MANASSAS, Va. – Students for Life of America (SFLA) is conducting a national tour to visit 26 college campuses this fall in order to inform students about the Planned Parenthood Project—the SFLA initiative which directs students to pro-life services and gives information about Planned Parenthood’s promotion of abortion.

The tour has met with mixed reactions, with a recent stop at University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., and another planned this week at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

As stated on the SFLA website, “80 percent of Planned Parenthood facilities are located within 5 miles of a college or university campus.”

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SFLA President Kristan Hawkins shared her experiences with The Cardinal Newman Society. She said, “Students are having abortions at both Catholic and secular schools and it is vitally important that our messages are heard on all campuses.”

“Our experiences on Catholic campuses aren’t much different than secular colleges,” Hawkins said.

Indeed, a 2008 study commissioned by the Newman Society found that out of students attending a Catholic college or university, nearly 1 in 5 knew another student who had or paid for an abortion.

Hawkins told the Society about the tour’s visit planned for one Catholic college this week. “We are hosting the Planned Parenthood Project at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI, on Friday and within three hours of putting up flyers advertising the tour, they were either torn down or ripped up,” Hawkins said.

Kristina Hernandez, the director of communications for SFLA, provided the Society with a visual of torn posters, one of which had been marked with the phrase, “STOP SPREADING LIES.”

Last week, SFLA stopped at the University of St. Thomas. It was a strategic stop as St. Paul, Minn., has the “third-largest Planned Parenthood facility in the nation,” said Angela Erickson, the Northern Regional coordinator of SFLA, in an article published by TommieMedia, a student-run publication at St. Thomas.

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SFLA set up a visual display on the campus quad which featured 915 pink crosses, one for each abortion performed by Planned Parenthood every day, according to the report.

SFLA told the Newman Society that 59 percent of 18-24 year-olds have no idea that Planned Parenthood performs abortions. One student was quoted by the TommieMedia article saying that the statistics taken “from Planned Parenthood themselves… [are] actually quite shocking.” But another student reportedly finds Planned Parenthood to “be beneficial to college students,” according to the article.

SFLA will continue its fall tour for the Planned Parenthood Project and will also lead a simultaneous We Care Tour on other college campuses to give out resources to victims of sexual assault and educate pro-life students on how to talk about abortion in cases of rape.

Authored by Justin Petrisek
Originally published here by Catholic Education Daily, an online publication of The Cardinal Newman Society

Published with permission