Is Pro-Life Religion-Neutral?

In a handful of posts this week, I’m going to present a few photos of images across campus and tie them to campus or political discourse.  Look out for them over the next few days.  This photo comes courtesy of Charlie Capps ’10.

Do you need to be religious to be pro-life? That’s the subject of a piece by Review columnist Charlie Capps from the January 8 issue of the Review.  Stanford Students for Life makes an annual display commemorating the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by drawing attention to the number of abortions performed since the case.  Capps tells us of Stanford Students for Life’s decision to replace crosses in their display with roses, in order to make the pro-life position more accessible by removing the religious dimension.  Capps goes on to argue that you can make the pro-life case without religion.

Last week, Stanford Students for Life made their display in White Plaza (Stanford’s designated free speech zone).  And quite a display it was – stretching from the Claw to the pavement, it contained 490 roses to represent the 10,000****roughly 100,000 abortions each, 50,000,000 total performed since Roe v. Wade.  Not something you see on campus everyday.

Making the photo all the more worthwhile, I couldn’t find any coverage of Stanford Students for Life’s display in The Stanford Daily, other than an op-ed that argued that pro-choice advocates need to be more active on campus.  The op-ed referenced another article in the Daily I was unable to find, so shoot it my way if you’ve got it.

So what do you think about the photo above, Stanford Students for Life’s display?  Go to Charlie’s column (where there’s already a lot of great comments) and join the discussion.  Is it clever?  Is it more accessible?  Is it offensive?  Talk about it!