‘Pro-life’ protesters

Hannah Murch is touring the nation for the sixth year. With her long blond hair pulled into a light blue scarf, she stands between James Branch Cabell Library and Shafer Court Dining Center, ignoring tiny sweat beads forming from the glaring sun. Her job is to hold a large poster of what she says is an aborted baby. Bleeding, dismembered and lying against a white background, the baby, which the poster claims is named Malachai, stirred heated conversation Wednesday.

Murch is a missionary with Life and Liberty Ministries, an anti-abortion organization founded in 1994 to visit high schools, college campuses and busy intersections.

They come to VCU – no permit required since it is a public university, they say – with a mission:

“To call people to turn away from their sin, to repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. This is a small time that we have here on this earth, and it is for a reason. That is to love God and love our neighbor, and that is why we come here,” said Michael Marcavage, assistant to Dennis Green, the founder of LLM.

Saying abortion is the sin people need to turn away from, Marcavage brought missionaries and photographs of what they said were aborted children and stood outside of Shafer Court Dining Center and the University Student Commons.

“We’re grieved by this holocaust taking place in America,” he said. “It’s happening over 4,000 times a day, where these children are losing their lives. Their beating hearts are stopped, and they’re torn limb for limb from their mother’s womb in the name of choice.”

Marcavage said this “holocaust” continues because of silence, indifference and apathy, “but most importantly because of our rebellion toward Almighty God.”

Murch, a loyal LLM missionary, said she is active with the street-outreach mission because it’s a good opportunity to get out the gospel. She said she does not understand why abortion is tolerated.

Some VCU students, on the other hand, do not understand LLM’s approach to making its point. Many students wanted to discuss the issue of abortion, not religion.

Standing in the middle of the commotion, every now and then “yellow journalism” or “propaganda” forced its way through the conversations.

Roy Roberts, a sophomore business information systems major, was one of those students who did not understand the organization’s choice

of presentation.

“One thing I don’t like is they’re using a religion to support it,” he said.

Roberts, a self-proclaimed atheist, said he felt the religious arguments did not help the pro-life side of the debate.

“They’re cherry-picking their religion. They’re choosing stuff from Proverbs and Leviticus, and they’re ignoring the rest of it,” he said.

Roberts described the pictures as “grotesque” and said that while he may not agree with the organization’s argument, the pictures are slightly intrusive.

“It takes a rather strong stomach to walk past these things.”

Mary Lucas, a freshman nursing major and her friend, Melissa Lloyd, a freshman forensic science major, agreed with Roberts.

“I think it’s ridiculous that they’re showing these pictures all over campus, especially in front of the dining hall,” Lucas said. “That’s tasteless.”

Lucas said she respects LLM’s right to be at VCU, but the pictures took it too far.

“I think they’re approaching it in the wrong way,” she said.

Lloyd, who is against abortion, said LLM’s strategy is not doing anything for either side.

LLM, however, said it is only embracing its First Amendment rights.

Also embracing the First Amendment, Planned Parenthood arrived not long after LLM.

Laurel Murray, president of the student orgnization Voices for Planned Parenthood, or VOX, said the protesters had the same right to be there as VOX did.

Only a few feet away from the protesters, VOX was seeking signatures for a petition to keep emergency contraception on campus.

“I’m all for getting your side out there, mobilizing and getting into grassroots activism as in talking to people on the street like this,” Murray said. “But personally, I think it’s totally offensive, and I think a lot of students agree with me.”

Murray said the group’s pictures and information were not accurate.

“These are fabricated pictures completely made up for their purpose,” she said. “These are pictures of like a miscarriage, or they could be completely made up. This is not an accurate representation.”

In response to Marcavage’s claims, Murray said, “Everything he’s saying is wrong. I think I heard him talking something about how babies are ripped limb by limb – that’s absolutely ridiculous. The man obviously has spent no time in a clinic where abortions are performed.”

Murray said the bottom line is the pictures and information are harmful to women.

“This is not what a woman wants to see,” she said.

Murray stressed a woman’s decision to have an abortion may be one of the most difficult to make.

“We need to respect her privacy and her ability to control her reproductive destiny,” she said.

As the crowd grew, the debates heightened, and students became more vocal.

Jon Eckert, a sophomore political science major, and James Chinn, a junior accounting major, appeared with bent coat hangers.

“If abortion is illegal, this is what people are going to use for abortions,” he said, pointing the hanger at the missionaries.

Murray said that is sadly true.

“When made illegal, abortion does not go away; it goes underground and becomes unsafe,” she said.

Hannah Bloedorn, a 15-year-old home-schooled student on tour with LLM, was one of LLM’s main features. Bloedorn is a child of rape.

She said she has dedicated her life to the Bible and Jesus Christ, just the way her mother did after she was raped.

She said that although her mother was encouraged to have an abortion, she said “absolutely not.”

Her mother’s decision made all the difference, she said.

“I’m so glad I’m here today.”

As the hours went by, the heat drove LLM to pack up their pictures. They said their job was completed.

Aaron Murch, a missionary of LLM, said, “Even if they don’t agree with us right off, at least they’re thinking about it.”

LLM is on a week-long tour of Virginia, and VCU’s reputation with the tour is quite known for being full of heated conversation, Murch said.

Some students, like Kerry Epperson, a sophomore exercise science major, signed a petition to have the group and their pictures removed from campus. They also do not want the group returning next year.

“Regardless of your beliefs, and regardless of these people’s beliefs, you should have the right to walk through campus without having to see pictures of mangled babies,” Epperson said.

Epperson called the pictures “completely obscene” and said the LLM missionaries were over-dramatic.

“Those posters are 6 to 7 feet high,” she said. “You can see them all over campus; you can’t avoid them.”

Epperson plans to take the petition to University President Eugene P. Trani to keep LLM off VCU’s campus.

E.J. White, a junior political science major, said he welcomes groups with differing ideas. He said he feels college campuses are the place to learn to be critical thinkers and take in foreign ideas.

As students walked by calling the pictures “inaccurate,” White defended LLM’s right to present their ideas.

“Accurate or inaccurate, it doesn’t say in the First Amendment that whenever you speak, you have to speak the truth,” White said. “It’s up to the people listening to you to decide whether or not you’re worth listening to.”