While advocating against abortion, a Christian organization was met with opposition from abortion rights advocates at a gathering outside of Brackett Hall on Thursday.
The organization is known as Operation Save America, a nationwide Christian ministry that “unashamedly takes up the cause of preborn children in the name of Jesus Christ,” according to its website. OSA’s overall goal is the repentance of the Church of Jesus Christ with a foundation in the Bible and a strategy in the “Cross of Christ.”
The organization believes that Jesus Christ is the “only answer to the abortion holocaust” and has been described as a fundamentalist Christian organization with a main focus on opposing abortion, homosexuality and Islam in the United States, according to NBC News.
The Tiger spoke to two OSA members, Gabriel Olivier and Kevin Hardin, about the organization’s goals and motives for staging the event on Clemson University’s campus.
Olivier and the rest of the group believe that life begins at conception and to “defeat” what they believe is an “evil” in the United States. OSA approaches the issue as a “spiritual battle” instead of just a physical one.
“So how to deal with the spiritual battle is to preach the gospel, to declare that sin is evil, declare that God is good,” Olivier told The Tiger.
The organization purposely tries to reach college students because its members believe that the prevalence of what it deems sexual immorality on college campuses leads to more abortions.
“This is really when abortion becomes a real thing,” Olivier said.
OSA members also advocated for the passage of a South Carolina bill that would preserve the human rights of an “unborn child.”
The South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act would change the definition of a person to “include an unborn child at any stage of development, and to ensure that an unborn child who is a victim of homicide is afforded equal protection under the homicide laws of the state,” according to the bill.
“It’s not a protest, it’s evangelism. When you point out 3,000 babies a day are being murdered, it’s really the best way to help spread awareness of how far we’ve fallen from Christ,” Hardin told The Tiger, noting that abortion is not the organization’s main issue — it’s spreading the gospel.
Hardin also noted that “some may be surprised” that he did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
A second group later gathered to protest OSA’s presence on campus. The group was not together as an official organization but instead was composed of individuals protesting for their own reasons.
“Each of us has a connection with the issue of abortion, and most of us are or have volunteered at abortion clinics, escorting patients past obnoxious protesters who yell at, judge and try to dissuade patients from accessing the healthcare that they, the patients, feel is right for them,” Brooke Adams, a member of the protesting group, told The Tiger.
The second group was initially positioned on the same side of the road next to OSA. The protesters then moved across the street at the request of Clemson University Police Department officers after several protesters became confrontational with OSA members.
While OSA obtained a permit to gather on campus, the University was not aware of any permit that the counter-protesters had, according to Shawn Jones, associate director of reservation services for campus reservations and events.
The protest group followed OSA from an abortion clinic in Greenville, South Carolina, to combat OSA’s presence at the University. Group members expressed intentions to apply for permits and organize through the proper means in the future.
“We follow the OSA organization (on social media) and follow where they are going, so that’s how we learned about the Clemson event,” Adams told The Tiger. “We are opposing OSA, theocracy and encroachment on personal reproductive freedom by religious extremists.”
