Many pro-choicers support twelve-years-olds getting abortions. They support babies in their ninth month being literally torn apart limb from limb. I’ve known too many pro-choice people to consider them all evil. I think so much of their stance on abortion is ignorance.
But it is an ignorance due to nothing less than a conspiracy of silence. If we dare to show images of abortions (which they support) then we’re the evil ones for showing such ghastly images. Is it now possible that the evil they’re supporting is so monstrous that we’re not allowed to discuss it?
Years ago, Matt Drudge was thrown off the air on Fox News just for attempting to feature a picture of a baby reaching out of the womb during an in-utero surgery.
Now, I personally wouldn’t want my children to see that truck which shows graphic images of abortion, driven by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform. It’s pretty awful looking. But on the other hand I do think exposing the horrors of abortion is important. So many people support abortion because they think of it solely as a rights issue. They actually forget the victim because there’s been a media blackout. To the media, the side of good (pro-choicers) supports the procedure which is so awful that the bad side (pro-lifers) should be disallowed from showing it. Make sense?
I spoke to a young pro-choice woman recently who went to services on Sundays and considered herself a good Christian. In our conversation it turned out that she believed that abortion was only allowed for the first three months of a pregnancy. And this is a smart young professional woman. I informed her otherwise and…she didn’t believe me. She said she thought I was wrong about that. I simply asked her to look it up online. I hope she did.
Graphic images of abortion puts the lie to the claim that it’s just a clump of cells or a blob of tissue better than any argument. There’s nothing like being able to point to a picture and say “This is what you support.”
I do think in the long run that science is on our side in this argument. And pictures like this one which inspire love and not just recognition of horror will win the day.
November 11, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I think you’re too generous. I’ve a got a commenter on my recent abortion post who’s allowed his abortion advocacy to extend to post-birth and direct euthanasia.
They know what they’re for.
November 11, 2008 at 8:31 pm
“There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
There are just too many folks who supported or got an abortion for them to admit to what abortion actually is, even when faced with facts.
November 11, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I got into a pre-election discussion with my wife’s cousin, an young man who tries to be a good Christian, but is uncertain about abortion.
When I gave him a link to Eduardo Verastegui’s video showing the reality of abortion (which I doubt he watched) and stated my position that abortion is worse than the Holocaust, he said that my response was “too charged”.
Abortion supporters are willing to remain intentionally ignorant about the evil they support.
I have a daughter who was born at 26 weeks gestation but was the size of a 22-week gestational baby. She wasn’t much bigger than the baby in that picture. I’ve eaten steaks larger than she was at birth. She spent 15 weeks in the NICU (her third trimester, so to speak). When I watched Mr. Verastegui’s video, I saw those killed and dismembered babies in relation to her. I saw her face in the destroyed faces, her hands in the dismembered hands.
She turned 2 yesterday, and I thank God every day for her life.
I remember what she looked like at birth. I just looked at a picture of her, tiny, vulnerable, weak, helpless, defenseless, with a breathing tube, IVs, and wires running all over the place.
How anyone can justify killing a baby simply because of location and developmental stage is beyond me. How they can deny the humanity of that baby is abhorrent.
But I know why they don’t want to watch such videos, or see such images…it would force them to reevaluate their position. It would force them to face a truth that conflicts with their current beliefs.
November 11, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Regarding the Matt Drudge photo:
We had the photographer, Michael Clancy, flown in to speak at our 40 Days for Life kickoff rally.
He had been pro-choice until he took that picture. Now he’s sacrificed his whole livlihood–newspapers won’t contract him to take pictures because he’s an activist–to defend the unborn.
November 11, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I could not agree more with the pro-life position, but I do have a problem with showing photos of those butchered babies. It is a deeply dehumanizing thing to take photos of a person at his or her most tortured state and put them out for all the world to see. Those are people with dignity. Words cannot describe the horror those innocents receive, to then publically display their photos just dehumanizes them all the more. Now I can see a private use of those photos in an environment of deep respect…
Kate
November 11, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Kate. You make a good point, and I see where you’re coming from.
Still, I respectfully disagree.
The reason these photos are effective is because they HUMANIZE the victims of abortion. By hiding these images, we allow abortion to be obscured in the shadows and dehumanized.
November 11, 2008 at 11:42 pm
There is a time and a place for both approached.
November 12, 2008 at 12:40 am
I’m not a big fan of using these graphic pictures, primarily because I don’t think it’s effective. Maybe in the right time and context it can be — perhaps after someone is already well down the road of converting to pro-life. At that point, they might serve as the final straw that moves them to action.
But as a way to approach ardently pro-choice people? Not a good idea. It alienates them and drives them away from our cause. That’s because no one thinks he’s evil. Approaching someone and calling him an evil murderer isn’t the way to win over someone who thinks he’s acting in good faith. Yeah, yeah — we all know it’s evil. But there has to be a better way of gently nudging them to that conclusion. Speaking as someone who used to be rather indifferent to the whole abortion debate, it took a long time and a lot of thinking before I finally saw the light. Forcing graphic images on people is trying to jump start the process too quickly.
That’s my opinion, but I’m speaking from personal experience as someone who’s undergone the change of heart.
November 12, 2008 at 12:48 am
Don’t mean to split hairs, Matthew, but nine month-olds wouldn’t be torn apart limb from limb; rather, they would be induced out by labor feet first, have scissors stabbed into the base of their skull, then spread out to make a hole where a catheter would be inserted to suck out their brains. Then forceps would be used to remove the remaining skull fragments after the skull collapsed. Don’t know many places that would do abortions on nine month olds, maybe George Tiller in Kansas. It is, never-the-less, a brutal procedure.
P.S. All that was needed to convert me were graphic images of the procedure and it was VERY instantaneous. I was never adimate one way or the other prior to the graphic images, as I thought it was above my pay grade. I would agree that there are those who call it propaganda and are so hard-headed that they won’t come to terms with reality no matter what one says or shows them. Very sad.
November 12, 2008 at 1:57 am
It’s not uncommon to see corpses stacked like firewood in stories about the German “final solution”. Kinda drives home the point.
We’ve tried for over 40 years to make our case, if FOCA reaches Pres. Obama’s desk that’ll be undone. Maybe it’s time for something stronger. I’ll be averting my five year old’s eyes from them, but I’ll still be looking.
November 12, 2008 at 2:10 am
On abortion, “gay” marriage, euthanasia, pornography, fornication, embryonic stem cell research and many, many other things, the media have driven about half the country completely nuts.
If we think we can prevail on any one of these issues, let alone all of them, by presenting effective, persuasive arguments, then we also are nuts. We don’t have enough ink or electrons at our disposal.
By far the most effective thing we can do to advance our cause is to pry the mass media out of the Catholic/Christian home. In other words, kill the messenger, don’t argue with him over each insane thing he says.
This, of course, seems impossible, too. But it is far more possible to prevail in THAT ONE THING than to prevail over abortion etc while leaving the primary vector of secular culture and propaganda untouched. If we prevail here, we have prevailed in everything.
And mothers and fathers are more than ready to hear that message from the spiritual leadership of our country. Many, many of them would say, “It’s about time.”
The scandalous thing is that humanists have been pursuing this with energy for some time. See whitedot.org