When 14-year-old Patricia Aguerrevere felt her brother kicking inside her mother's belly, she knew she was feeling life. Now, as a second-year art history major, she is a member of the Pro-Life Alliance.
Members of the anti-abortion campus organization spent five hours planting 2,000 American flags in the grass on the Reitz Union North Lawn Tuesday.
The event, "Cemetery of the Innocents," was held to demonstrate the number of abortions that occur in the United States.
A blue tarp sign indicated that each flag signified two of the 4,000 abortions that occur each day in the United States.
"Our main focus today is to just raise awareness about how much abortion happens," said Katie Cardinale, a UF philosophy sophomore.
In 2005, 1.21 million abortions were performed in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual and reproductive health research organization. According to the findings, an average of 3,315 abortions were performed daily.
"As I planted each flag in the ground, I thought, 'There's a beating heart this morning that's not going to be alive by tonight,'" Cardinale said. "It's just so sad to think about."
National anti-abortion organizations such as the Pro-Life Alliance have expressed opposition to President Barack Obama's policies on abortion.
Lorrie Kenney, interim executive director of A Woman's Answer Medical Center, spoke to a crowd of about 20 members of the Pro-Life Alliance on the Reitz Union North Lawn Tuesday night.
"Our mission is to intercept harmful behaviors and help women in the crisis that they feel they're in by providing educational materials about their options," Kenney said.
"We feel very strongly that a woman who does seek an abortion should be equipped with education of the physical and emotional risks."
Aguerrevere said she hoped the event would bring abortion to the attention of passers-by.
"You're discriminating against someone who's smaller than you and less developed and in a different location," Aguerrevere said.
