Dear anti-abortion protesters on FSU’s campus, your disregard for others in your photo display is sickening

Okay, listen. My main philosophy in this life is this: do whatever the hell you want, just don’t hurt people. A pretty simple rule, yes?

Not for you lovely folks behind the Created Equal organization, evidently. Instead, you’ve decided to take up a post in the “free speech zone” on my college campus in order to spew your uninformed and insensitive rhetoric about what you believe women should do with their bodies. (It’s worth mentioning that at least 80% of the volunteers you had on my campus today were cisgender men, despite your issue being one that is arguably an issue for people with uteruses. But I digress.)

I’m not here to debate your actual argument about abortion, because I accept that I cannot change your opinion. What I can criticize, however, is your presence on my campus, a place that is meant for learning and growth, not being shamed for what I do or do not believe in.

Yes, on this particular day, you were all smiles and well wishes of “have a nice day,” but to me, you may as well have been grabbing me by the arm and shouting in my face. You spent your day cornering students that were trying to do nothing more than get to class or grab a quick bite to eat in the student union, and that is what I cannot condone.

On top of this, you set up towering posters of horrible, graphic images of bloody body parts and of human fetuses, a sight still burned into my brain and making me shudder as I write this. And I don’t mean one of two of these posters; I mean they were everywhere. This beautiful campus that I feel fortunate every day to call my home was defaced with your violent and hideous propaganda.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. Florida State junior Julianne Lowry wasn’t afraid to make her voice heard to the Created Equal fanatics, and later told The Tab, “Florida State is such a beautiful campus and they’re ruining it with all these gross pictures, and they’re trying to shame people for having an opinion. That’s just not right.”

Several students walking through the free speech zone wrinkled their noses in disgust, visibly bothered by the depictions of blood and gore displayed on a campus that many of us consider to be a safe haven.

I don’t care if you’re pro-life, pro-choice, pro-whatever; I’m always down for some healthy discourse, and I will respect you as a human being regardless of whether your opinions align with my own. But to flout your opinions to strangers, young and impressionable adults, no less, with absolutely no regard for what these students may have experienced in their past that might make these photos and this rhetoric painful, is abhorrent. You have absolutely no regard for the feelings of the people at whom you are directing your judgement and discrimination.

I am a survivor of sexual assault. It happened here, actually, on this very campus. And now you folks are standing on this campus in front of me and telling me TO MY FACE that if I had become pregnant from what happened to me, you would force me to bring that pregnancy to term and bring that child into the world. A final and permanent reminder of the worst day of my life. The thought that you would force this unimaginable hardship upon someone like me, and that you so brazenly voice this opinion to a demographic among which there are countless survivors of sexual violence makes me physically ill.

I don’t care what your opinion is. I don’t care that you want to voice that opinion. I don’t even care that you want to try to influence others’ opinions on this issue. But to inundate college students with graphic imagery and intrude in their daily lives to harangue them about such an intensely personal topic is frankly inexcusable. Forgive me if I don’t welcome you with open arms on your next college tour.