Pro-Lifers Attacked

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RICHMOND, Va. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Pro-life students at Virginia Commonwealth University were forced to abandon their peaceful assembly after far-Left Antifa radicals disrupted their event with "physical violence and screaming."

Students for Life of America posted a video to YouTube on Wednesday where SFLA president Kristan Hawkins is recording a selfie video showing the crowd of pro-abortion leftist students screaming and shouting expletives at her. 

The event was part of SFLA's "Lies Pro-Choicers Believe" Tour with talks from Hawkins and SFLA Student Ambassador Isabel Brown. In exclusive comments to Church Militant, an SFLA representative says the talks were supposed to draw attention to "the misinformation commonly preached by pro-abortion activists."

The most aggressive of the unruly protesters, according to SFLA, were biological men, pretending to be women, who chanted, "Fascists Go Home," "Nazis Go Home" and "F**k pro-lifers."

On Friday, an SFLA spokeswoman told Church Militant that the campus police "stood outside and delayed engaging, despite the university's 'commitment' to protecting free speech on campus." There was private security for SFLA on the scene.

Autumn Walser, the president of Students for Life on VCU's campus, was injured during the event.

Walser says she was "aggressively shoved" into a table while she was trying to record the protesters on her phone. Emergency medical personnel were called to the scene. Fortunately, she was not seriously injured but made it out with what she called "a golf ball size welt and a growing bruise" on her leg.

As a result of this incident, SFLA says Walser will have security protection for the rest of the semester.

Police eventually arrived on the scene but instead of throwing out the screaming, yelling, pro-abortionists, SFLA was dismayed to see the authorities force "Hawkins, Brown, and other SFLA attendees out of the room and into a safe room, rather than demanding that the violent protestors leave."

The pro-lifers say they were detained in the safe room for "quite some time" before the police allowed them to leave.

According to SFLA, two people have been arrested due to the VCU incident. The university claims neither has any affiliation with VCU. One of those arrested was charged with simple assault and the other with disorderly conduct.

Legal correspondent for SFLA Olivia Garza commented, "I have worked closely with VCU Students for Life all school year. This group has reported vandalisms, threats, theft, and now assaults, and yet the campus police has consistently failed to protect their free speech rights and basic safety." 

But the pro-life group says it is not discouraged by the violence: "While suppression of free speech and violence from the abortion lobby is undeniably a huge issue at hand, SFLA doesn't plan to stop our activism or tour stops because of this incident."

"Unfortunately," the group says, "we are seeing this trend where we must have security and even body cameras on a lot of our students tabling on campus. While keeping the safety of our students is a top priority, we know we have to carefully continue on and ensure the right measures are in place to spread the pro-life message across college campuses."

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