Ellington

The national abortion debate got a little more local yesterday when the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) set up on campus.

The visual anti-abortion exhibit was displayed in Red Square, while abortion-rights protesters circled the project and chanted their opposition.

“I’d say about 80 percent of the people just walk right on by, steal a couple of glances,” said UW sophomore Marc Snyder, who organized GAP’s presence on campus. “It’s too hard to say if it’s just apathy or [if] it’s just too much to deal with all at once.”

GAP’s methodology involves the juxta-position of graphic images of abortion with images of violence and mass killing, paired with evocative text. Some of the photographs depict Holocaust victims, lynchings and child abuse.

Last week, senior Autumn Cutter coordinated a protest via Facebook. More than 20 people, including advocates from Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Radical Women, swarmed around the exhibit.

While Cutter agreed that the group held the right to freedom of expression, she found the comparison between abortion and genocide offensive.

“There [are] two things that I think are really horrible here,” Cutter said. “First is the implication that women are genocidal agents when they choose to have an abortion. The second is equating the suffering that so many people have gone through via genocide with the common procedure that many women undergo.”

In contrast, Darius Hardwick, northwest regional director for the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, which sponsors the exhibit, highlighted the parallels between the two acts.

“[Genocide] is a group of people, and it’s a lot of them dead,” Hardwick said. “The bigger connection is that there are millions of [babies] being killed. There are 1.29 million babies aborted in the U.S. every year, 50 million worldwide. That’s more babies being killed from abortion than Jews that died in the Holocaust.”

The tone of the protest shifted when one student egged the exhibit, and another scribbled on the signs advertising it in Red Square.

A free-speech board was erected next to the exhibit, offering students a chance to react to the images in another way.

Sophomore Tiffany Vu scrawled three messages on the board, among them “There’s always another way,” supplemented by a small doodle of a heart.

“As a Roman Catholic, I believe that abortion is a horrible, horrible thing, and it should never have to happen in the first place,” Vu said. “But, I don’t think all this shouting between the pro-choice and the pro-life sides is really solving the problem at all.”

Snyder stated that the goal of the exhibit was to sway observers’ opinions about abortion.

Holly Conger, a student at Olympic College in Poulsbo, Wash., and volunteer for the exhibit, explained how she persuaded a woman not to get an abortion.

“She was nine-weeks pregnant, and when she came over here, she was kind of on the fence about it,” Conger said. “When she walked away, she said she was going to keep the baby.”

Others, like senior Annamaria Clark, were unaffected by GAP.

“The pictures are very shocking. I wanted to come see what arguments were being made,” Clark said. “My official opinion would be pro-choice the first trimester. [That was] my same opinion coming into this.”

Personal views aside, Cutter and the other protesters contemplated GAP’s place on a college campus.

“You have every right to be against abortion — that is totally your decision.” Cutter said. “This is just really unnecessary and really inappropriate. There are other ways to protest abortion besides doing this.”

GAP will be in Red Square again today from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reach reporter Rachel Solomon at news@dailyuw.com.