Mississippi State University heard a different side of the abortion argument Tuesday night with a presentation from a staunch pro-life activist.
Christina Marie Bennett spoke on campus, delivering a lecture titled “Abortion, Idolatry and Christ’s Call to Choice.” Bennett’s presentation was backed by the MSU Students for Life and Catholic Campus Ministries, and was given in response to last week’s presentation from Dr. Willie Parker, an abortion physician who has worked at Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic. While security was not as heavy as for Parker’s lecture, attendees were still required to pass through a metal detector prior to prior to entering the auditorium. The audience remained civil and respectful throughout the lecture.
Bennett spoke about the pro-life case, in some cases even offering a direct rebuke to Parker’s lecture.
She gave several reasons why she felt the world idolized abortion, including 65 million abortions since 1973, the U.S. being one of seven nations allowing abortions past 20 weeks and the reproductive justice/freedom narrative.
“Abortion is a medical procedure,” Bennett said. “Some people see it that way, You’re terminating a pregnancy and a life, yet we have this language around it to say that it is a form of freedom, a form of justice. That’s a very strong claim.”
Bennett sad as an African-American woman, the tying of justice and freedom to abortion was something she often questioned.
“If you’re going to say that something is bringing freedom, then that’s something that I’m going to question,” Bennett said. “Does it really do that? Does it really make freedom? Does it really bring justice? Does it really liberate people like so many of us have been told.”
Bennett told the story of how she was nearly aborted by her single mother.
After her mother had paid for the operation and was put into a hospital gown, she was told to go into the doctor’s room. She sat down in the hospital hall crying a few tears.
“There was an African-American woman at the other end of the hallway,” Bennett said. “She was a janitor, and she was mopping the floor. She saw my mom, and she walked up to her , and she lifted up her chin and said ‘do you want to have this baby?’ My mom said ‘yes.’ She said ‘God is going to give you the strength to have this baby.”’
Among the claims from Parker she objected to was the word “abortion” never being mentioned in the Bible.
“He’s right,” Bennett said. “It’s not in the Bible. There’s also a lot of words that are not in the Bible like ‘sex trafficking.’ Let’s just stay that today we’re reading the Bible from this perspective, and we say ‘does God care about sex trafficking?, and we’re trying to figure it out. You can’t necessarily just look through the scripture and look for a specific word and conclude that because that word is not there, that therefore, God does not have an opinion about it.”
Bennett will also participate in a pro-life panel discussion Wednesday night at 6 p.m. in the Foster Ballroom in the Colvard Student Union.
Last week, MSU President Mike E. Keenum Released a statement dispelling the notion of either Bennett or Parker’s lectures being funded with taxpayer dollars. In the statement, Keenum also said the university’s goal was to give students the means to think critically and make decisions for themselves.