University celebrates ‘abortion heroes,’ commends illegal abortions

The University of North Carolina - Wilmington celebrated “abortion heroes,” including those who performed illegal abortions, during an event last week.

According to the flier promoting the event, the public university’s LGBTQIA Resource Office partnered with the school’s Women’s Studies and Resource Center (WSRC) to host the event celebrating those who performed abortions before they were legal. The event flier promised free pizza to students who attended.

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“Come learn about the brave men and women who performed abortions before they were legal, often risking their own lives and freedom,” the flier says.

“Abortion providers are heroes!” the flier also says. “Thank you for standing with 1 in 3 women who have an abortion.”

Students and professors at UNCW have decried the event, as well as several events both centers have co-sponsored.

“The LGBTQIA and UNCW's [WSRC] have put on many events like this in the past using taxpayers’ dollars to not only bring awareness to the feminist movement but to campaign and celebrate abortion,” Madison Marston, a senior biology major at UNCW told Campus Reform. “Their intent isn't simply to ‘celebrate abortion.’ No, this is a political campaign against life for abortion, and it is being funded by yours truly, the University of North Carolina - Wilmington.”

Marston, president of Ratio Christi, a student Christian apologetics organization, told Campus Reform that both the WSRC and the LGBTQIA office have been invited to sponsor, co-sponsor, or attend pro-life events, but have declined.

“This demonstrates that the resource centers are clearly biased towards only one side of the argument,” she said. “They don’t want to hear about the Life Line Pregnancy Center or adoption. They only want to push abortion in the minds of women.”

Wednesday’s event, which was billed as a NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) meeting, according to the flier, showed “ Life Matters: The Story of an Illegal Abortionist,” a film which centers on doctors who performed abortions before they were legal.

NARAL is recognized as a political student group by UNCW. In several emails obtained by Campus Reform, Katie Peel, WSRC director, has sent out staff emails promoting NARAL events and meetings which are held at the LGBTQIA office.

Peel labels the group as a “reproductive choice student org” in her promotional emails.

“Saying that NARAL promotes reproductive justice is like saying that NAMBLA [North American Man/Boy Love Association] promotes sexual liberation,” Dr. Mike Adams, a criminology professor at UNCW, told Campus Reform.

According to Adams, this consistent endorsement of one political student group is a violation of the Supreme Court’s Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth decision, which mandates viewpoint neutrality at public universities in their treatment of registered student organizations.

Adams said that of the 12 registered political student organizations on campus, WSRC has chosen to sponsor only NARAL and back the pro-abortion group with its resources and budget.

But it’s not just the WSRC that supports and advertises for NARAL. UNCW’s LGBTQIA office promotes the student group’s activities with fliers and the use of their office space.

Peel is married to the LGBTQIA Resource Office coordinator, Amy Schlag.

“UNCW now has two offices—the LGBTQIA Office and the Women's Resource Center —backing the NARAL student group,” Adams told Campus Reform. “No other student organization has or ever has had such a privilege.”

"UNCW is clearly lying when when it claims to be a free and open marketplace of ideas,” Adams said. “In reality, it sets up political offices disguised as diversity centers used to advance the agenda of the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. UNC-W should rename itself DNC-W."

“I'm glad these two lesbian activists finally came out of the closet and admitted that they celebrate the murder of innocent children. We've all suspected it for quite some time,” Adams said.

A photo of a previous pro-abortion event obtained by Campus Reform shows Peel and Schlag standing in front of a sign which reads, “[g]ood women have abortions.”

"Sadly, these two women seem to believe that their mothers were not good people, simply because they chose not to abort them,” Adams told Campus Reform. “It takes a strange combination of high self-loathing and low intelligence to arrive at such a twisted conclusion."

Schlag and Peel both declined to comment on how much the event cost or how the LGBTQIA office came to sponsor pro-abortion events, instead deferring Campus Reform to the university’s media relations department.

“As an administrator I am not allowed to speak with the press unless it has been cleared with [University Relations],” Schlag said.

UNCW’s media relations office did not respond to a request for comment from Campus Reform in time for publication.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @K_Schallhorn