Content note: Article contains mention of abortions and related topics.

Almost one thousand pink flags stood in the Memorial Union Quad.

Joining the flags was the Students for Life club at Oregon State University, an anti-abortion student organization, which tabled today alongside fetal models in the MU Quad on Friday April 28 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., facing backlash from passing students.

“There are 1,000 flags each one representing 73,000 aborted babies worldwide annually for a total of 73 million lives lost,” President Rebecca Lang said in a press release. “Our display also recognizes the loss of 550 and counting women who have died in botched abortions between 1973-2019.”

Lang said the club is pro-women and believes they “deserve better than the pain and lifelong repercussions of abortion.” Students for Life also provides resources to pregnant and parenting students on campus such as a diaper stash located in the Valley Library Student Parent Study Room, stocked with free diapers, wipes, baby formula and more. 

“We do not condemn women who have believed the lie of abortion and have been subjected to the pain and tragedy of it, but instead we welcome them with open arms offering hope, healing, and support in their time of need,” Lang said.

Following the 2022 Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization case that reached the Supreme Court and limited abortion access across the United States, Lang said they want to raise awareness of the fact that abortion access is still legal in Oregon for any reason. 

“There’s a lot of women out there who have been hurt by abortion and they tend to make their opinions known in a violent and very vocal way,” Lang said. “We just want to engage on a level where people can see the truth and just understand it fully, and we definitely don’t believe that’s judgment, we’re here to support women.”

Maddy, who preferred not to share her last name, was walking through the Quad and stopped to have a conversation with the Students for Life table around noon.

“It’s something that I’m very passionate about because my mother did have an abortion, and some of my mothers’ best friends have had abortions, and without them, they would either be dead or destitute,” Maddy said. “I decided that I wanted to come and talk about it because I know that a lot of the discussion points that these people bring up are based on faith rather than facts, and … subjective moral standards, and I just wanted to see what theirs were.”

Maddy said organizations like Students for Life Foundation or the Oregon Right to Life Foundation like to use a lot of statistics to prove that people should mourn them and prevent abortions from happening again, but in reality, reducing access to safe, legal, medically-qualified abortions will only increase the number of deaths in people who are already alive.

“It is very terrifying to see across the United States that there are legislatures that are not only trying to ban abortions, but also banning access to comprehensive sex education, and banning access to contraception, and banning access to birth control,” Maddy said.

This will only force people to have babies that they don’t want, Maddy said, which is a fast track to adding kids to the foster care system or abusive family situations.

“All it’s designed to do is punish people who can get pregnant,” Maddy said. “It’s not about the unborn babies, it’s about control.”

For anyone curious about OSU’s freedom of speech policy, Deb Mott, MU director, recommends students visit this website.

“Free speech on campus – there’s a lot of nuance to it, and everything we do in our approach is content-neutral,” Mott said. “Sometimes there may be individuals just walking by that are triggered by their response, that’s where we encourage them to talk to someone they’re close to, counseling, things like that.”