The morning was cold on March 3rd, 2025, when a sign reading âUCSF Harvests Baby Organsâ went up at Ring Road. I remember seeing it and many others while crossing the bridge from the Claire Trevor School of Arts to the Humanities section of the campus.Â
Flashes of seemingly AI-generated gore crossed my vision wherever I looked. I expected to be able to slip through the crowd that day as I had done before with big demonstrations. This was, of course, wishful thinking.Â
The moment one of the protestors made eye contact with me, it was over.Â
He approached me and asked, âDid you know whatâs happening at UCSF? Did you know theyâre killing babies?âÂ
When I didn’t respond, he kept hounding me.Â
Of course, there were a variety of things going through my head that I could have responded with, âItâs not my issue, itâs not on my campusâ being one of them. However, being a woman has taught me the best way to deal with people like that is to keep my head down and walk past. That is what I did on March 3rd.
This is also what many of the seasoned staff on campus have taught female students like me to do when faced with aggressive protestors.Â
The point of most protests, after all, is to garner attention.Â
As the demonstrations raged on through the winter quarter, I found it impossible to brush under the rug. I was taking secret routes through Aldrich Park to get back to my car every day and it was starting to feel invasive and uncomfortable.
On a fundamental level, I understand that protests are meant to be disruptive. Ring Road is, after all, a public space, and people can demonstrate how they please.Â
However, I feel obligated as a female student on campus to point out the hypocrisy of their campaign attempts. Ring Road is a public space, posting anti abortion stickers in the women’s bathroom on the first floor of the Humanities Instructional Building, however, is an invasion of privacy.Â
On March 4th, 2025, stickers started appearing in this bathroom which read âAbortion is murderâ and showcased a dead fetus. It occurred to me then, the way it likely should have on the first day of the protests, that this wasn’t about abortion at all. It wasn’t about the sanctity of life or the religious definition of when life begins. This demonstration, in the days that it occurred, was about punishing and harassing college-aged women.Â
The protestors got their wish for attention. The demonstrations were all my female friends and I could talk about at the end of the 2025 winter quarter.Â
That said, I can’t help wondering if their time would be better spent somewhere else.Â
Though I only know of their activities here, I have never seen the âjustice for the fiveâ crowd advocating for vasectomies, sexual education, or reforms for the foster care system for kids who are already alive. If they were truly pro-life or cared about preventing the number of abortions, they might think of any of these things. It is not about that for them. Their mission in visiting the UCI campus in the winter quarter was to harass women.
But why does it matter? It happened at the end of last quarter, after all.Â
It matters because it’s a signifier of the type of world we live in and the culture thatâs taking shape.Â
It’s been only three years since we lost Roe v Wade, and since then, anti-abortion sentiment has felt more confident in rearing its ugly head. It becomes exhausting to live in this world as a female college student with the constant reminder that people feel openly comfortable dictating what I do with my body. If no one speaks up, then it becomes one of those things that’s accepted as an unfortunate reality of the world we live in. I disagree with that sentiment. As much as freedom of speech is a thing, no one deserves to be browbeaten into submission or harassed on the way to class. If we allow hateful sentiment to germinate in spaces where students are supposed to learn, then those spaces stop becoming safe for all students.