An anti-abortion protest group brought hate and misinformation to Murray State on Monday, Oct. 18, and Tuesday, Oct. 19. The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform utilized Murray State’s Free Speech Space to display horrifyingly graphic images and spread misinformation to students outside the Curris Center.
In a series of massive signs, the Center presented their “Genocide Awareness Project,” which discusses how abortion is a genocide of “unwanted, preborn children.” The project compares aborted fetuses to victims of the Holocaust, a view that we at The News believe is both grossly inaccurate and a gross misuse of the word “genocide.”
As hate speech is not covered by the First Amendment or the University’s Outdoor Request Policy, we believe the University has a duty to its students to keep hate speech and misinformation off of campus property.
Organizations like the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform come to different college campuses not to spread awareness about their chosen issues or to exercise their right to free speech, but to get a response from students. They want to rile students up and make them angry in the hopes that someone will get physical, and then they can then sue the universities for damages.
As a public university, there isn’t much that Murray State can do to stop these groups from using the Free Speech Space without risking a lawsuit. What the University has failed to recognize, however, is they’ve already covered themselves in their Outdoor Request Policy.
According to the Outdoor Request Policy, the University can remove speakers from the Free Speech Zone if they:
- Use abusive language which is inherently likely to provoke violent action
- Promote lawless action
- Make statements of intent to commit violence
- Portray matters obscene under current law
- Speech does not concern lawful activity
- Use speech containing misleading information
The “Genocide Awareness Project” falls into two of these violations. By equating abortion to the Holocaust, the project incorrectly defines both the Holocaust and the term “genocide.”
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, genocide is “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The group being destroyed, according to the Center, is unborn children. If fetuses were truly facing genocide, we’d see a huge increase in crimes against pregnant people where the fetus was directly targeted. This is simply not our reality. According to the CDC, 3,747,540 births in the U.S. in 2019. If unborn fetuses were under attack, as the Center claims, that number would be much, much lower.
Comparing abortion to the Holocaust, is incredibly anti-Semitic and dismissive of the tragedy.
Rather than using their platform for any productive use, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform chooses to incite anger and contempt at the universities they visit. The “Genocide Awareness Project” does not offer any solutions to their issue. Rather, their entire presentation revolves around displaying horrifyingly graphic and misleading images large enough to be seen from great distances.
Murray State allowed these images to remain in plain view throughout the day on Monday and allowed them to return on Tuesday.
Murray State students have already responded to the Center and its message by protesting. On Tuesday, Oct. 19, students took to social media, urging each other to join the protest by making signs and wearing red in order to cover up the graphic images.
We on the Editorial Board call for Murray State to follow its policies and stop allowing groups like the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform to spread hate and misinformation on our campus.
