Student's Pro-Life Campaign Shakes Up Harvard

By Liz Townsend

In recent years, college campuses - - where the free exchange of ideas ought to be the coin of the realm - - have instead become places where dissent from the liberal pro-abortion party line is not tolerated. Often no where is that more the case than in elite eastern universities and frequently the issue is abortion.

Matt Evans, a third-year Harvard Law School student, has challenged the university's pro-abortion orthodoxy by posting mild-mannered, seemingly inoffensive pro-life signs on campus bulletin boards. Despite being mocked and derided, Evans said he has seen signs that some people are re-examining their unthinking support for abortion.

Evans got the idea for his pro-life campaign when writing a paper on abortion and adoption. He told NRL News that although he's always been pro-life, immersing himself in the facts and arguments about abortion gave him a renewed desire to express his beliefs.

Using his computer and a desktop publishing program, he made small signs reading, "Smile! Your Mom Chose Life." Printing them on cheerful bright yellow paper, Evans added orange highlighter to each message so it would be noticed. As he walked around campus beginning in early January, Evans stapled the signs onto public bulletin boards.

He quickly noticed that the signs were ripped down almost as soon as he posted them. "Luckily, I had a winter coat with lots of pockets," Evans said with gentle humor.

"I'd pack one pocket with the signs, one with a stapler, one with tape, and one with a highlighter." Patiently, peacefully, persistently, Matt kept replacing the torn-down signs. He went through over 1,000 in two months.

After a few weeks of his campaign, a female employee of Harvard stopped Evans as he was putting up a sign. "Are you the one putting up this sh?" she inquired.

Evans said the woman spewed out one of the oldest, most hackneyed arguments - - that abortion was none of his business since he could never have one.

"I told her that was the same thing southerners said to the northern abolitionists when they spoke against slavery," he said. A thoughtful response, and utterly on the money.

The very next day, another employee asked for his name. This did not bode well.

And sure enough the dean of students soon called Evans into her office. She told Evans that she had received complaints about the signs.

But because Harvard has an open posting policy, the dean could not ban Evans from posting his signs. She did insist he put some kind of contact information on them.

Evans added an e-mail address - - ModernAbolitionist@hotmail.com - - and to date the administration has not taken any further action.

But like opponents of free speech in Congress, campus censors soon found other ways to try to prevent Evans from expressing his opinions. They began to rip out only the middle of the signs, leaving the rest up and making it clear the message was removed. Some also put up signs mocking Evans, such as one reading, "Smile! You're a simpleton."

Evans said that he noticed that abortion supporters did not want to engage in any serious debate about the issue; they only wanted to destroy the signs or make fun of his beliefs. Again, he found parallels with the fight against slavery: both the pro- life and abolitionist movements fought against the status quo, against the accepted pattern of behavior.

"The interest of the status quo is to never have a discussion," Evans said. If there is no debate, there will be no change. "Our onus is to keep provoking discussion, never to let the discourse die," he added.

But not all reaction to his signs has been negative.

"Occasionally, someone will stop me when I'm putting up a sign and say, 'Oh, you're the one who's doing this - - I'm glad,'" he said. " Some people at Harvard are pro-life, and we're not afraid to say it." Other friends have helped replace signs that were torn down.

The signs have also inspired others to rethink their attitudes about abortion. One friend, before he knew Evans was behind the sign campaign, asked Evans to explain his passionate opposition to abortion, saying, "Those signs really made me think."

Evans has added new messages on his signs, focusing on themes such as oppression and the analogy of abortion and slavery that would interest law students at the Ivy League university. One sign reads, "Everyone who supported slavery was free. Everyone who supports abortion is born. That's how oppression works."

The pro-life sign campaign has gained national attention from columnists and even ABC News's World News Tonight, which interviewed Evans for a piece on censorship in universities. Many view tearing down Evans's signs as a refusal to allow him to express beliefs that go against the prevailing liberal pro- abortion orthodoxy common in America's colleges.

"It's indicative of the mentality of faculty and student activists at our schools of higher learning that something as innocuous as 'Smile! Your mother chose life' could be considered offensive," wrote nationally syndicated columnist Don Feder.

Evans said that the opposition to his campaign has only made him more determined to spread the pro-life message on campus. He designed a T-shirt with the "Smile!" logo and will wear it proudly.

"I'm doing this to demonstrate that we will not be silenced," he said. "They won't tear it from my chest!"