On Monday, Lydia Taylor Davis, anti-abortion activist and spokesperson for Students for Life, asked students passing by USC’s Alumni Park, “Are you pro-life or pro-choice?” As a part of her campus tour titled “Abortion is Violence,” Davis came to USC as a guest of the USC College Republicans, but her daytime event drew little traction.
“It’s been really calm and quiet. Not my typical school,” said Davis, who has been a vocal critic of abortion since she was a college student in North Carolina, according to her biography on the Students for Life website. “People don’t seem to care as much about abortion here, and that’s okay. I’m gonna keep trying to talk to people.”
The USC College Republicans posted on Instagram that this event would run from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Event coordinators told Annenberg Media that as of 12:40, they estimated only half a dozen people spoke with her.
The purpose of the tour, according to Davis, is to educate college students on “how abortion is violence against women, who are hurt and killed by the abortion industry, how it’s violence against babies in the womb, how abortion procedures poison, vacuum or dismember babies and how the pro-abortion movement is often pro-violence against even pro-lifers.”
“It was a lot… I kind of got roped into that [discussion],” said Huckleberry Young, a freshman jazz studies major who walked past Davis’ table as he was heading home. “I don’t feel like my mind has been changed at all. I do believe that abortion is a fundamental right, and while the things she said did make me think a little more about it, I don’t think it’s gonna alter my opinion about it.”
Sophomore business administration major Sarah Semere said that she was unaware of the event, but after she saw Davis’ poster on her table, she wanted to talk to her because she finds hearing both sides of a topic valuable.
“You could tell when speaking to her, she wasn’t here to really have a conversation or have a genuine debate or [provide] insight of any sort to the other topics that someone who’s left-leaning might bring up,” Semere said. “She was very, very stuck in her beliefs.”
According to Davis, there have even been times when she’s been “mobbed, physically attacked or just threatened for being pro-life.” She said that today she has “had some good conversations,” and she takes the attitude of pro-choice individuals as encouragement.
“[People] wouldn’t be this mad at me if I wasn’t making an impact for good,” Davis said. “I’m here to educate people and spread the truth and offer pregnancy resources to students on campus.”
Starting with the University of West Georgia on March 4, Davis has visited the University of North Carolina-Asheville, Florida State University and now USC. Her final stop on the “Abortion is Violence” tour will be Sacramento State University on Wednesday.
Young and Semere both said that in their conversations, Davis focused more on the biological debate surrounding abortion than the moral one.
“Instead of really taking into account what I was saying, she was going back around to the same point, saying ‘Biologists believe life starts at conception,’” Semere said. “It’s disregarding the unique situations [where] abortion does help people.”
Davis is set to speak again tonight at 7:30 p.m. in the Seeley G Mudd building.