I have already written a non-partisan piece on the Turning Point USA event hosting Abigail DeJarnatt; however, I personally found many issues with the event as a whole that I want to give my thoughts and opinions on. I sat through the entire event, taking notes, and I also had the chance to interview DeJarnatt herself. The entire event, which I was hoping would be a bit more nuanced in discussion, was very biased, with heavy usage of slanted language and misinformation, and I left feeling very disheartened.
Throughout the entire event, I don’t recall DeJarnatt citing any substantial pieces of evidence. Instead, she made many claims using rhetoric ranging from generally harmful to specifically misogynistic and homophobic. She stated that “men need to be protectors” and that, in relation to pregnancy, “[women] You were made for this!”
In the interview I conducted, she also stated that the biggest problem with our current generation is that we are supposedly suffering from an identity crisis. “We are told that we can live our truth, find ourselves, that love is love, follow our dreams, and none of it satisfies.” I find it a bit presumptuous of her to assume what does and does not fulfill an individual in life, especially when she does not seem to empathize with them.
As for slanted language, she uses many emotionally driven terms to make many appeals to pathos, with just some of the quotes including: “Abortion is demonic,” “darkness and evil,” “Genocide of our generation,” and a very opinionated quote – for which she gave no scientific evidence – “My body, my choice, scientifically that’s a dumb argument.” These descriptions are meant to be taken at face value and easily digested by the audience, which makes for a discussion devoid of logical arguments and fueled by only passion, regardless of sides.
On top of the previous issues, she also spread blatant misinformation throughout the entire event and interview. With one of the previous quotes, “genocide of our generation,” she gave the figure that one-third of Gen Z was lost to abortion. Through personal fact-checking, a few others and I found that the truth is actually a significantly smaller fraction, closer to one-sixth, although this number is only a ballpark estimate.
She also made an assertion about the separation of church and state, arguing that the phrase originated in a letter between Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury Baptist Association and that the concept was intended to keep the government out of the church, rather than the church out of the government. This is false, in both rights, as the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights directly goes against interference from either. She argued that if the Declaration of Independence was really intended to separate church from state, it would not have been approved, so that could not have been the intention, stating, “our declaration would never have been signed by the many Christians who did in fact sign it.” I counter with the opinion that if the separation of church and state only applied to churches, the United States would have been founded with a theistic government. The documents also do not mention any specific religion, only noting that any and all religions can be freely practiced under the First Amendment, and that there can be no test based upon religion, as outlined in Article VI.
I could continue with how she says that there is never a single instance where abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother, or how feminine contraceptives are the exact same thing as abortion, but I want to address the bigger issue. This was an event allowed by the University itself, and while I understand that this type of event is protected by the Freedom of Expression rules here on campus, the event itself and the speaker set a dangerous precedent going forward. DeJarnatt was given a platform to spread hateful, harmful and incorrect rhetoric. What kind of message does it send to the students when someone who views those getting abortions as “evil” and holds beliefs easily considered homophobic gets to say those things front and center? I, in no way, think that this event should have been prevented, but I do think that going forward, the university needs to take more care when inviting someone such as DeJarnatt, because it can only empower students to hold harmful ideas against other students on campus and further signal to them that those hateful ideologies are completely okay.