Published 2006-10-03T00:00:00Z”/>

Ashley Gebb

Women in a tent looked at their cervixes and students practiced yoga while surrounded by anti-abortion demonstrators holding signs of aborted fetuses in the Free Speech Area.

Two anti-abortion groups came to Chico State to educate students about abortion Monday. The Women’s Center was also in the Free Speech Area to celebrate Women’s Bodies Awareness week.

The yoga class and cervix tent were both part of Women’s Bodies Awareness week, and people from both groups said they didn’t know the anti-abortion groups would be there.

One woman wove between the anti-abortion group’s posters that said, “Abortion is genocide,” and held her own poster that asked, “Want to see your cervix?”

Dressed in a white hat that read “choose life” and a shirt that said “abortion kills kids,” James C. Canfield with Missionaries to the Unborn said his group wanted to share its message about abortion to prevent students from having abortions and show their effect on society, he said.

“If a mother can kill her baby, people rationalize they can kill other people,” Canfield said.

David Miller saw the anti-abortion group, and even though he believes in abortion rights, he asked if he could hold signs of the aborted fetuses, he said.

“I believe this is what pro-choice means – killing a dead baby, and I’m for that,” he said.

If people make things legal and support them, they should be promoted, Miller said.

Kortney Blythe, the director of Campus Life Tours’ group Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, said the group’s main goal was educating students about what abortion looks like and what alternatives exist.

“We want people to see the truth and know abortion kills a human being and hurts a woman, even if she doesn’t realize it at first,” Blythe said.

The group travels to colleges around the United States and tries to encourage discussion, but the graphic signs of aborted fetuses are aimed at passers-by, she said.

Some students walking by shouted swear words at the group, and others stood crying while looking at the images.

“Sometimes the truth is hard to look at,” Blythe said. “Hopefully, the image will stick with them.”

The group wanted it to be a peaceful demonstration, she said.

“They can yell at us all they want. We’re not going to cuss at them, spit on them,” she said. “That’s what they usually do to us.”

Many of Jeanne Christopherson’s yoga students were shocked by the graphic enlarged images of aborted fetuses, and she thought some students might have left after they came to class and saw the posters, she said.

“A few students asked if they could face a different direction so they wouldn’t have to look at it,” she said.

Even though the groups had different messages, everyone had the right to be there, Christopherson said.

“It’s a free speech area,” she said. “We’re here to represent different viewpoints.”

Ashley Gebb can be reached at

<a href=”mailto:[email protected]”>[email protected]</a>