In November 1998, the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville was
the scene of a week-long encounter between anti- and pro-choice camps.
The encounter began when Gregg Cunningham’s anti-choice Center for Bioethical
Reform (CBR) brought its "Genocide Awareness Project" to the campus. (This
is the same Gregg Cunningham with whom TFC "debated" on the Hallerin Hill
radio show early last year.)
The anti-choice group came from California with 13 paid staff members to set up multimedia displays (including 6- by 13-foot lighted posters, videos, and amplified sound) outdoors on the campus’ Humanities Plaza. University administrators allowed this, citing the anti-choice group’s rights under the First Amendment.
The CBR’s anti-choice displays attempted to equate abortion with genocide. Larger-than-life photos of black lynching victims, Jewish Holocaust victims, and an infant’s severed head (alleged to be from an aborted fetus) were displayed with the titles "Unwhite," "Ungentile" and "Unborn." Many observers reported being offended by these displays.
After word of CBR’s plans reached campus (just a few days before they arrived) a group of pro-choice students quickly coalesced to organize a counter-display. Tennesseans For Choice assisted their effort by supplying pro-choice literature, buttons, and bumper stickers from our stockpile. Planned Parenthood of East Tennessee and other organizations provided similar assistance, and several community volunteers joined the students at their display.
The pro-choice display was set up about 50 yards away from the anti-choice group. It focused on opposing violence against abortion clinics and on voicing objections to the graphic images and distortions of fact displayed by CBR.
The student organizers invited both pro- and anti-choice students to join them in the display. A significant fraction of the students who helped with the display identified themselves as "pro-life." These students said they participated because they were offended by the CBR displays and by the way the anti-choice group was polarizing the issue of access to abortion.
On Wednesday evening, November 18, about 80 pro-choice students, faculty members, and campus ministers joined together for a candlelight vigil to protest the violence surrounding abortion and memorialize those who have died in attacks on abortion providers. At the same time, in a nearby campus building, CBR was presenting a "debate" about why they think abortion should be illegal. According to the Daily Beacon, the CBR program drew an audience of about 60 people, including children.
A positive aspect of CBR’s visit is that it mobilized pro-choice students on the UT campus, where there has been no pro-choice organization for several years. Student organizers were pleased with the turnout of student volunteers, noting that the November 16-20 time period was close to the end of the semester, when university students are busy with term papers and projects. Unfortunately, the students were unable to establish an official campus organization in November because university policies permit new organizations to be formed only at the beginning of the all semester. TFC hopes to help a campus pro-choice group organize this coming fall.
Meanwhile, Cunningham and his associates continue to peddle their propaganda (they call it "educational information") on college campuses. UT was the fourth campus to be subjected to their "genocide" displays, after Pennsylvania State University, the University of Kansas, and Ohio State University. Since November, CBR reportedly has been to the University of Florida, Florida State University, the Universities of Central and South Florida, and Florida International University.
Choice Advocate readers with Internet access can review the CBR
propaganda at the organizations web site, http://www.cbrinfo.org/.
While the materials on the web site do not explicitly encourage violence
against abortion providers, pro-choice people are likely to be deeply disturbed
by their provocative nature and by the distortions they contain.