the other on the issue, and just want to go to their classes without having to see such images again. A very good friend of mine had relatives murdered in the holocaust and purposely avoids viewing images of the atrocities. He isn’t ignorant and he isn’t avoiding reality– he’s seen plenty of images and depictions of that particular genocide. But he does want to go about his day without an emotional load to bear. In a similar vein, a fellow Commentator staffer was bothered by the full image of the last Insurgent issue’s cover that I put up on the blog– for day or two when he visited the blog he pretty much had to view an image that offended him.
On the other hand, the images are undoubtedly powerful. People oftentimes benefit from being confronted by images they find offensive or disturbing– it either strengthens or challenges their existing worldview. I can’t imagine a picture of a late-term abortion could possibly strengthen a pro-choicer’s or weaken a pro-lifer’s respective belief in the righteousness of legalized abortion. Similarly, I can’t imagine a picture of an airstrike victim could possibly strengthen a hawk’s or weaken a pacifist’s view of military intervention. (Of course, in both cases opposing images can be found to invert argument strengths, which is why sensible people generally argue with reason rather than emotion.)
Additionally, images of lynchings in the deep south and of the holocaust were extemely important in convincing people of the respective times that there were unbelievable evils being committed. If a person believes that abortion is an extreme evil, wouldn’t they be negligent to not attempt to confront people with images such as these?
Anyways, enough of me saying what everyone already knows. Tomorrow and Thursday could be interesting, to say the least. If you don’t want to see the images, walk another route or avert your eyes.
Oh, and there was a bit of controversy over whether or not the UO College Republicans were hosting the GAP. I talked with Chair Anthony Warren earlier tonight and he told me that someone from the CRs had indeed reserved the amphitheatre on behalf of the group but that otherwise there was no official connection or involvement on the part of the College Republicans.
