POSTED AT 12:00 AM ON Oct. 18, 2006 | PRINT | Email | SHARE | COMMENTS (4)

"Why on earth would you spend your lunch break standing on a corner, holding a poster of an aborted baby?" This unspoken question was visible on the faces of many passers-by Friday afternoon as a dozen IU students and alumni held an anti-abortion protest in front of IU's Sample Gates.

These members of the Church of the Good Shepherd, a local nondenominational church, braved brisk weather and many hostile encounters while politely distributing anti-abortion literature and displaying posters. The diverse group included six women, seven men, one infant and one IDS columnist.

"Why would you spend your lunch break holding a poster of an aborted baby?" I wondered, after getting the one-finger salute from a car full of women.

"I haven't been on a date in 11 months," I thought. "Making a social pariah of myself probably isn't helping my prospects."

Of course, I already knew the rejoinder to my introspection. It came a year ago from a middle-aged African man. My friend, Jean-Baptiste Mugarura, was targeted for "extermination" during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He lost nearly his entire family and only escaped by the skin of his teeth.

Jean-Baptiste took me to a genocide memorial near Kigali, Rwanda, where the church's floor is still blanketed by bones, left just as they were after a massacre 12 years ago. He showed me this grim spectacle of his nation's shame, then exhorted me to "remember the victims of America's genocide."

Just as Rwandans have shone the light of the public's eye on their nation's crime, we drag abortion out into the light where it can't be ignored. Yes, posters of aborted babies are repulsive -- just like a church full of dead men's bones.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote: "Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable." I haven't met anyone audacious enough to suggest that prenatal infanticide is good, but many accept it as a necessary evil. To be accepted as a necessary evil is not a commendation; rather, it's a condemnation of our complacency in excusing it. What is it that necessitates the commission of an act, the specter of which causes universal revulsion?

Without question, the Hutu peasants who murdered their Tutsi neighbors in Rwanda in 1994 also saw their act as a necessary evil. In their defense, though, they were given the urgent ultimatum "kill or be killed."

Graduate student Josh Congrove, an organizer of Friday's demonstration, confirmed that future demonstrations are being planned.

"As long as abortion continues, there will be cause for demonstrations," Congrove said. "We certainly don't savor that prospect, but we also recognize that to do nothing ... is to fail in our responsibilities before God, our community and our campus."

Similarly, Philip Gourevitch, chronicler of Rwanda's genocide, explained that "the best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda's stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomfortable."

Apathy is no excuse for God's law.