Anti-abortion group will make its case on the road - Motorists may see graphic images plastered on the sides of semis as part of 'guerrilla' campaign. 

By Mary Beth Schneider
© 2001 The Indianapolis Star

Their goal is to be in your streets, in your face -- and, maybe, in your head with graphic images of aborted fetuses.

The anti-abortion group Center for Bio-Ethical Reform is bringing what it describes as "guerrilla marketing tactics" to Indianapolis and Indiana University-Bloomington.

The group -- based in Mission Hills, Calif. -- had sought to display an exhibit of bloody pictures of fetuses at IU. It sued IU in federal court last year after the university refused to let the group use a spot between two academic buildings at the campus's core and spurned IU's offer of Dunn Meadow -- the traditional site for protests.

The lawsuit was dismissed last month after a compromise was reached allowing the group to instead set up its exhibit just inside the university's formal entrance, known as the Sample Gates.

But Gregg Cunningham, founder and executive director of the group, said IU will pay for its recalcitrance, as a lesson to other universities that might interfere.

And that means semitrailer trucks.

The group has convoys of semis, plastered with billboard-size color photos of aborted fetuses. While the group has used fixed displays featuring the pictures for the past four years, it began using the trucks in June, first in the Los Angeles area and later in Florida. Cunningham won't give dates for the trucks' itinerary, citing security concerns.

But in the next several weeks -- university officials say it likely will be Oct. 17-19 -- those trucks are headed to Indiana.

Cunningham said his group likely wouldn't have brought the semis, at least right now, to either Indianapolis or Bloomington were it not for the court fight with IU.

"If we are further interfered with, we will extend our stay at IU, and we will be back, and we will be back, and we will be back, and we will virtually move in," he said.

Richard McKaig, IU's dean of students, said no one at the university is trying to interfere with this or any other group's First Amendment freedoms.

The court dispute was about location, he said, and not about the group's right to present a controversial message.

And while that might provoke a negative reaction from people with differing views, McKaig said, the answer is to encourage debate through more speech, not less.

Sarah Marvell, an IU junior and president of Campus for Choice, considers Cunningham's group "trained agitators."

She said her group will be nearby to watch when the center displays its exhibit but will not protest.

"I hope people on campus keep a clear head," Marvell said.

Students who may encounter the group's display on campus will have the option of walking by. Motorists who encounter the trucks, though, may not be able to easily pass by.

The rolling displays have created controversy in other cities. "Every place we drive these trucks, people are throwing up, fainting, going on and on about what a terrible thing this is," Cunningham said.

The center's own Web site publishes the e-mails it receives, many of them angry. Even people who say they agree with the goal of eliminating abortion complain about pictures that disturb young children who are forced to watch the trucks from the family car.

That, Cunningham said, is the point.

"You've got to force-feed these facts into people's minds," said Cunningham, who cited the Vietnam War as an example in which graphic images changed public opinion. "On the freeways, we have a large, captive audience of people who can't turn away, who can't change the channel, who can't turn the page."

Jane -- an Indianapolis woman who asked that her full name not be used to protect her privacy -- said she had an abortion in the 1980s when she was a young, married graduate student, already a stepmother and not ready for another child. Jane has had moments, she said, where she wondered about the child who now would be 17.

But, she said, "I have no qualms at all."

When asked how she might feel, to confront as a motorist one of the center's photos, Jane went to the group's Web site, where they also appear. She was, she said, taken aback at the bloodiness.

"It is a gruesome thing to look at," Jane said.

But, she added, if she had seen them years ago, it wouldn't have changed her mind.

"I am so firm in my belief that women deserve this right and this decision that I don't think I'd let it get to me."

Cunningham said his organization does not advocate violence.

But Dinah Farrington, vice president for public policy of Planned Parenthood of Greater Indiana, said Cunningham's stance is disingenuous. "They can say that, but their intent is to make people very angry."

Cunningham said the group gets death threats. In 1999, he said, someone attempted to drive a car into their display, almost running over some of his group's members.

Cunningham said the group is privately funded through anonymous donors. According to Internal Revenue Service forms that the group must file to get tax-exempt status as an educational organization, the group had income of about $712,000 in 1999 and expenses of about $543,000, including Cunningham's salary of $50,400.

Cunningham said his group stays away from direct involvement in politics; it doesn't endorse candidates or lobby for legislation. The goal, he said, is to change minds by showing people the vivid consequences of abortion. Only when public opinion changes will public policy change as well, he said.

Bloomington Mayor John Fernandez said it's hard to predict how his community will react to these trucks. "The community has a long history of tolerating a wide range of sometimes offensive speech."

It's one thing for a group to spread its message in ways that give people the option of paying attention, Fernandez said.

"It's something else entirely to uses a process that forces that message on people in unsuspecting ways."