IU Students For Life hosts CALL Weekend

The weekend of April 3-5 marked the "One Heart, One Spirit, One Life" weekend of pro-life activism sponsored by IU Students for Life and Collegians Activated to Liberate Life.

Joan Appleton speaks

Appleton noted that throughout history, people have found various scapegoats to persecute. Adolf Hitler had the Jews, Margaret Sanger had the poor and minorities, and the pro-aborts have unborn children.

While she was an abortion nurse, Appleton's clinic performed abortion six days a week. She noted that aborted babies were sent to universities for fetal tissue research after the abortion.

Appleton's move from pro-choice to pro-life began when she operated an ultrasound machine while the abortion was performed. She watched the baby fight the instrument used to rip it limb from limb, and could no longer believe it was not a human being. She was able to continue to justify her activity by believing in the need to care for born women first. Later, when she left the abortion movement, she befriended a sidewalk counselor. When she left the abortion movement, she lost every friend she had in the National Organization for Women. Appleton had worked with Molly Yard and Patricia Ireland.

Appleton noted that to kill a human being, one must first dehumanize them, because nobody in their right mind can kill another person while believing they are human. Eventually, the abortionist dehumanizes the woman, because abortion is a violent attack on a woman's body. Finally, the abortionist dehumanized himself.

Appleton noted the suicide rate among former abortionists is very high, and the substance abuse rate is even higher. When the abortionist realizes the horror of what he is doing, he either leaves the industry, engages in substance abuse, or wholly buys into the culture of death similar to Jack Kevorkian.

Appleton noted some pro-life people have refused to accept her due to her history in the abortion industry. She noted that while she will answer for the 10,000 babies she killed, there are no innocent bystanders in the abortion wars, and everyone must "carry the cross of abortion". She challenged the students to get more active in the pro-life movement.

After Appleton's speech, IUSFL and CALL held a prayer vigil at Planned Parenthood, where abortions are performed on Thursday mornings in Bloomington.

Saturday's activities

After the workshop, the activists picketed the IU Health Center. Currently, IU students have to pay a $70 health fee, which helps subsidize the business costs of the Health Center. But the Health Center also provides "birth control" drugs, which act as abortifacients (chemical abortion) after fertilization. IU Students are forced to subsidize this activity. This created a great deal of response, from honks and "thumbs up" from passing drivers to raised middle fingers and shouts of "go home" or "F*** you!"(For more information, read this article from the Bloomington Herald-Times.)

The CALL weekend continued with a workshop on effective sidewalk counseling, and a speech by Monica Miller on birth control. Miller noted the contraceptive mind set leads to abortion because the baby becomes an "accident" that is now a "threat". This mind set encourages abortion because abortion becomes the preferred option if birth control fails. Miller also explained how "birth control" methods such as Norplant, Depo-Provera, the pill, and RU-486 are actually methods of chemical abortion.

The last CALL weekend at IU was in the spring of 1994.