Others were not so convinced that the shocking images have value. “You’re doing it the wrong way!” a defiant young man bellowed several times as he walked past the display. Another student blocked the images from his sight with a notebook.
Underneath the charged surface, however, there was productive dialogue taking place among the students and volunteers. Alaina Parsons, 19, said that the discussions she had were mostly fruitful. “I was enriched and enlightened.” Parsons, who is in favor of legalized abortion, said she was upset with the educational system for not presenting the facts of abortion that she learned from Justice for All. “We’re simply not taught the facts of it all in our education. We have never seen the sight of it, and that’s not fair.”
Metro State student, James Yarovoy, said that the dialogue he engaged in with Justice for All volunteers persuaded him to change his view on a few particular issues. “I’m still pro-choice,” Yarovoy said, “But I was persuaded that late-term abortions are morally impermissible and that affirming unborn life as much as possible is a general principle we ought to hold.”
The 15 feet high and 30 feet wide displays include images of fetuses at various stages of development and also some disturbing images of aborted fetuses. The images are supposed to create dialogue and also awareness of what actually happens when a woman has an abortion. “Our aim with these images is to make abortion unthinkable,” said Cook. According to her, the images have power because they give a voice to groups of people who would not even be considered human otherwise.
The Justice for All spokeswoman cited the 1955 case of Emmit Till, a young black boy who was killed and his body mangled for whistling at a white woman. Till’s mother insisted on an open casket so people would see the treatment blacks were receiving – subhuman. Jet magazine published a picture of the body, a picture that inspired Rosa Parks to remain sitting in the famous bus incident. The goal of these pictures, Cook said, is to get another class of humans the respect they deserve – the unborn, “Just like Jet magazine did for Emmit Till, we’re opening the casket on abortion,” she said.
Cook explained that the group has visited “about fifty college campuses” around the country, and that this is the fourth time they have been on Auraria Campus since 2004.