Flyers advertising a pro-life event at the University of Georgia have been repeatedly, immediately torn down by apparent enemies of both the pro-life movement and the First Amendment.
Elizabeth Ridegeway, a UGA sophomore and writer for The Arch Conservative, a student publication, spied a hooded figure tearing down a banner announcing the upcoming pro-life event.
Rebecca Stapleford, president of the UGA pro-life club, told The College Fix that the attacks on her flyers have been incessant.
“I keep putting the posters up… and someone keeps taking them down,” Stapleford said. “I put them up, go to class and within an hour they are gone. I put them up again, and within five minutes they are gone.”
The club was trying to advertise a Thursday event, “Pro-Life Without God.” The speaker will be Kelsey Hazzard, an anti-abortion advocate who is known for making purely secular arguments.
Stapleford has spent $30 of her own money trying to replace the stolen and damaged posters.
Advertising for the event was important, she said, because she hoped to draw a sizable crowd of abortion foes and supporters. She even personally informed the Student Secular Club that its members, like all students, were welcome to attend.
“I also want to make people realize that abortion, as a human rights issue, can be opposed on secular grounds,” she said.
UGA, a public university, must safeguard the rights of students to distribute leaflets, an explicit First Amendment right.
A UGA spokesperson told The College Fix that “no one should be destroying notices properly posted by someone else.”
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to whether anything would be done to protect the rights of a minority viewpoint on campus.