Augustana’s Right to Life Club held their Life Week during week seven of Augustana’s spring term.  They held a cutest baby contest and put up a display of onesies and bibs in the quad.  This was all part of a plan raise awareness to what they refer to as their “pro-baby” stance.
“Being ‘pro-baby’ takes away all the negative connotations of ‘pro-life’, which can be twisted around to be confused as being ‘anti-abortion’,” said Colleen Brown, the Augustana’s president of Right to Life. “(Pro-baby) simplifies it down to the root of our belief: wanting to provide life and opportunity to these babies.”
Life week is normally held around the same time as Easter, but the date was changed this year as Easter fell very early in the year.  The club instead decided to move it to coincide with Relay for Life.  Brown said they did this to both support Relay for Life and to celebrate life in all shapes and forms.
They say their ideas for the Cutest Baby Contest and display in the quad were chosen to show the lives that unborn babies could have had.
“I thought that maybe the onesies and bibs would best illustrate that these unborn babies could have had lives similar to ours when we were young,” said Brown. “That also ties in our cutest baby contest, as well, and for the same reason: that could have been them.”
It was difficult for the organization to come up with a display, as they one they had last year was quickly vandalized.  They set up a flag presentation in the quad where they had three hundred flags. 100 of these flags were white and 200 were green, which represented that 100 out of every 300 pregnancies end in abortion.  The presentation lasted for one night before being torn down and thrown in the slough.  They received support from campus after this happened, including a campus-wide email sent out by Dean Campbell saying that anyone who turned in the perpetrator would receive a reward.
Right to Life maintains that they are doing what they can to raise awareness for their cause without causing offense.
“A lot of friends of mine are pro-choice, but we all have our different ideas,” said Leo Nguyen, marketing chair of Right to Life.  “We’re trying to present our ideas in a peaceful way.  We’re not trying to cause any trouble.”
The group is donating the bibs and onesies that are on display to Moline Pregnancy Resources.  They’re doing this to not only help support Moline Pregnancy Resources and also to try and prevent any vandalism on their display.
“It was hard to come up with something, as there was always that thought in the back of our minds: ‘would someone destroy this?’” said Brown.
Overall, Right to Life wants to emphasize that they are spreading a positive message and hope students respond just as positively.
“We’re not opposing your ideas, we’re just trying to present our ideas in the most peaceful way possible,” said Nguyen.  “There’s a lot of conflict on campus for that, but everyone has their ideas and we respect that.”