Catholic Loyola University’s student group, Students for Reproductive Justice (SRJ), recently posted a video of their pretend “papaya” abortion lesson on Facebook. In the video, students use a papaya to learn about vacuum aspiration abortions, claiming it’s similar to sucking out papaya seeds.
In the one minute video, a “teacher” tells a student how to insert the cannula into the papaya (uterus) and instructs her on how far to go and how to suck out the insides. The student extracts a seed and gets excited. The teacher continues, telling her to try a different sized cannula.
The Loyola group posted under the video:
The papaya workshop was a success! Special thanks to Midwest Access Project for putting the workshop together and supplying everything, Chicago Women’s Health Center for allowing us to use their space, Bedsider for funding the event, and especially to Natasha, a medical student at Loyola, for instructing us.
The purpose of the papaya workshop is for students to learn about aspiration abortions, and to destigmatize abortion in general. Abortion is a simple medical procedure. Up to 10 weeks, this procedure is very similar to sucking the seeds out of a papaya!
We’ll have another workshop like this next semester, so stay tuned for that!
While the mock abortion lesson was taught by a medical student, it was closer to medical mockery. Originally, angry commenters on the Facebook post noted this, taking the group to task for its pro-abortion stance; however, by Monday all the comments had disappeared and only a lone comment from an alumni, proud of the abortion exercise, remained. Aborting a growing, developing human being is nothing like suctioning seeds out of a piece of fruit. One kills a human being. The other clearly does not.
Loyola is a Jesuit Catholic school which prides itself on its rich heritage. Its page on its faith and identity is replete with explanation of their Catholic mission and identity, promoting ethical behavior, social justice, and service to God. None of the mission’s roots align with a pro-abortion mission. But Students for Reproductive Justice decided it didn’t need to be a registered student organization to further its own mission on campus. Its mission is more than its papaya abortions. SRJ also recently staged a demonstration against the Catholic school’s refusal to provide contraception. The demonstration involved passing out 1,000 condoms, as well as contraceptive information, the Loyola Phoenix reports. The students seems to ignore that as a private Catholic university, they signed up to attend a school which did not support contraception or abortion, in keeping with the Catholic church’s tradition and mission.
But this group doesn’t stop there. It also bragged that it managed to get the student wellness center to remove information from a local crisis pregnancy center from its website. SRJ posted:
![Picture from Students for Reproductive Justice Facebook cover photo, with the caption: WE WON!!! Because of our demands, the wellness center agreed to remove the crisis pregnancy center from the resources on their website. According to NARAL Pro-Choice, "Anti-choice groups created CPCs to look like comprehensive health clinics, but many are generally unregulated and unlicensed. For instance, they don't have to follow privacy-protection laws like your doctor or real clinics do. They use tactics that mislead [people] about pregnancy-related information." This is a huge win, but the fight doesn't stop here. Share this post to spread the word!](https://www.liveactionnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2016-10-09-at-11.07.01-PM-700x351.png)
Picture from Students for Reproductive Justice Facebook cover photo, with the caption: WE WON!!! Because of our demands, the wellness center agreed to remove the crisis pregnancy center from the resources on their website.
According to NARAL Pro-Choice, “Anti-choice groups created CPCs to look like comprehensive health clinics, but many are generally unregulated and unlicensed. For instance, they don’t have to follow privacy-protection laws like your doctor or real clinics do. They use tactics that mislead [people] about pregnancy-related information.”
This is a huge win, but the fight doesn’t stop here. Share this post to spread the word!
Through loving engagement, radical activism, and collective and ongoing action, we demand our right to sexual and reproductive health at Loyola.
We are committed to creating a womyn affirming space that is free from misogyny, sexism, and male-centeredness.
We are committed to creating a Black affirming space that is free from racism. We act in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, knowing that Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.
We are committed to fostering a queer‐affirming space. We reject heteronormative thinking.
We are committed to fostering a sex positive group that values human sexuality and regards all consensual sexual activities as fundamentally healthy and pleasurable.
The group stands for many things that a Catholic Jesuit university does not, yet the students offer no commentary on these posts about why they chose to attend a school that opposes abortion, contraception, and open sexuality instead of simply attending a school that aligned philosophically with their beliefs.
SRJ as a group has shown through its actions that it wants to remove actual choice from women seeking alternatives to abortion, and wants to push its own values on a Catholic university. So much for “choice.”
