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College Republicans Diaper Drive at NYU Today

Jill

prolife.jpg

This afternoon, the NYU College Republicans are holding a “diaper drive” to benefit anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers. The facebook invite for the diaper drive says:

We will be collecting diapers and monetary donations for EMC Frontline Pregnancy Centers. These donations will go directly to helping women who decided not to have an abortion. “EMC has served over 70,000 clients since 1985, with over 17,000 certain saves from abortion.” You can check out the organization at www.emcfrontline.org.

The purpose of this event is to help women who decided against killing their baby. We’re also hoping in the process to discuss abortion and explain why it’s murder and why it should no longer be legal. We’ll be passing out literature at the table and the following day we will be having the executive director of NYS Right to Life come speak to us about abortion.

Yes, this is a pro-life event and we will be discussing abortion but no matter what your personal opinions may be I encourage you to donate. You don’t have to be pro-life to realize that these women need assistance.

But you apparently do have to be a College Republican to be ignorant enough to think that all these women need are a few diapers.

I left the following comment:

Pregnant women need more than diapers. I’m sure the College Republicans will come out in support of social programs that actually help pregnant women and families, right? Things like aid to low-income women with dependent children, universal health care, contraception access, affordable childcare, and expansion of pre-school and after-school programs for under-served kids?

Or how about promoting ways for women to prevent unwanted pregnancies — like comprehensive sexual health education and affordable and accessible contraception?

Instead, you’re focusing on “crisis pregnancy centers,” which deliberately lie to women. For more info on CPCs and who you’re supporting when you contribute to “pro-life” groups, see:

http://alternet.org/rights/35545/
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/1/17/11545/4565
http://feministe.powweb.com/blog/2007/07/18/the-company-you-keep/

The stupidity and the hypocrisy is astounding. “Pro-life” groups like the NYU College Republicans claim to value life; they claim they want to prevent abortion. But they make a concerted effort to promote policy that do substantial harm to women and families; that give women fewer options; that make it harder for women to decide to have children; that make it more difficult for women to prevent the unintended pregnancies that end in abortion. Pro-life Republicans are proponents of cutting children’s health care. They’re against aid to low-income families with dependent children. They’re anti-birth-control. They promote “abstinence-only” sexual health education, which sorely misinforms students and puts them at risk for pregnancy and disease. They support policies that have been shown to kill women all over the world. And they definitely don’t care about children — 100 percent of the worst legislators for children are pro-life.

This isn’t the first time the NYU College Republicans have put their ignorance on wide display — remember the “find the illegal immigrant” hunt? Or when they invited a Minute Man to speak on campus? They’re a truly special group of individuals.

So if you’re around NYU today, head over to their event and ask when they’ll start supporting paid parental leave, early childhood education, affordable pre-natal and well-baby care, universal health care, contraception access, aid to low-income families, and affordable child care. Be prepared for blank stares and bumbling, incoherent responses about how they don’t have to support actually helping children and families in order to oppose killing babies. Wish I could be there.

For more background on just how screwed up the anti-choice movement is, I’ll point you here.

6 thoughts on College Republicans Diaper Drive at NYU Today

  1. From that Facebook thread:

    “Why should we require that women involuntarily donate their entire bodies for nine months? I didn’t realize that all abortions happened because of involuntary sex. Thanks for pointing that out. Also, thanks taking an event meant to help out a local pregnancy center and turning it into a rant about Republicans and social programs. Way to work around the issue. Yes, it may seem like a valid point except that abortion is used as a form of birth control and making it illegal doesn’t mean there would be 1.3 million unwanted children. When people know that murdering their unborn child isn’t an option they take more precaution in making sure they don’t become pregnant. I hope even you can acknowledge this.
    If you really want to get into a discussion about social programs though and how large-scale government assistance is generally ineffective and when people are taxed less they give more we can do that, but for now let’s stick to abortion.”

    Jill, I admire your efforts there, but there’s no reasoning with that brand of idiocy. I just threw my head against the wall to make the stoopid stop hurting.

  2. UGH im so pissed im stuck at work until 7 otherwise i’d be there! im encouraging all voices for choice members of nyu to try and get down there to protest! i just wish i knew about this earlier…..

    As much as i hate to engage in critical conversation with the nyu repubs id really like to know if any of the people in their group or their partners became pregnant what they would actually do?

    but i can’t say the event suprises me considering the affirmative action bake sale, find the illegal immigrant, and the minutemen and now the diaper drive are all NYU repbulican events

  3. I agree that the tactics of crisis pregnancy centers should be exposed. I agree that people who say that they are pro-life should be challenged to fully articulate what it means to be pro-life. Many people who describe themselves as pro-life are fully willing and up to this challenge–I have been lucky to have a number of deep and challenging conversations with people like this, and remain staunchly in favor of a woman’s right to control what happens to her body.

    I disagree that using the rhetoric of slavery to describe anything besides actual slavery is effective or useful.

  4. As much as i hate to engage in critical conversation with the nyu repubs id really like to know if any of the people in their group or their partners became pregnant what they would actually do?

    LOL….that is easy….

    http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html

    From the link….

    “I’ve had several cases over the years in which the anti-abortion patient had rationalized in one way or another that her case was the only exception, but the one that really made an impression was the college senior who was the president of her campus Right-to-Life organization, meaning that she had worked very hard in that organization for several years. As I was completing her procedure, I asked what she planned to do about her high office in the RTL organization. Her response was a wide-eyed, ‘You’re not going to tell them, are you!?’ When assured that I was not, she breathed a sigh of relief, explaining how important that position was to her and how she wouldn’t want this to interfere with it.” (Physician, Texas)

  5. I have to ask, where did that accompanying picture come from? The woman in it looks like my grandmother, and although it’s a stupid question since she’s been dead for 10 years, I am extremely intrigued by it. Thanks! I love this page but never post.

  6. Jill,

    I wasn’t able to find contact information for you on the blog, possibly because the “About Jill” button seems to be broken, so hopefully you’re still checking the comments to this article. I wrote a response to the NYU news article on the diaper drive ( http://tinyurl.com/ynw7q8 ). My comment more or less parroted your comments above. Yesterday morning, there were three comments on the WSN website. Two were pro-choice, and one was pro-life. When I checked later in the afternoon, the two pro-choice comments had been deleted. (You’ll notice now that the second comment by Katrina refers to my deleted comment and that the first comment is a pro-life response to Katrina’s first comment, which was also deleted.) I called the editor-in-chief, and he told me that he was “99% sure” that this had been a computer error. An hour later, however, I received an e-mail from the opinion editor. He wrote that “Pursuant to our policy of allowing only comments related directly to the article itself, I removed yours and other comments over the course of the day,” and he claimed that my offending sentence was “Republicans are not pro-life. They’re anti-choice.” He accused me of either inviting a flame war or trolling. However, the pro-life comment which was not deleted includes, “for all the rhetoric of the pro-choice movement, the only choice that movement supports is abortion,” and the Washington Square News has a history of publishing very provocative statements including, for instance, Gary He’s name-calling attack on “leftist professors” during which he calls them “Nazis.” It seems therefore that the opinion editor, Anthony Marek, is deliberately censoring comments which criticize the College Republicans. I wrote him an e-mail yesterday, but I have not received a response from either him or the editor-in-chief.

    I thought you’d like to know how this develops. I unfortunately do not have the text of my original comment, but since Marek quoted from it, I suspect he still has it. I do, however, have the text of both his e-mail to me and my response. If you’d like either, send me an e-mail.

    Keep up the awesome blogging!

    Brian

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