Group stages abortion protest

A group of about 35 anti-abortion protestors demonstrated on either side of Washington Road for several hours yesterday afternoon, holding up large signs with images they said were of aborted fetuses. The demonstrators said they were "calling a nation in rebellion toward God to repentance."

The protestors, some as young as eight and nine, came from all over the country as part of a weeklong anti-abortion tour of college and high school campuses sponsored by Repent America, a Philadelphia-based evangelical Christian organization that opposes, among other things, abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution.

Michael Marcavage, the group's president, said in an interview that there was no particular reason for demonstrating at Princeton and that the organization has no affiliation with any University group.

One protestor, Karin Karinca from New York, said that the group visits a lot of college campuses because "the whole point is to engage in conversation and debate, and that's what a university is all about."

Throughout the protest, Princeton students gathered to engage demonstrators on matters related to religion and abortion.

One protestor, Serj Dergazarian from Los Angeles, said that while most of the students he met disagreed with the group's views, they were overall fairly civil in their debate. "At George Washington University I got spit on and cussed at," he said.

Miguel Sansalone '10, one of the students watching the demonstration, expressed doubt that the debate would change minds. "I think abortion is a non-arguable issue because it depends on your own arbitrary views," he said.

Other students expressed outrage about the graphic images of aborted fetuses. "These images are not ones you show, this is disgusting," Maryam Khan '08 said. "I wish we had their addresses so we could go show horrible pictures at their homes."

"I think someone should take these people off campus," Mackenzie Russell '08 said. "It's midterm week, and people are already on edge. I think that for the females on campus who have had abortions these images could be psychologically dangerous."

Anne Twitty GS, co-chairwoman of Princeton Pro-Choice Vox, said the group's tactics were "reprehensible."

"Repent America shamelessly compares abortion to the lynching of African Americans and the murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust," she said in an email. "These analogies are nothing more than hateful propaganda that has been calculated to shock and manipulate."

"The right to choose," Twitty added, "saves women's lives."

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Princeton Pro-Life president Tom Haine '08 said he thought the demonstrators' signs were "terrible and extremely saddening" and had asked members of the group to remove their protest.

"Although these graphic and shocking pictures reveal the sordid truth of abortion in our country, I found today's public display disrespectful of those displayed in the photographs, and certainly offensive to those accosted by the protesters and visually bludgeoned by the images," Haine said in a statement.

Protestor Hannah Murch from Virginia defended the images, saying that the posters were an important part of the demonstration because "people just talk about abortion; they don't know what it looks like."

A Repent America pamphlet that the protesters passed out read, "When something is so horrifying we can't stand to look at it, perhaps we shouldn't be tolerating it."

The group, which Marcavage said has about 10,000 members nationwide, also intends to visit schools such as Rutgers and Temple University.

In October 2004, 11 members of Repent America were arrested under Pennsylvania's hate crimes laws for protesting at Outfest, a gay pride event in Philadelphia. Each was charged with five misdemeanors and three felonies, including ethnic intimidation and riot. The charges were later dismissed.

Anya Levinson '09 thought the posters addressed the wrong aspects of abortion. "I think they have the right to express what they believe," she said. "I just feel like rather than getting facts out about abortion their signs are appealing to people's emotions. I wonder how much they even understand about abortion."

Protestor Aaron Murch denied the claim that the group uses posters only to inject emotion into the debate.

"People think we're out here to be in your face and gross people out, but that's a self-motivated opinion of us," he said. "We're not doing this for ourselves. We came here to send a really important message to college campuses across the country."