Showed pictures of battered foetuses.

Last Thursday, students and staff at the University of Oslo (UiO) who were passing by Fredrikkeplassen were met with a huge banner picturing aborted and battered foetuses. President of the Student Parliament, Lina Johanne Strand, witnessed the episode.

– This is terrible; I don’t think I will ever forget these pictures. This has to go immediately! It’s extremely provoking and sad, was Strand’s comment to Universitas while the campaign was going on.

The pictures were meant to focus on the issue of abortion, and the campaign was set up by the student organisation Transdenominational Network (TNet) and their American guests from the organisations Operation Rescue/Operation Save America.

In the end, people reacted so strongly against the campaign that Frode Meinich, Director of the Technical Department (TD), Astri Ottesen, Works Manager of TD, and Kjell Sjøberg, Area Supervisor of TD turned out to stop the campaign.

– We received a considerable amount of requests to stop an offensive abortion campaign from students, student politicians, and a number of university staff, says Meinich.

– We were censored

– I am very surprised by the way the university responded to our campaign – we didn’t yell and we weren’t violent, says Professor Pat McEwen from Florida. She is the spokesperson for Operation Save America, and states that she only wanted to speak the truth about abortion.

– Abortion means killing a child. It didn’t seem like the university was comfortable with the truth. First, they made us remove the banner, which we did. Then we were told that we couldn’t distribute our brochures, and in the end, we weren’t even allowed to make conversations with the students, McEwen states.

She believes that a university should be open to different points of view.

– If you only listen to the ideas you like, your perspective becomes very limited. And if you always agree with everyone, you’ll never grow as a person. We were censured, McEwan declares.

– But do you understand how some people may be offended by these pictures?

– Some may find our campaign horrible, while others may support it. That is why we have freedom of speech.

Dismisses allegation of censorship

Strand does not agree with McEwan’s claims of censorship.

– The means they used were extreme, and their only purpose to create disgust. In my opinion they crossed the line for what is acceptable on a campus. However, I would like to make it clear that I believe that everyone should have the chance to make political statements, I merely reacted to the way they did it.

Strand also thinks that the information leaflets the anti-abortionists were distributing had no truth in reality.

– The «Let the children live» brochure was dated back to the nineties, with methods that aren’t relevant today. Among other things, it showed foetuses aborted at 21 weeks and various abortion methods that are incorrect according to Norwegian practice. The campaign was very offensive and made on the wrong terms.

Meinich agrees with Strand, and says that the campaign was very different from the Christian message TNet has advocated in the past.

– In the old agreement we have with them, they have not mentioned campaigns like this one, and until now our relationship with the student organisation has been good, Meinich says.

He points out that the Technical Department has no intention of moralising about what can be considered acceptable issues to campaign on, and says that the reason why they stopped the anti-abortionists was the way they put their message across.

– Our job is not to be judges. As long as everything goes nice and quietly, we want to be as cooperative as possible.

Stand corrected

– I understand the commotion on Thursday, and should have considered the campaign more thoroughly before I agreed to letting our American guests join us. I see now that this could have been avoided if I had done things differently, says President of TNet, Arne Dag Johansen.

– So you can understand the reaction from the Technical Department?

– Yes, I do. The banners the Americans had brought with them were terrible. I agree with their message of anti-abortion, which is why we agreed to work with them in the first place, but the campaign could have been carried out differently.