Usually when Ohio-based anti-abortion group Created Equal makes its regular stop at UF, students do their best to ignore the graphic images of aborted fetuses set up on the Plaza of the Americas and Turlington Plaza.
But Wednesday, students traded their apathy for posters and chants in response to this year’s addition of a Jumbotron-sized screen showing video clips of actual abortion procedures.
About 50 UF and Santa Fe College students gathered Wednesday morning on the Plaza of the Americas, chanting and holding signs with phrases such as “My cat has more rights than my pussy” and “This was not on my campus tour.”
The group, made up of mostly pro-abortion-rights supporters, said they were concerned the photos and video would trigger an emotional response in students, said Kimmy Kemler, the UF student who organized the protest.
Michael Prizament, 22, holds a sign reading “Pro-life but not pro-trigger,” at an abortion rights protest held on Plaza of the Americas on Wednesday afternoon. Referencing the graphic abortion imagery shown by Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization, Prizament said students shouldn’t have to worry about a panic attack just by going to class.
While walking to her modern British poetry class Tuesday, Kemler said the images caused her to panic and miss two of her classes as well as an attendance quiz.
“I’m a senior, so I’ve seen them every year,” Kemler said. “But this year they were just, sort of, more aggressive about it.”
This prompted Kemler to make a Facebook event Tuesday night, hoping for a few supporters to shelter students and lead them safely through the graphic images. Instead, more than 500 people RSVP’d to the event, which quickly became a forum for pro-abortion rights messages and counter-protest organization.
“It just blew up and went out of my hands,” Kemler said.
Kemler, along with other protest leaders, escorted students and provided blankets for people to relax and talk if they were triggered. The university provided counselors as well. And some students brought their pets, including Kho the cat and Daisy the black-lab-pitbull mix.
“It makes sense to have this option available — to take a break and come pet a dog,” said Michelle Espinoza, a 20-year-old UF political science senior and Daisy’s owner.
Created Equal organizers were not aware the protest was going to happen, but they weren’t surprised, said Seth Drayer, the group’s director of training.
“We believe in free speech,” Drayer said. “We want … both sides to be heard because what we want is an informed public discussion.”
Mark Harrington, Created Equal’s national director, said his organization accomplished that goal. He said his anti-abortion advocates convinced several students to change their views on abortion.
“We call it putting a pebble in their shoe,” he said, “giving them something to think about long after we’re gone.”
The video was particularly effective, he said
“A still is worth 1,000 words, but a video is worth a million,” Harrington said.
The protesters were nothing unusual, he said. Created Equal faces similar opposition at almost every event, and UF’s activists elicited no complaints from him. However, in a Facebook post published Wednesday, the Created Equal page called the UF protesters “vile, mean and rude” in a comment.
The protest stayed tame except for one incident that drew University Police to Turlington Plaza. Just after 1 p.m., a man walking through the plaza got upset and knocked visual aids off a Created Equal table, said UPD spokesman Maj. Brad Barber. Officers responded to the area, but members did not press charges, and the man apologized.
To some students, the conflict at stake was one between right to free speech and right to an education. Megan Smith, a UF costume design senior, held a sign with a quote from UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes from an Alligator story previewing Created Equal’s presence on campus.
“If you don’t want to see it, don’t walk over there,” it read.
“I feel like it’s telling us that the school cares more about these people being here than our right to an education,” Smith, 21, said. “Telling us to avoid two main centers of campus for two days doesn’t work.”
Clay Calvert, a UF journalism professor and expert on First Amendment Rights, said that, like all Americans, Created Equal is allowed to engage in “offensive speech” in a public forum as long as it does not fall under the category of unprotected speech, like obscenity or fighting words.
“Because it’s hard to draw clear lines, as a public university we have to tolerate speech that we might find offensive. The proper response is, yes, to stage a counter-protest,” Calvert said. “We add more play, more speech, to the marketplace of ideas rather than removing some.”
Back on the plaza, Created Equal group members packed up the signs and turned off the screen at about 3:30 p.m.
The students, some at the plaza since the protest’s 9 a.m. start, took the last opportunity to make their message clear: “Hey-hey, ho-ho this propaganda has got to go.”
A student holds a sign reading, “Jesus isn’t a dick so keep him out of my vagina,” at an abortion rights protest held on Plaza of the Americas on Wednesday afternoon. Dozens of people gathered on the plaza to protest the graphic abortion imagery shown by Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 - 4 on 3/12/2015]
Hannah Gutman, a 22-year-old Santa Fe theater senior, holds a sign reading “This was not on my campus tour,” at an abortion rights protest held on the Plaza of the Americas on Wednesday afternoon. Dozens of people gathered on the plaza to protest the graphic abortion imagery shown by Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization.
