College campuses tend to reflect foreign nations with limited speech rights instead of the land of the free and home of the brave. The exchange of ideas has so many caveats it’s easy to forget in a University that there’s a First Amendment.
Safe spaces have replaced robust discourse, sheltering too many from the non-monolithic marketplace of ideas.
Harvard’s motto used to be “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae” which translates into “Truth for Christ and the Church” as the school was established to train missionaries. Today, it is simply “Veritas” or “Truth”, severed from the original Source, left to be subjective and ultimately (as we see with abortion) destructive. Knowing Truth is a constant pursuit, and it takes initiative. Seven years ago, when my amazing wife Bethany and I started The Radiance Foundation, I knew little about the historical, legal, socio-economic, and scientific aspects of abortion. I worked hard to learn, to weigh evidence, to come to reasoned conclusions about the human rights issue of our day.
I truly applaud the brand new Law Students for Life and the Black Law Students Association for creating an opportunity for Truth to be spoken on an Ivy League campus last week. I spoke to Harvard Law School students to address abortion’s alarming and disproportionate impact in the black community with rates up to 5 times higher than those among whites. Harvard Law Professor Diane Rosenfeld, who teaches courses on “Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice” was invited to offer a pro-abortion view. (Predictably, she refused to allow the whole forum to be recorded.) Her focus on violence and rape is ironic, considering she supports the violence of abortion and Planned Parenthood, which has repeatedly failed to report rape. The abortion chain was caught aiding and abetting sexual predators in Live Action’s undercover video exposé. Planned Parenthood even fired one of their abortion center directors at the middle of this scandal. I was conceived in rape, so protecting the innocent is my passion. In typical liberal fashion, she called my adoption story—where a woman proved she was stronger than her circumstances and chose Life for her child—“cute”.
It became immediately apparent that Rosenfeld knew nothing about the central theme of the event. She had to have talking points given to her by the Harvard Law Students for Reproductive Justice--none of which addressed the premise. She filled her time invoking buzzwords that define “Women’s Studies” programs (victim, bodily integrity, sexual coercion, gender violence) and sounded eerily reminiscent of Margaret Sanger as she repeatedly stated only “wanted” children are worthy of life.
It was surreal to hear the mocking laughter, jeers, and mistimed finger snapping from predominantly black students throughout my brief 15-minute presentation. I shared my personal story, dispelled the myth of the “unwanted” child, talked about more black babies being aborted than born alive in NYC (1,180 aborted for every 1,000 born alive), highlighted the 330,000 unarmed black lives aborted each year, and provided historical and statistical context to the issue. It was obvious the more vocal “prochoice” students didn’t want context; they wanted confusion.
I addressed poverty rates (9.65% among whites, 20.5% among blacks, 22.5% among Hispanics) and uninsured rates (12.7% among whites, 15.9% among blacks and 24.4% among Hispanics) and how it did not explain abortion rates up to 6 times higher among blacks than whites and often 2-3 times higher than Hispanics.
I challenged the often empty rhetoric that #blacklivesmatter if time and place determine the value of human life. I affirmed that #whitelivesmatter and #brownlivesmatter because #humanlivesmatter, period.
The hour-long Q&A was, basically, a free-for-all to try to attack and silence me. It didn’t work. The “Bodily autonomy” defense was invoked numerous times, ignoring the fact that aborted human beings are never afforded any. One of the students angrily declared that, as a man, I would “never lose my bodily autonomy”. As a father, I lose my “bodily autonomy” every day. I lovingly sacrifice for my wife and children. I give of my body—just as mothers do—to provide, to nurture, to protect, to educate, to console, to play, to instruct, to do whatever I need to do no matter the physical cost to my perpetually exhausted body. Self-sacrifice is a far higher virtue than a narcissistic and unrealistic notion of bodily autonomy.
Professor Rosenfeld lamented some unidentified photograph of seven white men who allegedly opposed the suffragist movement, decrying white patriarchy. She, and pro-abortion advocates, have no problem with seven white men in robes who ruled, in our nation’s Supreme Court, that one group of human beings (abortionists, who were mostly white men) could kill another group of human beings (the unborn).
I was laughed at when I suggested fatherlessness has a huge impact in the black community where 72.3% of children are born to unmarried mothers. When I praised single moms for doing all they can to raise their child(ren) yet were never meant to be both mother and father, the “reproductive justice” students scoffed.
The student activists were merely parroting talking points from the pro-abortion group, SisterSong, which has tried (and failed) to remove our TooManyAborted.com billboards in cities across the country. These “reproductive justice” students are being propagandized by a minority-led activist group funded by the world’s largest population control organization and population control chain—the Ford Foundation and Planned Parenthood. Oh, the irony. They were ferociously defending an institution birthed in eugenic racism and elitism that has become the number one killer of unarmed black lives (and white lives and every hue in between). Many of these Harvard “social justice warriors” are fighting for the billion-dollar oppressor and not the defenseless (and mutilated) oppressed.
But I am hopeful. Courageous students on campuses across the country, including Harvard Law School, are challenging the misinformed status quo. There are brave millennials who don’t need safe spaces to hide from the Truth. They are willing to stand their ground in hostile territory to illuminate the fact that all lives matter, born and unborn.