Sponsored by Mizzou Students for Life, the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s campus outreach team exhibited its Genocide Awareness Project on April 23 and 24 on Lowry Mall.

The GAP is a traveling photo mural exhibit that compares abortion to historically recognized forms of genocide such as the practices of the Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

The pictures included a separated fetus’ limb next to a quarter and a destroyed fetus lying on an adult’s palm, which were compared with pictures of lynchings and the Holocaust.

Sophomore Jalisa Shaw said she thought the pictures would not do anything but bother students.

“Those pictures were inappropriate to display (on) campus,” she said. “The pictures aren’t going to change people’s minds because it is their choice whether to have an abortion or not.”

The pictures also offended the MU Jewish Student Organization. Leaders from the organization addressed the issues they had with the exhibit in an email.

“The systematic planning and implementation of a grotesque Fascist plot to murder the entirety of the Jewish population throughout Europe is what is now known, today, as the Holocaust,” the email stated. “Students for Life corrupt their own cause as well as history when they hijack this painful historical event for their own propaganda purposes.”

CBR campus outreach director Alanna Gomez said the organization brings the exhibit to college campuses because many women who choose to have an abortion are college students.

“Every year, about 1.2 million children are killed by abortion,” she said, “We are hoping to change pregnant women’s minds that (have) not been aided (by) the campus.”

CBR thinks greed and selfishness lead to abortions, biblical counselor Teresa Fricke said.

“We don’t want to take his life, (but) rather keep (his) life, even though it’s (a) 10-week-old baby,” she said.

Educating college students about abortion is essential, Fricke also said.

“The reason we are doing this (on) campus is because in a given day, there could be 140 pregnant women who are on the border (about) whether to abort their baby or not, according to the numbers we have seen,” she said.

Students from MU had a variety of reactions to the exhibit.

MU student Brianna Blackmon said she thought the pictures are appropriate to let people know what is real.

“I believe the comparison between the abortion and KKK and Nazi Germany is valid because murder is murder,” she said.

Blackmon also said she thinks since the child is God’s creation, it is not our choice to determine the child’s life.

“There could be other ways than abortion, such as adoption or taking a pill, to prevent unwanted pregnancy,” she said.

MU medical student Robby Jones said he hates the pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion rights dichotomy in the first place, but said he is pro-abortion rights because people in desperate situations will seek abortions whether they are medically accessible or not.

“In keeping abortion legal, accessible and safe, we are preventing these shock-value pictures on display from becoming even more gruesome, both to the fetus and mother,” Jones said.

MU senior Tanya Drew, who is pro-abortion rights, said women have the right to protect their bodies.

“All men have the right for their own lives,” she said. “For instance, we have the right to kill the enemy during the war for our lives. Same thing goes to abortion. A mother should have the right to protect her own body if giving birth will threaten her life.”