Contact: Kristina Garza, Survivors, 951-750-1114, info@survivors.la
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., March 6, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ -- On March 3, 2014, a UC Santa Barbara professor attacked a young pro-life activist, stole and destroyed her sign, and encouraged a group of students to violence, inciting an angry mob.
Thrin and Joan Short, experienced Survivors activists, led the peaceful pro-life outreach event with 11 friends, most of whom were students from Thomas Aquinas College. They used signs displaying images of abortion victims to begin conversations with students before a confrontation by Professor of Feminist Studies, Mireille Miller-Young turned violent.
The angry professor interrupted the students' calm interaction with the activists by grabbing a pro-life sign out of the hands of one of them, carrying the sign off through the campus flanked by her students, and then assaulting Thrin Short while trying to hide from police, who were on their way.
Police officers later found the remains of the sign, which had been destroyed. UC Santa Barbara police are completing their report to be submitted for prosecution.
Despite the violence, neither Thrin nor Joan are deterred from leading future pro-life outreaches.
Joan says, "Yesterday we had a good day. We passed out all of the literature we had, and had lots of conversations. We know babies are dying everyday so we will continue to peacefully and nonviolently speak the truth about abortion. We know we will suffer insult and even violence as we did today but we will not waver from our nonviolent speech on behalf of the babies."
"Survivors leadership are very proud of Thrin Short who at 16 years old, not only led a successful event, but handled one of the 'worst case scenarios' of pro-life activism with courage and poise," says Kristina Garza, Director of Campus outreach for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust. "She led students even older than herself, to take action to end abortion, and when confronted with anger and violence, she responded calmly and wisely."
