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Effective Social Reform 101
In response to the ACP protest at a Planned Parenthood rally this month, pro-lifer ‘Suni Moon’ writes:
“Pictures of aborted babies, huh? Well, that’s certainly not treating those lives lost with the respect they deserve. Don’t praise these people for doing what they did. It’s completely inappropriate, going only on shock factor. Turning those photographs into shock factor. Not dead infacts, just shock factor. Not a life, just something grotesque.
It’s horribly demeaning, disrespectful, disgusting. Shame on these people and their backwords methods.”
The ACP responds:
Suni Moon, please do not be so quick to condemn.
If you were a student of history and of social reform, you would know that going all the way back to William Wilberforce and the anti-slavery movement, shocking, distasteful, horrifying images have always been used by effective reformers to educate and change public opinion. As Wilberforce famously said, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”
Pictures of aborted babies are the most powerful and effective material means at our disposal for changing hearts and minds. Social Reform 101 teaches that you cannot end an injustice which you agree to cover up. Martin Luther King put it this way, “Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
For 40 years pro-lifers have been shouting the conclusions they want skeptics to reach (Abortion kills children, God is pro-life, Choose life, Abortion stops a beating heart, etc.) rather than proving the facts which compel these conclusions. And we’ve been doing so to the great demise and misfortune of unborn babies who are being slaughtered at roughly the same rate today that they were 30 and 40 years ago.
Father Pavone was right when he said, “America will not end abortion until America sees abortion.”
You speak about the respect these babies deserve. The dignity and respect owed these babies was not sacrificed by pro-lifers revealing their horrifying fate, Suni Moon, but by the abortionists and those who paid to have them tortured to death in their mothers’ womb.
Following your logic, it must be disrespectful to display any pictures of the dead. Yet we erect entire buildings, with tax dollars, dedicated for just this purpose. We print disturbing pictures of violence, killing, genocide, and war in our history textbooks, which are then used in classrooms all across America.
Our news media is well aware of the power of imagery and routinely places gruesome pictures of the dead on the front covers of our most popular magazines when the pictures involve causes they want Americans to end or humanitarian efforts they want Americans to support.
Of course, for Christians, there’s always the question of whether or not Christ would use a bloody image to make his point. But then, he already did.
Enter your nearest Catholic church and you’ll likely find near the altar a larger-than-life sculpture of a man being tortured to death. Perhaps you have something similar hanging on a wall in your house, or around your neck.
Where is your outrage at all this ‘grotesque’ carnage put on public display, Suni Moon?
No, it is not disrespectful to show pictures of the dead. When you are living in a society which is complicit in the slaughter of 50 million innocent babies I submit you are morally obligated to stand up and show them what their complacency and indifference looks like from the perspective of a 10 week old baby.
The pictures are grotesque, nauseating, and shocking. But that’s because abortion is a grotesque, nauseating, shocking act of violence which kills a baby — not a clump of cells. We must continue using the pictures to turn the stomachs of Americans until they are bothered enough to stop the killing.
If I was living in the 1930’s and managed to sneak pictures of Jewish children out of Dachau but then hid the evidence of Nazi brutality in a shoebox under my bed, I would rightly be called an anti-semite. Certainly no one would call my actions Christian.
Yet pro-life Christians today do exactly that when they take the pictures of American children retrieved from our own death camps and dumpsters of Planned Parenthood and hide them from public view under the false pretense that suppressing all the horrifying evidence is the best thing to do. Planned Parenthood cannot believe their good fortune at the stupidity of an opposition which would actively cooperate with them in hiding the proof that abortion kills a baby.
You say shame on us for exposing the injustice of abortion. I’m afraid you’ve got it exactly backwards, Suni Moon.
William Wilberforce
“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know.” – William Wilberforce
Forcing the Debate
Prominent columnist and pro-life blogger Jill Stanek linked to our event last weekend in Seattle, which, with her wide readership, generated over a hundred comments, and led to a subsequent headline on LifeSiteNews.com.
Here is one exchange buried in the comment section of Jill Stanek’s blog.
“Were any of you even at the rally?” -JB
I held the camera.
“Planned Parenthood’s primary service is NOT abortion, it is prevention.” -JB
Arguing over what their “primary” service is is irrelevant. PP is directly responsible for the deaths of more than a quarter million American babies every year. I am not in the habit of weighing any perceived good someone does against the lives of babies he ends. You cannot shelf the baby killing and engage in rational discussion of positive attributes of PP any more than we could shelf the Jew killing and discuss positive attributes of Hitler. (If Godwin is a sticking point for you, just replace Hitler with Pol Pot.)
“The rally wasn’t for abortions, it was for Planned Parenthood.” -JB
Again, you’re trying to divorce Planned Parenthood from baby killing, and so long as they remain the nation’s largest abortion provider, that just isn’t possible. Imagine if I attended a rally in support of federal funding for the Ku Klux Klan, and you showed up with pictures of blacks being lynched. What would you think if I posted that the rally wasn’t for lynching blacks, it was for the KKK?
“As far as the pro-life protesters who showed up, they should have read what the rally was actually for. We were not looking for a debate between pro-life and pro-choice; we were standing with Planned Parenthood.” -JB
No, you are right. PP is never looking for a debate with us. We deliberately force the debate on them whenever and wherever we can. By confronting PP with pictures of their handiwork – the horrifying and undeniable proof that abortion kills a baby – we force them to defend their raison d’etre without recourse to twisted, ambiguous and misleading language (‘choice’, ‘clumps of cells’, ’reproductive rights’, etc).
Standing With Planned Parenthood
Yesterday, March 19th, the Anti-Choice Project took Planned Parenthood up on their invitation to stand with them during an hour-and-a-half rally at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle. You can imagine their surprise when we joined the crowd carrying 4′ X 3′ pictures of what babies look like as they leave Planned Parenthood.
Marc Snyder, director of ACP Seattle, organized the counter protest which included 11 ACP volunteers. Planned Parenthood rallied a few hundred pro-aborts to listen as members of Planned Parenthood and of public office (including King County Executive Dow Constantine (D)) decried attempts by our new congress to cut millions in federal subsidizing of Planned Parenthood, and gave testimony to the greatness of the abortion giant. This was no easy task, as each speaker attempted to extol the virtues of an organization responsible for the carnage displayed on 11 signs around them.
Many of the pro-aborts in attendance scrambled to do whatever they could to prevent the images from being seen. Yet no one was able to answer the question posed to them, “If abortion is a morally defensible choice, why do you feel the need to cover it up?” (One woman covering my sign even responded sincerely, “That’s a good question.”)
One thing is clear. Pro-lifers dispute the power and effectiveness of using abortion pictures to change hearts and minds. Pro-aborts do not.
Planned Parenthood Aids Pimp’s Underage Sex Ring
In case you needed further evidence that Planned Parenthood is an evil, corrupt organization, here it is. The question is, how much more evidence does the American public need before they demand our government stop giving over $300 million of your tax dollars to Planned Parenthood each year?
Ken Schram Invites Olympic College Admin to Research First Amendment
In response to Olympic College’s recent ‘free speech’ policy revision, liberal talk show host from KOMO 4 News, Ken Schram, invited the Olympic College administration to research the First Amendment to the Constitution and write a 10 page paper on it.
Press Release: Anti-Choice Project Responds to Attempt by Olympic College to Restrict Free Speech Rights
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 29, 2010
Anti-Choice Project responds to attempt by Olympic College to restrict free speech rights
(Bremerton, WA) Following a decision made this summer by the Olympic College Board of Trustees, the state college plans to revise its free speech policies, relegating non-students who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights to an obscure location described by the school paper as the “least visible on campus” (“OC Adopts New Regulations,” The Olympian, 9/21/2010).
The board’s decision comes after a member of the Anti-Choice Project (www.antichoiceproject.com) — a non-profit organization based in Bremerton, Washington, which uses pictures of abortion to reveal the humanity of the unborn child and the inhumanity of abortion — peacefully protested on campus with 3’x4’ hand-held signs during the 2009 and 2010 academic school years.
The Anti-Choice Project rejects out of hand the decision made by the administration of Olympic College that free speech can be limited to an obscure and nearly-invisible area of campus. Under the new policy, students would still enjoy their First Amendment rights in all free speech areas, but non-students would be restricted to the administration’s carefully selected locations.
Tom Herring, Co-Founder of the Anti-Choice Project said, “What this administration is attempting to do borders on the comical as a ‘free speech area’ denied to non-students is by definition a restricted-speech area. Not as comical are the fines which accompany such discriminatory policies infringing on citizens’ First Amendment rights.”
As Olympic College receives funding from the taxpayers of Washington State, its campus is public property. Property in which, Herring explains, the rights of citizens — members of the Anti-Choice Project included — cannot be denied as a result of content-based discrimination.
Anti-Choice Project Co-Founder, Andrew St.Hilaire said, “The new policy is being driven by board members like Ms. Ross who feel ‘put off by people’ and ‘their point of view’ which Ms. Ross thinks is too ‘pushy.’ [C.f., Ruth Ross, Olympic College Board of Trustees member and Dean of Library and Media Services quoted in the article “OC Adopts New Regulations,” The Olympian, 9/21/2010.] It is axiomatic, however, that the First Amendment is especially protective of speech which is ‘off-putting,’ ‘pushy,’ and offensive.”
Herring concluded by saying, “Oppressors always try to suppress the pictures, but it is truly frightening to contemplate the lengths to which this administration is willing to go in its attempt to hide the truth of abortion from public view. If — as current U.S. law dictates — abortion is a perfectly moral choice, why does Olympic College find pictures of it to be so offensive?”
The Anti-Choice Project has sought legal counsel at this time.
Please email all media inquiries to info@www.antichoiceproject.com
(Photo: Co-Founder of the Anti-Choice Project, Tom Herring, holding a sign of a 10 week abortion during a demonstration outside the Olympic College campus)
Correction: According to the Olympic College newspaper, the Olympian, Ruth Ross is the Dean of Library and Media Services and was on the 12-member panel which developed the language and content of the new free speech policy adopted by the college Board of Trustees. She is not a member of the Board of Trustees. The Anti-Choice Project apologizes for this factual error.
Video: Typical Chat With Pro-Aborts
On September 5, 2010, the Anti-Choice Project (ACP) stood at a busy intersection in Silverdale, Washington to protest the killing of babies by abortion.
In a typical reaction to our 4’x3′ signs of first trimester aborted babies, two pro-abortion women, unrelated to each other, approached our volunteers at the same time asserting that men had no right to speak about babies being killed in the womb. In addition, both were upset about their children having to see our signs.
Whether or not it is moral to perform an action that can have both a good effect (here, adults seeing pictures of dead babies) and a bad effect (small children seeing pictures of dead babies) is governed in ethics by the Principle of Double Effect.
Although the conditions of this ethical principle may sound complicated, all of us apply them frequently. A little boy cuts his hand, and his mother puts an antiseptic on the cut. This action has two effects: it causes the boy pain and it wards off infection. Although the mother may not realize it, she actually used the principle of double effect. She performed an action that was good in itself, that had two effects, one of which was bad (pain).
Though the Anti-Choice Project never intentionally shows small children pictures of abortion, it can be foreseen that our strategy will result in their viewing. Employing the criteria of the Principle of Double Effect, we have weighed the “bad effect” against the “good effect” and, since the graphic images change minds, have come to the conclusion that the lives saved from a torturous death matter more than the feelings and emotions of born children.
Video: Pro-Abort Loses It Over Abortion Pictures
Chad Smalley believes abortion is a “G** d***** necessity” but upon seeing pictures of it, he loses control of himself and resorts to violence. This raises the important question: If abortion is such a morally acceptable choice, why do pictures of it make pro-aborts so angry?
[Warning: Rated R for extreme language.]
Chad Smalley is being charged with disorderly conduct by the Kitsap County District Attorney.
Focus Group: The Impact of Pictures of Aborted Babies
From Priests for Life:
In April of two thousand and ten, Priests for Life asked The Polling Company to conduct professional research into the attitudes of the African American community about abortion, and into what kind of messaging would be most effective for them. Focus groups were held in major cities and a nationwide poll was also conducted.
One of the things that was done in the focus groups is that pictures of aborted babies were shown to the participants. This had an impact, expressed by these words of one of the participants, “Before I came in to this room today, I was pro-choice. But after seeing those pictures and hearing all that, I think I’ve changed my ideas on abortion.”
Let’s keep in mind the simple truth that the more people see abortion, the more they reject it.
