Both pro- and anti-choice groups are vying for the youth of America — and some of the rhetoric and tactics on the anti side are pretty scary.
The Genocide Awareness Project, part of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, based in Santa Fe Springs, travels to public universities for two-day “shows” that feature huge full-color signboards and banners depicting aborted fetuses.
Over the last five years, it has appeared at about 60 universities, said Gregg Cunningham, the center’s executive director.
Private universities, unlike public ones, have the right to ban organizations from their campuses. In the near future, Cunningham said, if school officials deny the project access, “they will be punished.”
Cunningham said schools that turn the group down could face having an airplane fly overhead — for days — towing a 50-by-100-foot banner depicting bloody fetuses.
“The airplanes will give us the opportunity to reach the elite, sectarian universities that have been pretty smug in thinking they can have a debate-free zone,” he said. “We will use these pictures like a cudgel.”
The pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, focus on a broad range of issues and try to encourage already pro-choice people (or marginally pro-choice people) to become more active; they don’t seem quite as arrogant as some of the anti’s, who say that they will focus on blue states, and “We will go after student opinion, and the pro-abortion states will become considerably less pro-abortion.”
The anti’s are also trying to take over the “MTV culture” — “The pro-life movement has been portrayed as out of sync and curmudgeonly old white men. By embracing newer design techniques, the MTV mentality — if that makes us hip, so be it,” Jones said. (That’s Derrick Jones, by the way — I suspect that he may be male.)
And what totally hip bands are playing at Rock for Life? I could just be really uncool, but I’ve never heard of any of them , except for MC Hammer and Mike Devine, formerly of 2 Live Crew (yes, you read that right — 2 Live Crew, as in “Me So Horny.” Strange bedfellows, indeed).
The pro-choice bands, on the other hand, boast a few more familiar names — Bikini Kill, Jackson Browne, Mary J. Blige, Bruce Springteen, Tracy Bonham, Dave Matthews, Babyface, Fugazi, Ben Harper, Joan Jett, Jurassic5, Le Tigre, Madonna, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Liz Phair, Pavement, the Ramones, Bonnie Raitt, Santana, Matthew Sweet, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Tom Waits… and those are just the bands that I like.
But, to be fair, I hear that “pro-life” rockers Infant Discarded are really the cat’s pajamas.