February 12, 2016 (UnmaskingChoice) — If there is one thing pro-life activists should take encouragement from, it is the sorry state of what passes for the pro-choice “movement” these days. A sad collection of students straggled out to oppose our pro-life display at the University of Central Florida, and it struck me once again that they haven’t even managed to come up with any new slogans since the late 1960s. Aside from that, most of them were, quite simply, ridiculous.
A young male university student, with apparently no classes to attend, spent two full days pacing back and forth in front of the display, a goofy grin plastered on his face. In a sing-song voice, he pleaded with passers-by to accept condoms from a female protestor, waving a plastic fish bowl full of condoms.
“Don’t be silly! Wrap your willy! Don’t be condumb! Take a condom! Our condoms are free! They literally could not cost less! Take a condom!” From the strength of his efforts, I concluded that his university major was not English, music, or sales. He could, however, be quite fantastic at wearing a sandwich signboard on the sidewalk outside a pizza joint.
I had to chuckle. Usually when we set up a display on campus, Planned Parenthood volunteers and a phalanx of feminists show up. This time, apparently, the pro-choice movement was feeling lazy. Send in the clowns!
It was interesting to watch the protestors beg passersby to take their condoms, all the while inventing little ditties on ejaculation and the virtues of latex. In reality, a lot of students walking by ducked their heads awkwardly, dodging the outstretched arms offering brightly colored rubbers and walking faster. Even many pro-choice students had too much dignity to fish condoms out of a plastic bowl in the centre of campus. Even free things aren’t free when they cost you your self-respect.
When a reporter dropped by and chatted with our volunteers about some of the students who became pro-life as the result of the discussions taking place around the display, the raucous odes to genitalia caught her attention and she wandered over to the protestors.
“Have you had any discussions, changed anyone’s mind?” she asked the ringleader of the Condom Crew.
“Um, no…but we have had a lot of supportive ‘woohoos!’” responded the girl cheerily. Woohoos, indeed.
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The pointless nature of their little jaunt was emphasized further by loud suggestions from the male member of their crew urging people to “wrap it” or perhaps take matters into their own hands. I felt this was rather counter-productive to his intentions, seeing as how the protestors wanted to make the pro-life activists look crazy, whereas instead our volunteers conducted themselves with the gravitas of sages in comparison. He wasn’t much interested in conversation, either—although when I told him his mother must be proud of his performance, he flinched a little before the creepy perma-grin slid back into place.
At the end of the day, the fishbowl was still quite full of condoms. I have to admit, I found that failure funny: When you can’t give away a bowl’s worth of free condoms in two days on one of the world’s most populated university campuses, you really are wasting your time.
And in the meantime, dozens of their fellow students engaged in lengthy intellectual discussions on the ethics of abortion, and came to the conclusion that support for abortion was inconsistent with human rights—as the Condom Crew watched and listened.
It must be depressing to be a pro-choice protestor.
Reprinted with permission from CCBR.