“Thank you guys so much for doing this. This is important, and you have no idea how much this means to me.”
– Emma, a student at Louisiana Tech who was in tears
after walking through the new college exhibit
By Kandace Landreneau, College Director
Louisiana Right to Life launched our “#They’reHumanToo” walk-through pro-life display at Louisiana Tech University on Nov. 5. Since then I have traveled to Nicholls, LSU and Loyola and plan to set up the exhibit on every college campus in Louisiana within the next year.
This exhibit has been months in the making and was a long term goal of Executive Director Ben Clapper. His dream of a traveling pro-life installation that could confront the pro-abortion message head-on among our college students is finally a reality.
The “#They’reHumanToo” display is a traveling installation that defends the humanity of the unborn in a street art fashion and asks the viewer why we value one human being over another. The goal is to remind the students that every human life is valuable and should be protected and then prove to them that the unborn is a human life, no matter what they’ve heard from their professors or during the most recent presidential race.
Abortion has been one of the main focuses of presidential candidates in the last year because abortion is something very familiar to their target audience, young people. More than 50% of all abortions are committed on women between the ages of 18 and 24, which means the majority of abortions are being experienced by college aged women. Unfortunately, even in Louisiana, the most pro-life state in the country, those statistics remain the same. The majority of women traveling to the abortion businesses are from our universities, so, even though election season is over, the necessity of the pro-life message on every university cannot be overstated.
The response to the display has been overwhelmingly positive, even among those who proudly call themselves “pro-choice.” I think this response is primarily because they have rarely seen something presented in a way that is meant to challenge them to think instead of just fight back. In today’s heated political culture students are very accustomed to protests and marches and see it as one of the only ways different sides present their message. They haven’t witnessed an event where pro-life information is being presented in a way that invites conversation instead of conflict.
This exhibit is meant to spark dialog and get students to talk about why they’re pro-choice and then to be challenged by our pro-life student groups who have been trained by Louisiana Right to Life to defend the humanity of the unborn.
Multiple students have admitted that the display caused them to think about abortion in a different way even though they’re “pro-choice.” One student said, “I’ve always leaned toward morality being relative and different for each person. I can’t tell other people what to do, because what’s right for me might not be right for them. But seeing this is making me think differently about it all. Some things are just wrong across the board.”
These conversations are not easy, but presenting the pro-life message in a clear way always reaches the conscience of students who are considering abortion. We’re looking forward to the Spring semester and the opportunity to take this message across the state to campuses where abortion finds sanctuary. We’re going to continue to expose the realities of abortion and defend the rights of the most vulnerable human beings among us. I am honored to be able to carry this message to our college campuses and, because of your support, there will be lives saved, both mother and baby!
