Hate Against RTL: An Anecdote
It is common for people to think that pro-lifers are hateful individuals who simply want to control women’s bodies while pro-choicers are the ones who are acting morally. I’d like to challenge this perception with something that I experienced while chalking just the other week.
On Wednesday October 20th, the Right to Life board met in Red Square to chalk pro-life messages on the ground. Of course, we didn’t expect pro-choice students to agree with what we wrote but we weren’t expecting to receive such great hostility. I chalked a large section of the ground saying “unborn humans have the right to live”. After I finished, a woman passed by and said: “Oh how nice, people are chalking on Red Square, let’s see what it says...unborn humans have the right to live… ugghh these psychos — it’s the pro-lifers.” I responded to her asking, “Do you disagree with that statement?” She looked at me with fury before uttering the words, “I’d kill a baby any day of the week.” I was a bit shocked and felt compelled to say something back to such a terrible statement. So I simply said, “What you just said is horrific.” She stormed off.
As the night progressed, more and more pro-choice students walked past andread the messages while erasing them with their shoes. We asked them to stop as we were not breaking any rules but simply exercising our Red Square free speech rights. Furthermore, it is against Georgetown University free speech policy for our speech to be erased in this manner. This did not stop some of them from discreetly trying to erase more pro-life messages. Still later, some pro-choice students arrived with chalk of their own and proceeded to counter-chalk. The anger was visible on their faces. Some of us began to ask them questions. Instead of engaging in good faith conversation they replied with the clichéd statements of “Did I ask?” and to the men in our group “You don’t have a uterus.”
Now we get to some of what the pro-choicers wrote (see some of the pictures attached). By standard, there was the pro-choice mantra of “my body, my choice”. They did not ask us about how our opposition to abortion is because we think it’s never moral to kill someone else’s innocent body, in this case, the unborn’s. The unborn didn’t even get a choice and even if they could choose, why would you think they’d say yes and even if they could say yes, it’s still wrong to kill someone innocent. I later had a discussion with someone who was saying that the unborn is literally a part of the woman’s body. I asked her if by that she meant that the unborn are just as much the mother’s body as a hand is. She said “yes” but thankfully she took that back and gave me a different yet still vague answer. I asked her that if she thinks that an unborn is part of the mother’s body, then if the baby is male, does that mean the mother would have male genitalia as well as female genitalia. This is when she stormed off complaining about how ridiculous these questions were even though I was being serious.
Back to the things that they wrote (not PG): beside our chalking that said “need babysitting?” (because we do gather volunteers to help with free babysitting), someone wrote “need anal sex.” Next to our email address, someone wrote “sucks ass titties.” Another wrote, “I wish my mom had aborted me so I didn’t have to read this sh*t.”
Now this is saddening and highly egregious, especially to all the people alive today whose parents almost aborted them. One pro-choice student came over and saw that particular comment and made a big deal of telling us how funny he thought it was. The immaturity in these comments shows a disingenuous behavior of many pro choice students, many of whom did not care to have a good-faith conversation on this topic. Furthermore, the active supression of pro-life speech and verbal intimidation of pro-life students is counter to the values of liberal democracy that modern society, and univeristies specifically, ought to hold. I would also add that people tour campus regularly, often including young children, and these are the kind of things they would have seen on the ground. Is this how we want to portray the Georgetown community to the public?
There’s a good side; some pro-choice students allowed us to engage with them in discussion over our points of difference and some really good conversations took place. I want to commend those people for taking the time to discuss abortion with us. The school newspaper, The Hoya, showed up to take contact details from Right to Life in case they published a story on the incident (though this has not happened). I feel as though there was a silver lining to the counter chalking, as it showed people how vitriolic some students can be against Right to Life and it for discussion. I hope that the future will be full of more fruitful discussions without the immaturity displayed by some students on Red Square that night.
Julian is a Sophomore in the College studying philosophy. He also serves Right to Life as its Tabling Chair.
