{"id":76630,"date":"2015-10-10T11:12:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T15:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=76630"},"modified":"2015-10-09T21:21:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T01:21:05","slug":"university-of-pittsburgh-abortion-advocates-twerk-on-students-for-life-display","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/university-of-pittsburgh-abortion-advocates-twerk-on-students-for-life-display\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Pittsburgh abortion advocates “twerk” on Students for Life display"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(Students for Life<\/a>) On the fourth day of the Students for Life of America and FRC Action five-day, five-campus\u00a0Don\u2019t Fund Planned Parenthood<\/a>\u00a0bus tour, the\u00a0University of Pittsburgh\u00a0showed pro-life students the tolerance that the pro-choice side is typically known for.<\/p>\n

Joking!<\/p>\n

In reality, they were disrespectful, obnoxious and vulgar.<\/p>\n

Abortion advocates took a page out of Miley Cyrus\u2019 playbook and lewdly twerked, yes twerked, on the banners displayed at the display and on one of our SFLA staff members. It was ridiculous.<\/p>\n

There were little kids there and the abortion advocates were yelling obscenities and had drawn them on their signs. They accused pro-life students of being racist, ignorant and anti-gay. They even took a Sharpie to one of our banners and attempted to draw an \u201cX\u201d through it. They were a bit amateur though since you could barely see the X. #fail<\/p>\n

The students also attempted to block our giant pink bus from moving anywhere. Hey, more people to see it on campus if it wasn\u2019t going anywhere! The police were called because abortion advocates had created a very hostile environment.<\/p>\n

Michele Hendrickson, the SFLA Capitol Area Regional Coordinator, was there and she explains what happened:<\/p>\n

\"ignorance-at-pitt-225x300\"The Planned Parenthood Project display ran as expected on campus for the majority of the day. The display consists of several teardrop banners that display stats from\u00a0Planned Parenthood\u2019s own annual report, showing how many abortions they do a year and how much money taxpayers give them. There are also 897 pink crosses set up in the ground to symbolize the number of abortions Planned Parenthood does per day. We set up about 10am and had great conversations with students who approached the display, some more intense than others, which is totally normal for this display. There were even students who shook our hands\u00a0and thanked us for openly\u00a0sharing ideas with\u00a0such a calm and respectful manner. Other\u00a0students walked away agreeing to disagree, but were\u00a0able to maintain a level of respect.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately a surprising amount of students who were proud Planned Parenthood supporters decided\u00a0it was best to scream obscenities as they walked by rather than\u00a0engage in intellectual discussion. \u00a0One girl even asked, \u201cIs this even\u00a0legal?<\/em>\u200b\u201d \u00a0I assured her that free\u00a0speech was still very much legal in our country, even if you don\u2019t agree with it. \u00a0She rolled her eyes and walked away.<\/p>\n

The volume\u00a0of conversations peaked right at the end of the display around 1:45 PM. At least 10 pro-life\u00a0volunteers were\u00a0immersed in the crowd, engaged\u00a0in productive dialogue,\u00a0when we noticed our display had been vandalized.\u00a0\u00a0A giant black \u201cX\u201d\u00a0was drawn on one of the posters. Moments later,\u00a0as our 2 o\u2019clock break-down commenced,\u00a0one girl angrily walked over to our display with a question mark written on a\u00a0piece of poster paper (maybe to question our display? I don\u2019t know. Communication wasn\u2019t her strong point). She started yelling and was visibly shaking as she spoke. The statements she made were inaccurate and offensive to the student group, calling them names. She continued to shout that everything we printed\u00a0on the banners was a lie.<\/p>\n

\"boys<\/a>I attempted to explain that the sources are Planned Parenthood\u2019s annual report as well as information found by the undercover videos provided by the Center\u00a0For Medical Progress. \u00a0She wouldn\u2019t accept that, and she would not engage in a calm conversation with me, so I ended the discussion with her. Although she had rallied\u00a0some other supporters, she was the one taking the lead with yelling as much as she could.<\/p>\n

Her next move was to convince her\u00a0friends to take pictures of her while she posed sexually around the banners putting her legs around them, groping them, and at one point \u201ctwerking\u201d,\u00a0or rubbing her butt, all over the banner. \u00a0After a few more minutes of her yelling by herself, she told others to grab the blank paper she had brought to make their own signs. \u00a0Students created signs that called the pro-life students \u201cignorant\u201d and other signs had vulgar language.<\/p>\n

Our team continued to break down and tried our best to not respond to the name-calling and offensive language. \u00a0Once the collective yelling began, we were concerned enough to call the campus police, because\u00a0the space was ours to be in\u00a0\"protest1\"<\/a>until 3PM.\u00a0\u00a0The protestors\u00a0created a very hostile environment that did not allow for productive academic discussion.<\/p>\n

We officially cleared the space around 3PM, and a small crowd was still there talking amongst themselves. Other students\u00a0reported to us that while we were running the display, our tour bus was being blocked by students in the\u00a0street who\u00a0stood in front of the bus for several minutes.<\/p>\n

Friends and family of mine have both graduated from and taught at the University of Pittsburgh. \u00a0Pitt\u00a0has always been held in high regard in my household.\u00a0 But today, I am left\u00a0embarrassed to see how this\u00a0group of disruptive intolerant young adults is\u00a0portraying the campus and spending\u00a0their college-career suffocating free speech.<\/p>\n