Hundreds of fresh sneakers and sandals the size of newborn feet sat on the grass of the Reitz Union North Lawn on Monday.
Katherine Schinn, a member of UF's Pro-Life Alliance and a UF linguistics student, said the 249 pairs of shoes represented the number of children aborted every day in Florida.
Women who have had abortions picked out the shoes, named unborn children, wrote notes to them and attached the notes to the shoes.
"It kind of helps them come to terms," Schinn said.
About five people manned the group's table during the day, guarding the shoes and fielding questions from onlookers, providing them with additional information.
"There are currently 2 million couples in the U.S. waiting for children," Schinn said.
Abortions could also result in infertility, a perforated uterus and depression, she added.
"It's actually been proposed by some people to be a mental disorder like post-traumatic stress syndrome," she said.
"A lot of people are standing by as we're losing our generation. We've already lost a third of it already," said Anders Bergmann, a UF integrative biology major and member of the Pro-Life Alliance.
Katelyn Milliman, president of Voices for Planned Parenthood - known as VOX, said in a phone interview Monday that information and statistics associated with abortion mislead some women.
"Abortion is a medical procedure, and medical procedures come with risks," Milliman said. "A lot of those statistics associated with abortion have been trumped up. They tell these lies in attempt to scare and manipulate them."
"The choice whether or not to be a mother should rest with the woman," she said.
Schinn said the Pro-Life Alliance gets the majority of its facts and statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, which was originally a division of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The display of shoes on Monday was the first event in a weeklong effort by the Pro-Life Alliance.
Schinn said the group plans to do a fundraiser for Arbor House, an organization in Gainesville that supports women who have decided to have children.
The group will also hold a candlelight vigil outside an abortion clinic and will finish the week Friday on the Reitz Union Colonnade with speeches from women who have had abortions.
"A life is a life, and you have intrinsic value because of your humanity," Bergmann said.
