I don’t think I’ve ever been cursed at quite so many times in a four-hour period as I was today. I lost count of the number of times I was called vile and vulgar names, flipped the bird, or F-bombed. I’m sure yelling obscenities to strangers – even strangers you disagree with – isn’t normal behaviour for you, the pro-choice individuals who walked past our abortion display, so I can’t help but wonder why our opposition to abortion stirs up such emotion in you.
I was on the streets of Hamilton, Ontario today as part of a training course with the Canadian Center for Bio-Ethical Reform – an organization that uses abortion victim photography as a tool to educate the public about the human rights violation that is abortion. We use the images because they convey a terrible truth that cannot be rightly understood with words alone, and because victim imagery has been a proven tool of success in social reform movements across the centuries. Even more importantly, we use such imagery because when people see the violently dismembered bodies of the youngest members of our species, many of them change their minds about abortion – and their children’s lives are saved.
But many of you are angry when you pass by our signs, and I fail to understand why. After all: you’re pro-choice. The violence depicted in our pictures is the aftermath of one of the choices you support – so why does its reality upset you? Abortion takes a developing human fetus and tears him or her limb from limb. If you’re sure that’s a perfectly fine thing to do, why are you angry with us for showing others what that choice looks like? Surely it’s not merely that we disagree with you on this issue – you don’t curse at everyone who holds views different from yours, do you? I suspect it’s not really the bloodiness that bothers you either – how often have you cursed at the grocery clerk for having bloody animal parts on display in the meat department?
One of the angry individuals who approached me yesterday complained that children might see the images. I explained to him that while we’re not targeting children, we must prioritize the lives of preborn children over the feelings of born children. “Women are walking past these signs,” I told him, “who are pregnant and considering whether or not to do this to their preborn child.” A woman standing nearby said quietly: “Yes, and I’m one of them“. We were able to counsel her to leave an abusive environment for her sake and that of her child, and with our support she’ll be breaking the cycle of violence by giving her child life. Yell at us all you want; she and her child and the countless others we’ve saved are worth your abuse – and those pictures won’t go away until abortion does!
The next time you’re tempted to curse and shout obscenities to someone holding the image of a preborn victim of abortion, please ask yourself why that image bothers you so much. If these images are too disgusting and awful to look at and to accept as the reality of choice, then perhaps the procedure these pictures expose is too disgusting and awful to continue supporting.
Do u ever think people are angry or upset with your signs cause their children are seeing them. Why are parents being responsible to explain something to their “children” that they don’t want a 6 year old knowing. My friends daughter at the age of 5 came across your flyer and was mortified and I would be to at the age of 5. Or how about the lady driving home that was just told she miscarried. I’m sure she doesn’t wanna see your morbid photos. I think u could have a better approach to where if people want info on what you are preaching they will ask. Myself personally am against abortion however I think people have the right to their own choice. You act as if you are all about the children and if that were the case u would not be subjecting this to them. Time for a new hobby
Hi Allison, CCBR (whose projects I was partaking of) has drafted some excellent responses to your questions, and I direct you to them: http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/faq#t974n2794
Also, I’m curious as to why you are personally against abortion? Is it because you know that a fetus is a human being and that it would be wrong for you to kill your preborn child? Why is it ok for someone else to make that same choice to kill their preborn child? Are choices absolute just because they are a choice? Aren’t there many choices that we forbid, precisely because they bring harm to another human being, such as rape, child beating, assault, drinking & driving? Aren’t some choices wrong and worthy of being illegal? If you’re personally against abortion isn’t it because you know it’s a wrong choice? Shouldn’t wrong choices be forbidden?
“But many of you are angry when you pass by our signs, and I fail to understand why. After all: you’re pro-choice. The violence depicted in our pictures is the aftermath of one of the choices you support – so why does its reality upset you? Abortion takes a developing human fetus and tears him or her limb from limb. If you’re sure that’s a perfectly fine thing to do, why are you angry with us for showing others what that choice looks like? Surely it’s not merely that we disagree with you on this issue – you don’t curse at everyone who holds views different from yours, do you? I suspect it’s not really the bloodiness that bothers you either – how often have you cursed at the grocery clerk for having bloody animal parts on display in the meat department?”
Absolutely brilliant Kristine! If they were really pro-choice, then they wouldn’t mind others having a choice to show pictures that represent the truth of a certain choice.
Thanks, Chandler. 🙂
Thank you for doing what you do. You care enough to put up with so much negativity but think about all the lives you are saving…..so many you won’t even know about! Visual’s speak volumes!!! This saddens me, not angers me……so many just do not know….Thank you for caring enough for telling them the truth. Truth hurts sometimes….but truth is truth! God bless you Kristine!
Thanks Janay! 🙂
The reason pro-choicers get pissed off is because most of these pictures are not accurate representations of abortions and are intended to misinform and manipulate. The vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester, where a fetus looks like this:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Human_Embryo.JPG/741px-Human_Embryo.JPG
In fact, the majority of pictures taken for abortion protest signs are actually the results of stillbirths (aka late-term miscarriages). The differences are significant. In the first trimester, the embryo/fetus (distinction made at approx. 8 weeks) does not have a developed nervous system – it is in no way self-aware nor does it feel pain. For many people (including me) this makes an enormous difference. The fetus has the moral status of a jellyfish or a sea cucumber. It will not suffer. However, to show late-term fetuses and attempt to pass them off as product of the majority of abortions is unethical because it suggests that the fetus has characteristics that are essential to many people’s definitions of personhood, when it fact it does not.
It reminds me of how a huge part of the title character’s choice in the movie Juno relied on the humanizing characteristic of her fetus having fingernails – a lie told to her by a protester. This is simply untrue of fetuses at that stage of development.
So if you are wondering why pro-choicers become angry with your pictures, that is why. If you are willing to lie to achieve your goals, that is understandable. I know that you believe you are doing the right thing, and I sympathize with that, although I could not disagree more with your stance. However, please do not lie to yourself about your methods, and please do not convince yourself that pro-choicers who see through your lies have no good reason to be angry.
Hi Lark, thanks for commenting. 🙂
In fact you are mistaken about the pictures in use. While we do use some pictures of older aborted fetuses, these are always labeled as such. Most of the pictures used by CCBR are first trimester abortions like the embryo in your link. The fetus in the image I am holding above was approximately 10 weeks old gestation and is so labeled. Not only can you verify that with an embryology text book and compare limb shapes and size and presence of intestine/organs shown in the image for yourself (online see http://www.ehd.org/prenatal-summary.php for instance), but you can also read the authentication of the images/ages made by an abortion provider who verified the images (http://abortionno.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/LevatinoLetterMay08.pdf) and statement by the photographer who took the pictures in a working abortion clinic and whose identity will be revealed in court by anyone willing to be sued by CBR for publicly calling “fake” on their images (http://abortionno.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/photographervideographercertificationhardcopypixelated.pdf)
By the way, regarding Juno, most abortions happen between 8 and 12 weeks and finger/toenails begin to develop somewhere between the 10th and 12 weeks’ gestation. Juno was still in her first trimester when she went to the abortion clinic, and depending on how far along she was in her pregnancy, it is entirely possible that her fetus did have fingernails. See embryology text book by O’Rahilly and Müller, 2001 which indicates nail beds develop at around 11 weeks and nails begin growing 12 weeks. This info is also available in many fetal development calendars for expectant mothers (See http://www.babycenter.com/6_your-pregnancy-10-weeks_1099.bc?intcmp=timeline or http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/your-baby/week-11/yoga.aspx for instance). The pro-lifer in Juno wasn’t lying.
Maybe it’s time you stopped lying to yourself. Calling “fake” is an old tactic against social reformers using visuals, but it’s a dishonest one. Examine the evidence of fetal development for yourself and you’ll very quickly see that they match the dismembered bodies in the abortion victim photos.
So first, let me say that I am opposed to abortion. Second, let me say that I am understanding of those who find these images offensive. To say that you “fail to understand” why the images make them angry is disingenuous at least and also a bit unflattering to your intellect. I suspect you do understand, and are using this expression as a figure of speech. The images are gory and disturbing which is why they are used. Whether it is the result of a choice they support or not does not take away from the visceral response to the picture. The reality is that meat in the meat department is packaged neatly in a form that most can accept (much in the same way that abortion is packaged neatly as a sterile medical procedure, removal of an unwanted growth). But if someone was standing in front of the meat section playing movies showing the slaughter of cows, the slicing the jugulars by butchers standing knee-deep in blood, I would certainly be bothered, vegetarian or not.
Perhaps the ends justify the means on this issue, I just don’t think that you portray the debate or yourself in a favourable light when you “play dumb” and pretend not to understand why people respond the way they do to these pictures.
Thanks for your feedback. Indeed, I hope to be able to get my pro-choice readers to ask themselves why they are bothered. The pictures are graphic and disturbing because abortion is graphic and disturbing. We’re all exposed to much violent imagery on TV and movies and yet the visual evidence of a dismembered fetus hits us harder. I suspect there would be far fewer meat eaters If people saw the violence of factory farms, and likewise, support for abortion drops as people see the reality of what it does to the youngest of us.
It’s all the same isn’t it? Touch someones beliefs when their self image and identity are attached to them and you do no more than awaken those doubts so delicately repressed, huh?
I think their fury is your greatest victory:)
Well said, Chris!
Like this?
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m99x7cu3ay1rdklleo1_500.jpg
Hi Dr Dru. Yes, that image is tragic! If a woman feels she has no choice but to have an abortion she has been desperately wronged by her society. And a woman who feels so trapped by circumstances that she would endanger her own life to abort her child is no less wronged. Women and their children deserve better than abortion!
That woman did not need legal abortion. She needed real solutions. The circumstances that cause a pregnancy to be such a problem do not vanish with abortion. Abortion doesn’t kill a woman’s problems, it merely kills her child.
I love your passion, it’s wonderful to see people standing up for the rights of the unborn child. I do feel concerned about small children seeing such graphic images, though I have no problem with adults being exposed to the reality of abortion. And it should be upsetting, because it is so horrible. It’s not as clean and simple as those who are pro choice make it out to be. Our teens need to be taught whether it’s in school or at home, that life beings at conception. Show them what the growing infant in the womb looks like at every stage of development and all that is happening. I’m not sure if schools are doing this, but shouldn’t this be part of sex education, teaching them the beginning and development of human life in the womb.
Thanks so much for the great work you are doing! 🙂
Hi Hannah,
No the schools aren’t showing these images – but WE area 🙂 I’ve partnered with the local group in my home town that is taking both prental and post-abortion images outside of high schools and engaging with students on their lunch breaks.
I agree that it’s unfortunate when children see these images, as they are not the target audience. Nonetheless, the images save preborn children’s lives. What matters more: born children’s feelings upon seeing these images, or the lives of preborn children who will be saved when their mother sees this image. I asked this very question to a gentleman during my activism in Hamilton in August and pointed out that any of the women walking by these signs could be pregnant and considering an abortion. A woman next to him said “yeah, and I’m one of them.” She’s now keeping her baby.
More often than not, younger children are just confused or nonchalant because they have no clue what they’re seeing. And for an older child it could be a good opportunity for a parent to explain to their child that while they are loved and protected, these people are trying to show what’s happening to other children who are not being protected right now. I think many parents resent being put in a position of having to explain to the child that they support what is being done to those preborn children, and I’m convinced that a lot of their anger comes out of that cognitive dissonance/shame.
Happy to discuss this further. Thanks for your thoughts.
I would not want my child to see pictures like that. Not a fan of in your face protests either. Harassing troubled pregnant women seems like a bad idea to me. Protests or “educational displays” like this belong before the courts and congress, where it matters, not on the streets or at clinics. Maybe if you had it in a pamphlet with a graphic warning on the cover. This just keeps the extremism rolling.
I am a humanist/agnostic/atheist pro life and pro birth control. I place personhood at implantation.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Josh! I’m curious: how do you think we will ever get this injustice before the courts and governments if the people of the land are not convinced that abortion is an atrocity and an act of cruel injustice worthy of a law change? How do you propose to change a sufficient number of minds about abortion? I’ve got hard data and countless examples of people who have changed their minds on the spot after seeing these images. Can you name me a single pro-life activism project that has a higher success rating when it comes to saving minds and changing lives?
I think dismembering the youngest and most dependent members of our species is about as extreme as it comes. Perhaps we need to be a bit more extreme in our response to it? Social reformers across history have used graphic images to humanize their victims and show the inhumanity of what was being done to them. Images do work.
I don’t like children seeing these images either. It’s a simple question of math that more people will see the images on signs than if we tried to hand out flyers. The feelings of born children matter, I agree. And still, let’s not forget that there are lives of preborn children on the line. Which matter more: lives or feelings?
I think both sides of the abortion debate can be rightly accused of chasing compassion for one group into apathy for the other. The issue is not black and white. I think it’s probably safe to say most pro-lifers agree on allowing abortion if the life of the mother is jeoprodized and saving the baby isn’t possible. There are instances of ethical necessity. I think the pro-life movement needs to focus more on abortion reform towards a gradated system. I don’t believe in the right to a choice to kill. I believe in the right for a doctor to decide if a circumstance meets the criteria for necessity. I believe the doctors/providers should be held accountable by the government for each abortion individually. We would have to vote in new abortion laws for it to get to the courts. The issue is extreme, but extremism doesn’t factor in the varying degrees of circumstances and will probably push a lot of people away. We need to find a middle ground where these things are considered before we will get abortion laws that won’t be overturned.
Well said
Thanks, John 🙂