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Crime & Safety

UConn Students Arrested While Protesting Pro-Life Group

Dozens of students flocked to Fairfield Way to protest disturbing anti-abortion images.

Two students were arrested Tuesday morning while protesting a visiting pro-life group, which set up a display of large images of dead babies, adults and fetuses by the Monday and Tuesday.

Brenna Regan, 22, and Logan Place, 21, were arrested after refusing to stop marching around the barricades set up by representatives of The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), a pro-life organization. The pair, two of some 30 protesters that assembled as early as 6 a.m., were charged with criminal trespass in the second degree, Regan said.

“These images were wrong and hurtful to a lot of people,” Regan said. “Many of us understand the life-begins-at-conception idea to an extent, but when the images are so forceful and presented in a way that people couldn’t avoid them, that is … attacking in nature.”

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Representatives from CBR came to UConn Monday with large posters of dead fetuses and displays that compared abortion to genocide in Darfur and the Holocaust. The initiative is called the Genocide Awareness Project.

“We’re just trying to activate the UConn campus,” said Leslie Sneddon, New England Regional Director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. “We’re here, you’re passionate, and I like it.”

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Matt Tuscano, a protester and senior studying psychology said, “It’s not bad to discuss this sort of thing, this is just the wrong way to go about it.”

In addition to images of fetuses, the posters pictured corpses of Holocaust victims and a decayed adult body.

“It’s so incredibly hurtful,” said Cindy Luo, a senior studying Classics and English. “To say that somebody who has an abortion is Hitler reincarnate? It’s offensive. It’s absolutely absurd.”

Many of the student protesters mentioned that captions under the images of fetuses, which included the supposed the age of the fetus, were false, though CBR representatives insisted otherwise.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re pro-life or pro-choice, if you use scare-tactics and medically-inaccurate information, it’s not OK,” said Jessalyn Pennington, a sophomore nursing student.

The anti-abortion organization, which is funded by private individuals, was not visiting on behalf of any student organization at UConn. CBR reached out to the UConn pro-life student group, but the organization did not approve sponsoring the visit. The organization reserved the space on Fairfield Way by the Student Union through the Special Events Office.

Sneddon, a full-time pro-life activist who has had four abortions and two children, said she wanted other women to have the information she did not when she made her decisions.

“It took me a couple of decades to come to terms with the decisions I’ve made. They’ve left me empty,” Sneddon said. “I can help other women…graphically awaken their conscience.”

CBR is on its annual college tour. The group’s next and final stop is UMass Lowell.

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