Pro-Life Groups Face Increasing Hostility on College Campuses

By Lisa Bourne
Life Site News

Violations of free speech rights for pro-life students is escalating on college campuses and high schools across America beyond the vandalism of pro-life displays that has occurred over the past few years.

Pro-life groups are noticing an ongoing pattern, and one group also says there has definitely been an uptick in face-to-face incidents since the pro-abortion March for Women.

The radical march on Washington, D.C., last January started as simply a pro-abortion event but morphed into a collective of nearly every radical cause, many of which seek to silence speech with which they disagree.

“Ever since the election of Donald Trump, abortion advocates have been more emboldened to violate the law and use whatever means necessary to censor pro-life speech on campuses across America,” Created Equal national director Mark Harrington told LifeSiteNews.

While radical “Antifa” demonstrations have caught a lion’s share of the headlines with widespread violence, a Created Equal release this week chronicled some of the increasing head-on assaults on pro-life speech.

“Sir, can you let go of me?” says Created Equal staffer Sam Riley on a video capturing a student at the University of Pittsburgh grabbing Riley and trying to forcibly steal literature out of Riley’s hands. The student was throwing the pro-life literature away and attempting to distract Created Equal members from performing outreach to students.

“Please get your hands off me,” Riley continues as the male student belligerently challenges him, demanding Riley give him literature that he intended to throw away.

The student falsely insists that he hasn’t touched Riley or his literature to a peace officer passing by.

The officer directs the student not to grab the literature from Riley, and then the student launches a bizarre rendering of freedom of speech that somehow creates justification for his demand for some of Created Equal’s literature.

“I think that if I am right, I’m pretty sure the freedom of speech dictates that if you’re giving other people things, then you have to give it to me as well,” the pro-abortion student stated. “According to freedom of speech, freedom of speech is only illegal by the method you do it. And you have to do that method based equally upon all people. If you’re giving the literature to everybody and you’re specifically not to give to me because I’m voicing an opinion … ”

The October 26 confrontation continued, with a female pro-abortion student consistently yelling in the background about “choice,” and it wrapped up with the male pro-abortion student triumphantly taking some of the literature from a nearby garbage can and telling Riley, “You guys are also trash.”

Life Site News report continues