Group members and other volunteers gathered near the Rock on Farm Lane with one mission in mind: showing students about the realities of abortion in vivid detail. The group partnered with representatives from the Center of Bio-Ethical Reform, who displayed a large poster display of aborted human fetuses, as part of their initiative, the Genocide Awareness Project.
Public policy junior and MSU Students for Life president Lisa Jankowski said the goal was to show students on campus what abortion really is and encourage conversation.
“In order to change minds and change hearts, we wanted to bring this display here so we can maybe get some conversations going,” Jankowski said.
Maggie Egger, an employee from the Center of Bio-Ethical Reform, said the center came to MSU per request of the groups and often brings their display to different college campuses.
Egger said this project is the center’s largest initiative to date.
“There are two main points we want to get across,” Egger said. “First is the humanity of the unborn child, and the second is that abortion is an act of violence that decapitates and dismembers unborn children.”
Jankowski said she thought the display was the best way to get students’ attention because the size of the photos makes people stop and look.
“It makes people realize that yes, this is a genocide, this is murder, we can’t let this continue in the United States,” she said.
Despite the photos, Jankowski said many students walking by the display were apathetic.
But some students,like interdisciplinary studies in social science freshman Sarah Torrico, were disturbed by the display. Torrico said she heard group members referring to the anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and felt misled when she realized what the subject matter was.
“The way they phrase it using the word genocide is wrong,” she said. “This is the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, and me and my friends were walking by and we thought that’s what it was about. It’s inappropriate for them to use that platform for their own agenda.”
Staff writer Emily Jenks contributed to this report.
