Yale University student steals flag at pro-life tabling event
Choose Life at Yale organized a tabling event on Oct. 21 to convince students to join the pro-life cause.
In response, several students attempted to steal flags from the group’s display, with one succeeding.
Students at Yale University repeatedly attempted to steal flags from a pro-life display, and others defaced pro-life chalking messages at an Oct. 21 tabling event.
Every month, the student organization Choose Life at Yale (CLAY) hosts a tabling event on campus to persuade people to join the pro-life cause. “Tabling helps us bring an alternative viewpoint to an already overwhelmingly pro-abortion community,” the group’s website says.
The event, which featured a pink flag display, drew disruptive responses from students at the Ivy League school. According to the group, each flag symbolizes “one life lost to Planned Parenthood Everyday.”
Several students attempted to steal flags from the display, and the one who succeeded identified herself in an article for The Yale Daily News, the school’s student-run newspaper.
Christian Gong explained that she stole the flag because she doesn’t accept pro-life beliefs. The article says she spoke to the site while still holding it.
“I took this because I don’t believe in their messaging, and that’s my silent protest,” she told the news site. “The color pink is associated with breast cancer awareness, and I don’t like that they’re using it.”
In addition to the flag display, CLAY chalked pro-life messages on the sidewalk, including a call to “Defund Planned Parenthood.” Two different students poured water over the “De” prefix of “Defund” while CLAY members were still present. Each time, a group member redrew the message.
Despite the pushback, CLAY’s organizers sense a shift in the discussion around abortion and the pro-life position.
“I think people are becoming more sympathetic to the pro-life position in the aftermath of the removal of Roe v. Wade, and there’s a lot of positive changes that are taking place on campus and around the nation,” Oscar Miñoso-Rendón, CLAY’s treasurer, told The Yale Daily News.
CLAY president Kylyn Smith told Campus Reform that while most Yale students are pro-abortion, the group’s tabling usually receives respectful debate compared to the Oct. 21 incidents.
“We have very occasional water splashed on our chalk displays or dirty looks and laughs directed at our displays, but I have not seen individuals engage any further,” Smith told Campus Reform.
“We understand that some students are not willing or do not have the time to talk through their arguments, but we are grateful that the vast majority of those who do stop to interact with our tables do so with the intent to contest us with rather than with force,” she continued.
[RELATED: Leftist ‘pirate’ disrupts pro-life display at University of Tennessee, Knoxville: VIDEO]
As Campus Reform has reported, pro-abortion students often disrupt pro-life events on campus.
In February, a University of Florida student removed flyers for a “pro-life supply drive” to provide “diapers, wipes, pacifiers, and other necessities” for young mothers.
In a video recorded by a Young America’s Foundation member, the student equated being “pro-women” with the power to “sacrifice a child.”
In June, an unidentified man vandalized a pro-life display for the second time at the UCLA.
Campus Reform contacted Yale University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
