The event, held in a lecture hall on the Carleton campus, contrasted sharply with the Oct. 4 arrests that resulted in trespassing charges and fines of $130 each against four students from Carleton and one from Queen’s University.

Lifeline president Ruth Lobo, one of those who was handcuffed and driven away in a police van Oct. 4, said the GAP is “dedicated to teaching why abortion is unthinkable.”

“We should be talking about it on a university campus where we freely discuss ideas,” she said. “We hope it will be done in a respectful way.”

Ruba admitted the comparison of abortion to the Holocaust or other genocides is not popular, and “some get angry.” He said that during the fight against slavery — which killed up to eight million Africans — the most unpopular people were abolitionists because they reminded people that every time they put sugar in their tea or wore a cotton shirt they were benefiting from slavery.

If an unborn child is a human being, “then the comparison is inevitable,” Ruba said, noting that even biology textbooks say that “anything that reproduces sexually begins life at fertilization.”

“We are in the court of public opinion and we are the judge and jury,” he said. “We decide whether abortion is going to continue in our society.”

He noted the point of GAP was not to condemn people but to “bring the evidence out so we can deal with it.”

The event drew about 30 people but none of the chanting protesters that have sometimes shut down similar presentations on other campuses. Carleton security guards maintained a visible presence outside the auditorium.

Lobo said the students plan to contest the trespassing charges against them.

“In terms of campus we’ll continue doing the projects we had planned to do, which include graphic imagery,” she said.