Author’s Note: The opinions reflected in this piece in no way represent the opinions of College Heights Herald and its staff.

Last week, there were anti-abortion protestors on Centennial Mall. They were impossible to miss—they had a large display set up explaining their views with many people around handing out flyers.

I had to walk past it several times. Each time, I found it even more disturbing.

I was unable to think of little else for several days. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you why. No protest or public awareness project has affected me like this one has. For some reason, though, this one did.

When I woke up Wednesday morning, getting ready for my 8:00 AM class, I was not expecting to see the images that were displayed. Their graphic nature was something that I was in no way mentally prepared to see, even at eighteen years old. Images displayed showed aborted fetuses alongside images depicting the horrors of the Holocaust.

I’ve told friends and family that I couldn’t decide what the most disturbing part of the display has been: these pictures of aborted fetuses, the fact that they call themselves the Genocide Awareness Project or comparing abortion doctors to Nazis and the amount of abortions to the Holocaust.

It’s for this same reason that I could not imagine the high school students and parents taking tours throughout the day expecting to see them either. Imagine their thoughts when they walked past it on what may have been their first time on campus. How does that make them feel about the university? Could this cause prospective students to look elsewhere for their higher education, or does it show that WKU’s campus is one of diversity and acceptance of all ideals?

I’m aware that WKU has no control over the content of what groups such as these protest. This is in no way an attack on the school. These groups have rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that allow them to do what they did. This is a right that’s not protected in all parts of the world.

It was, after all, peaceful protests that led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, giving women the right to vote. Peaceful protests by Martin Luther King Jr. led to President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As recently as 2019, young people protested the lack of action on climate change. Everyday, people are protesting issues on which they feel action must be taken.

It’s this that makes America a nation many around the world admire. People have been guaranteed the ability to peacefully protest in whatever way they seem fit.

There will be unintended consequences like the touring students above, however. Nothing can be done about it, but they must be taken into account either way.

I can’t imagine anyone being mentally prepared to see these images, though. I couldn’t imagine anyone feeling comfortable displaying them like they did, either. The disregard for how it could affect people was shocking.

As I previously mentioned, the group calls themselves the Genocide Awareness Project. Merriam-Webster defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” The name implies that the issue of abortion is comparable to events such as the Holocaust or the Rwandan Genocide.

It implies that countless people are suffering the way that people did during those events. They are events that should be taken seriously, and their impacts known. It lessens the seriousness of parts of history in a way that makes a mockery of what actually happened and what should be remembered.

On the group’s website, one can find a fourteen page document explaining why they chose to name themselves as they did. The document explains why they chose to use the word “genocide” while attempting to justify calling abortion a hate crime. Comparisons are drawn to the relationship between slaves and slave owners in the United States, to the treatment of Native Americans by the United States, and many more.

Reading this document only disturbed me further.

It was the comparisons to Nazi, Germany and the Holocaust that I believe disturbed me the most. In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazis committed unspeakable atrocities that killed millions of innocent people. It disturbed people all around the world then, and it still does today.

These comparisons diminish the sacrifices that countless people suffered through during the Second World War. Unspeakable tragedies happened on a daily basis in concentration camps across Germany that are in no ways comparable to a woman’s choice to have an abortion.

Comparing abortion to arguably the darkest time in world history is what I find the most unsettling. I will give the group credit, though—their display was meant to disturb and to make people think, and it accomplished exactly that.

I understand that people fully believe these views. In the United States, they have the right to think what they want, after all. What I don’t understand, however. is how a group such as this one can morally display what they did. It angered and upset me in a way that I didn’t realize was possible. It disturbed me that the images and comparisons were so easily accepted by the people presenting them, and it disturbed me that the images and comparisons were presented in a way that has no regard for history or the people that suffered in unimaginable ways.

Everyone has their own opinions. Everyone is entitled to them and is able to express them in whatever way they deem fit as long as it follows the law. I understand that they feel this way and want to share their opinion. I cannot understand or respect, however, the way in which this group displayed their views without question and with a complete disregard for current affairs, history and the thoughts of other people.

I can’t stop thinking about it.

Commentary writer Price Wilborn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @pricewilborn.