‘I Had an Abortion’ Shirt Sales Stir Controversy at University of North Carolina Wilmington
- Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:30pm by
Christopher Santarelli
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Gloria Steinem Wearing "I Had an Abortion" Shirt Designed by Jennifer Baumgardner (Photo: WFAE)
While the right to privacy may have been the key to securing abortion rights in Roe v. Wade, some advocates of the controversial procedure today want to walk around with a sign, t-shirt to be exact, broadcasting their reproductive decisions.
In 2004, abortion advocate and author Jennifer Baumgardner launched the “I Had an Abortion” project to encourage women and men to “come out” about their procedures. The campaign featured shirts that read “I Had an Abortion,” a book, photo exhibit, and documentary film featuring 10 women – including feminist Gloria Steinem – describe their abortion experiences spanning seven decades.
In preparation of an upcoming panel discussion and book signing featuring Baumgardner at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, controversy ensued when “I Had an Abortion” shirts began to pop up around campus. WWAY reports that the panel was held Monday by the Women’s Studies Department and LGBTQIA Resource Office, where the controversial shirts were sold for $15 each at the event.
WECT reports that the shirts caused a protest and other students rallied with their own shirts, saying things like “I haven’t killed a baby.”
“It’s still a very controversial issue,” Jimmy Eastman, a spokesman for several students that held a silent protest outside the panel room, told WWAY. ”It’s not about the abortion or pro-choice. It‘s about ending a human life and that’s the real issue here. That‘s what we’re trying to get at.”
Supporters of the shirts told WWAY that they are simply trying to de-stigmatize the word abortion. Critics said the abortion shirts are out of line and embarrassing to the UNCW student body.
Proceeds from t-shirt sales went to Soapbox Inc., the feminist non-profit group formed by Baumgardner and fellow author activist Amy Richards.
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Comments (238)
OlefromMN
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:06pmWhat a sad world we have become.
Report Post »paperpushermj
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:16pmAmen Brother
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:05amWell, it‘s easy to sort ’em out, innit?
Report Post »fishandpoi
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:38amAmen and amen
Report Post »creepshow
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 1:00amI wonder how many Vietnam War protests Gloria Steinem attended in which our returning troops were spit on and called “baby killers”?
Report Post »There is no greater irony than reality itself.
Quandary
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 1:05amIs this something that women are proud of? Theyre proud to announce to the world that they were so lazy and or careless that they couldnt be bothered to ensure the guy’s tool was wrapped or at least took a morning after pill?
This isnt making a provocative statement about your rights, this is just bragging about how immature you are about your sexual encounters.
Report Post »Maji
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 1:48amGloria Steinem??
Report Post »I thought that was a “sea turtle”!!
The “loggerheads” are endangered you know!
brickmoon
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 3:57amI wonder if they sell the shirts in in infant sizes?
Report Post »May Clark
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 7:00amPlease watch this trailer for a pro-life movie – Blood Money.
Report Post »http://bloodmoneyfilm.com/abortion-video/
Thomas
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 7:30amDon’t trust pro-choice people with your children. If you find out that a teacher or a daycare worker has had an abortion or is pro-choice then I would remove my child from than environment immediately for they cannot be trusted around your children. If you find out they are pro-choice I would also find away to get them out of your place of business.
Report Post »Gonzo
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 7:44amSick ain’t it?
Report Post »hidden_lion
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 8:21amWhat disgusting people. No only do they kill their young, but they would brag about it on a t-shirt. This country deserves the coming destruction. Worse than Sodom and Gomorra.
Report Post »hoopsgulch
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 8:27amMay as well just say, “Date or marry me and I’ll kill your child.”
Report Post »Jenny Lind
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 8:49amSad and sick, good for the girls fighting back and telling what abortion means. Most southern girls have more class than wearing a shirt like the abortion one. I am totaly proud of the response to it.
Report Post »brotherkasey
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 10:09amI wonder if they’ll be as proud to wear that shirt as they stand before the Creator.
Report Post »Mainer forever
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 10:13amHonestly…..who in thier right mind would wear a shirt telling people proudly that they killed an innocent?
Report Post »teamarcheson
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 10:49amThe Baby Killer Shirt.
Nazi Death Camp Guards wore shirts like these that stated, “I killed Jews.” If only we could compel every baby killer to wear one of these Baby Killer shirts when in public. OOPPPs, we can by simply passing a Law. I think its aready written in the Obamacare Law.
Report Post »Unix
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 10:50amThat’s great, announce to the world proudly that you committed a murder of an unborn child, just great, you heathens!
Report Post »teamarcheson
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 10:52amWill These Shirts Be Given Out At The Democrat-Commie Convention This Summer?
Report Post »CultureWarriors
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:40pmOnly the most depraved and sickest amongst us would be proud of the fact that they killed an innocent and defenseless child. These people are monsters. Murderers!
Report Post »Obamammy
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:45pmDemocrats killing future Democrats. Dressed up in the incest, rape, and mothers life excuse – as it is about a total of, oh….. 3 % of the time. If that.
Report Post »May Clark
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 1:35pmI have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words. – quote from Gloria Steinem.
Here she is – not only making young women vulnerable – but getting at their unborn infants too!
Report Post »JRook
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 1:46pmPerhaps the applicable lame single moms over 30 should wear a “I got fake boobs” or I depend on botox.. T shirts to remind us just how desperate and sad they have become.
Report Post »Tandem2011
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:02pmThe whole abortion issue — on BOTH sides — is intellectually dishonest and hypocritical. It‘s like people fighting over whether God exists or not when neither side will ever convince the other they they’re right. It’s a huge, stupid distraction in an election year anyway.
Report Post »ChiefGeorge
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:09pmIn these last days we find people unrepentant and doubling down on their sin and revulsion of everything decent and good that the Lord has made. He is giving us a chance but time, my good people is running out.
What they are doing is wrong and it is murder.
Report Post »toto
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:12pmAny embryologist will tell you that life begins at the beginning, when the gametes meet. The argument are about what stages the killing of life is acceptable, if at all.
Report Post »boomboom
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:26pmRight On Chief George!~
Report Post »pre-planning the terminaton of a human life is Murder.
Abortion is murder.
COFemale
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:23amI‘m sorry that you can’t see that murdering a baby is totally wrong in lieu of a woman’s right; which is a bunch of crock. This is the only sanctioned killing allowed. However, if I kill the woman and she is carrying a baby, I can be charged with two crimes? So if a woman kills her own baby, why isn’t it a crime also. Her hand is no different than my hand?
Report Post »May Clark
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 7:06amTHE PHYSICAL COMPLICATIONS OF ABORTION
National statistics on abortion show that 10% of women undergoing induced abortion suffer from immediate complications, of which one-fifth (20%) were considered major.9,11
Over one hundred potential complications have been associated with induced abortion. “Minor” complications include: minor infections, bleeding, fevers, chronic abdominal pain, gastro-intestinal disturbances, vomiting, and Rh sensitization. The nine most common “major” complications are infection, excessive bleeding, embolism, ripping or perforation of the uterus, anesthesia complications, convulsions, hemorrhage, cervical injury, and endotoxic shock.23
In a series of 1,182 abortions which occurred under closely regulated hospital conditions, 27 percent of the patients acquired post-abortion infection lasting 3 days or longer.27
While the immediate complications of abortion are usually treatable, these complications frequently lead to long-term reproductive damage of much more serious nature.
For example, one possible outcome of abortion related infections is sterility. Researchers have reported that 3 to 5 percent of aborted women are left inadvertently sterile as a result of the operation’s latent morbidity.33,23 The risk of sterility is even greater for women who are infected with a venereal disease at the time of the abortion.30
from The Elliot Institute
Report Post »Kerstile
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 7:50amHmm, I never regarded killing* people as a huge stupid “political” distraction. Silly me. Killing people has nothing to do with belief in God. Believers and Atheists alike regard the unjustified killing of defenseless people as wrong, yes? Am I wrong? As in killing civilians in a military operation?
*I use the word “killing here, because in the secular law of the United States, abortion is a legal “killing”, not a murder. And that is the saddest thing I can think of.
Disclosure: I regret my fiancee’s abortion I pushed her into (later married and we raised three children) every stinking day. Every. Stinking. Day. Don’t tell me there are no “consequences” although I will agree that it “distracts” me every stinking day.
Good Grief, wrong is wrong.
Report Post »Welcome Black Carter
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 9:31am“if I kill the woman and she is carrying a baby, I can be charged with two crimes? So if a woman kills her own baby, why isn’t it a crime also. Her hand is no different than my hand?”
Yes sir, Reminds me a of a recent case where a girl asked her boyfriend to punch her in the stomach to force a miscarrage. The child did in fact die. He was charged in the death, she was not. Why? It is legal to kill your own baby…
Report Post »1956
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 3:14pmWasn‘t the baby the boyfriend’s baby, too?
Or is possession – being in the mother’s womb – the only thing that determines whose baby it is?
Report Post »Chromo200
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:02pmAnd there is a picture of a murderer.
Report Post »May Clark
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 8:18amHere is an informative article about Planned Parenthood
Report Post »http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2003/12/03/the_predators_of_planned_parenthood
trueamerican40
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:00pmHere’s a shirt slogan, “I had an epiphany”. Human blood is human blood and the Creator doesn’t like when it is shed especially for the demon called Baal.
Report Post »godlovinmom
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:57pmOther than killing babies and bragging about it on a t-shirt…tell me …what has this woman EVER done for her fellow women…not a damn thing.
Report Post »May Clark
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 7:11amAGREED! She is a con artist. What about all of the greatness she personally promised was going to arise from the feminist movement? The world is a mess and the Feminist Movement is a big reason for that. She should be forced to pump gas for women for the rest of her life.
Report Post »Coralchristie
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:54pmA colleague of mine had an abortion a couple of years before I met her. She said that if she’d known what she knew afterward…she would never have done it. No amount of PC would have made it right for her.
Report Post »whatthecrazy
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:04amI lost a grandchild to this procedure.Had i have known i would have done everything i could to prevent it ,I would have raised it myself if need be.My heart is broken that I’ll never get to know and hold and fall in love as i have done with my Grandson that i have now.To me he/she was my grandbaby from the moment of conception.People don’t realize that this murder of an innocent human being hurts others as well.I hurt that i have any part in this topic.
Report Post »powertrowel
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:54pmI think this great! Let me now which one of the pigs I want nothing to do with.
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:10amXactly.
Report Post »theninthplanet
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:52pmThe only shirt I‘d approve of talking about a person’s abortion is one that says, “I regret lost mother/fatherhood”
What this shirt really says is, “I chose myself over my baby.”
Although this shirt saddens me, I’d like to thank these individuals for making it very easy to know whose souls to pray for, and who to keep my family away from.
Report Post »ChiefGeorge
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:11pmDeclaring your sin or crime before God and the world will be all the proof that the ultimate judge needs to declare you guilty. Even the guilty will declare themselves guilty and unfit to dwell with the Lord. Pray People and pray often for the lost in these last days.
Report Post »The-Monk
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:52pm“The picture of Gloria Steinem Wearing ”I Had an Abortion” Shirt Designed by Jennifer Baumgardner…”
Wow, look at the skin hanging off of this old hag’s body. Who in the World was so bad off that they needed to bang this old hag?
Report Post »Actually, I think she’s post menopause, can’t even get pregnant, is just wishing she could and is living a midlife crisis like old guys that buy a Harley or a sports car. She bought a t-shirt… stupid commies, when will they ever grow up?
CatB
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:57pmShe was born in 1934 — making her 78! (her birthdate is March 25) … under Obamacare she qualifies for a “pill” (too old for treatment) not “the pill” .. LOL .. she is LONG past that.
Report Post »Therightsofbilly
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:48pmOn the back side it should say………….
“I went to Planned Parenthood……..and all I came back with is this stupid shirt”
Report Post »SteelRight
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:51pmShirt should read“I should of swallowed” instead.Or “Dirty skank-Free deposits”.
Report Post »rsanchez1
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:48pmAs if it wasn’t sick enough, but wearing a t-shirt to celebrate killing fetuses is beyond words, it’s just so evil.
Report Post »Mary Just
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:48pmMy God, how evil can these Socialist/Communists Progressive Democrat Abortionists be.
Report Post »Twobyfour
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:12amThey can get much much eviler. Trust me.
Report Post »valleyfever
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:46pmCome out about their “procedures”? Is murder now just a procedure?
Report Post »Married to a Liberal HELP
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:45pmWhether you are a right to life or pro choice person, no way is an abortion a thing to be joyful and proud about. It is such a sad thing to kill your own baby. Gloria Steinem is so disgusting for celebrating such a sad event in anyone’s life. What does that say about her, with that big grin on her face like she just won the lottery? So bizarre. These young woman wearing such horrific t-shirts will not feel like celebrating their decisions when they finally have a live child of their own even if they remain pro choice.
Report Post »Winedude
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:51pmI don’t think that any of the wearers of the T-shirts were “celebrating” the fact that they had an abortion. I believe that it‘s more of an exercise to say that it wasn’t the traumatic experience that so many of the anti-abortion folks want you to believe. It is still a personal choice, legal in the United States and not a procedure that any pregnant girl takes lightly. The debate is the beginning of “life” and in my mind, it begins at birth. On this issue, I subscribe to the ********* creed: ” Don’t try to ply me with facts, my mind is made up!”
Report Post »marine249
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 11:21pmHey DUDE
Did you see the arms on that thing.
Report Post »Bet it got you hot–dip
Married to a Liberal HELP
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:08amI assume you are a dude, winedude for if you were a woman you would know it is a traumatic experience to have your baby killed as it is sucked out of you, regardless of your political views. They just have to think of the pain to their fetus as it is being torn apart. It is a barbaric way actually.
And if you do not think Gloria Steinem is celebrating abortion in that photo with her hands raised in victory and that huge grin on her face, you are blind. She is so disgusting.
Report Post »JustMeInAZ
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 3:28pmSo Winedude, you seem to be as proud of your stupidity as they are of committing murder. So a baby isn‘t alive until it’s actually out side of the mother? Really??!! Really?! So, tell me, what was it before it came out, not alive? I can only think of two reasons your would say such a stupid thing, 1) You’re hurting because you played a part in a babys abortion, or 2) You’re just stupid.
Report Post »dadadadio
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:45pmForgive them, Lord, for they know not what they have done. Some day, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, these women and those who impregnated them will feel a sense of profound sadness, loss, shame, and guilt. Don’t ask how I know.
Report Post »Wishmich
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:45pmNo, let’s not de-stigmatize the word.
Report Post »SteelRight
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:45pmI wonder how many women have gone on to have kids after an abortion? If they have, I’m sure they regret their uninformed decision. There is no substitute to the joy of seeing,holding and kissing God’s greatest gift.Life!
Report Post »Chet Hempstead
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:25amJust the opposite, the children they have later when they are prepared to care for them properly demonstrate the wisdom of their earlier decision. People aren’t possums. You can have and rear just so many kids. If you have a kid when you should have had an abortion, you are having it instead of a kid you could have had after you are ready for the job.
Report Post »knobbysmoo
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 1:49amTwo of my sisters had abortions (did not tell anyone at the time). Both went on to have 4 children each. Both have spent the last 20 years regretting their decisions. They both carry the emotional pain and guilt with them. No one will ever be able to convince me that this “procedure” has no long-term damage.
Report Post »blackyb
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:44pmThen there is: “I do Satan’s bidding by murdering babies.”
Report Post »“I am a coven unto mysel.”
Welcome Black Carter
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:44pmAbortion = murder = smile?? (= confusion for normal people)…
Report Post »CatB
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:53pmHow about a shirt
“I’m too stupid to use birth control or self control”
Report Post »Pelling1020
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:43pmI think Rosemary DePalo had a shirt that said “I had a colonoscopy”.
Report Post »marine249
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:45pmwhy can I get one
Report Post »SpankDaMonkey
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:43pm.
Why don‘t you wear a shirt that say’s “Rape Me! So I Can Have an Abortion & Kill Your Baby?”…….
Ya’ll are going to Hell……..
Report Post »blackyb
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:42pmMight sell better if they put: “I am the after birth that would have been a baby.“ Or ”I am a murderer who murdered for sex.”
Report Post »fishandpoi
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:55amSpot one…..
Report Post »The-Monk
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:39pmThe only thing I can see that needs aborting is the current path these commie socialist Marxist have us on.
Report Post »Abort socialism.
Abort communism.
Abort Marxism.
Abort the Congressional Progressive Party.
I think Allen West should be promoted to Chief Surgeon…
Teabunny
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:36pmwe used to offer counseling to women who had an abortion….now we sell them tee-shirts????? Holy Father in heaven! (sorry Lord! you shouldn’t have to even see this!)
Report Post »Teabunny
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:37pmliterally, tears running down my face, involuntarily.
Report Post »blackyb
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:55pmTea Bunny, I may have to adopt you. You need taking care of. God has seen it all before. He can’t be shocked.
Report Post »Pucci
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 12:12amHe has already seen it, nothing shocks the Lord.
Report Post »Dde13
Posted on April 19, 2012 at 10:36pmAbsolutely SICK.. It should say ‘ I killed a baby’ !!!!!! really, let’s call it what it is….
Report Post »