Display angers, educates

Pictures spoke more than a thousand words Wednesday. \nImages of aborted fetuses, the Holocaust and animal testing confronted students as they walked by the Sample Gates. Students, faculty and community members made evident their feelings with looks of surprise, disgust, shock and disbelief. \nThe Genocide Awareness Project came to IU and brought these pictures to compare abortion to acts of genocide. The group remains just inside the Sample Gates until Friday. \nThe pictures are billboard size and enclosed by a metal railing. Behind the metal railing, employees and volunteers helping with the project answer questions and hand out literature. \nGAP member Greg Davis acknowledges the unavoidability of the detailed and graphic pictures. \n"This is right in the midst. You can't get away from it, it's in your face," Davis said. "Sometimes, it takes drastic measures. It's not easy, and we don't like to have to do this. "We're appalled by this."\nThe pictures contain graphic content, but the workers said they believe in their purpose.\nErica Rogers, a 17-year-old volunteer with GAP, said she knows the power of the images which ricochet through people's minds. \n"These pictures are needed because there are some things that are so horrific that words cannot describe the magnitude," Rogers said.\nAlongside the stirring images, students gathered to protest the display. \nKate Schroeder, a graduate student, came to the display as a member of the group IU Reaction to GAP. Schroeder said she does not believe in the effectiveness of GAPs form of promotion. \n"I don't believe these kinds of tactics promote debate," she said. "It should be discussed, and this doesn't promote civilized discourse. I don't believe that any message should be promoted with fear or hate. That is not the way you should get your message across."\nGreg Davis, the GAP employee, said forums and discussions do not draw people and do not truly bring forth the issue. Workers with the project attempt to engage onlookers in discourse about the topic. \nA discussion on First Amendment rights has sprung from the controversy surrounding the display, and the various groups do agree on this issue.\n"I support free speech. I believe they have the right to be here," Schroeder said.\nThe Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, an anti-abortion group that created GAP, sued IU for the right to set its display on the public campus.\nIU wanted the display presented in Dunn Meadow, the campus's normal free speech area, but the two reached a compromise to place the display near the Sample Gates, in the heart of IU's old campus.\nProtesters remained peaceful and showed their dislike and disagreement with the display by distributing information and offering a different point of view. \n"Basically, we aren't reacting so much to this but we want our community to be safe and peaceful. We're not out here to argue or debate. There are times for debate, and this isn't it," Schroeder said. \nSchroeder said she also disagrees with what she sees as mistakes in the display, such as the correlation that abortion causes breast cancer.\nRogers said the display helps people make an informed decision with option, whether that choice be pro-life or pro-choice.\n"People need to know what it actually is," Rogers said. "The pictures show that it is not just a blob of tissue. It is a human life.\n"And when you have a picture, the image is instilled in their mind"