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A Journal of Catholic News and Views

26 Oct 2001

Abortion protesters take necessary steps

Anti-abortion activists in Chicago began a campaign to educate the population as to the horrors of abortion. In a campaign called "Face the Truth", pro-life volunteers stand along the side of roads holding signs which depict the horrors of abortion to passing motorists.

These efforts are a clever technique by a grassroots movement with limited finances. Having to battle against Planned Parenthood, N.O.W. and other abortion providers with million dollar budgets, small organizations need to do what they can with the resources available. They can't afford nationwide television commercials or extensive billboard campaigns, but these efforts at busy intersections can reach tens of thousands of people each day. The concept is gaining popularity and similar events are occurring in other parts of the country.

Trust your senses

Even though there are signs up the road warning oncoming traffic of the pictures, some object to having to look at such depictions of abortion. They claim the pictures are too violent or bloody or "obscene". Well if it's too horrible to look at, it should be absolutely unthinkable to allow. Pictures of murdered children should make people uncomfortable.

Some argue the pictures are "prejudicial" because they "look like babies". Of course they're going to look exactly like what they are. How liberals have been able to convince millions not to trust their own senses is a difficult question to answer, but they are aware of the power of pictures and afraid of their hypocrisy being exposed. Even in congress while lawyers were arguing against partial birth abortions, supporters of child murder instituted a policy forbidding the use of diagrams and drawings that showed a "human or child-like form". So lawyers arguing against the brutal murder of defenseless children during delivery were forced to use crude diagrams of stick figures to prevent the lawmakers from witnessing the terrible reality of the "procedure".

While it's unfortunate that propaganda can be used to convince people that a fetus with a beating heart is not human, it's unbelievable that those same people can be convinced that a child delivered up to his head is also not human. The ugly truth of the matter is that most abortionists no longer maintain that a fetus or newborn baby is less than human, they just don't care if they are killed. A fact emphasized all to well by the increase in child abandonment.

Stress-free killing

As Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life points out, the reason Nazi executioners used gas chambers was to minimize the toll on those who needed to carry out the killings.

"In the documents of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, we read the following excerpt: '...Women and children were to be executed with the men. ... In this respect, the Einsatzgruppen leaders encountered a difficulty they had not anticipated. Many of the enlisted men were husbands and fathers, and they winced as they pulled their triggers on these helpless creatures who reminded them of their own wives and offspring at home. ... This was hard on the executioners, personnel experts reported to the RSHA in Berlin, and to relieve their emotional sensitivity, gas vans were sent to the rescue.'"

"We read further in the Nuremberg documents that even the method of gassing created problems for those who had to unload the bodies ... This is why the task of unloading the bodies was eventually given to the Jews who themselves were destined for killing. In the abortion industry, the abortionist will leave to the nurses and the assistants the grim task of reassembling and disposing of body parts." ¹ Pictures of abortion's reality turn this stress-free killing spree into the ugly debacle it really is. Additionally, during both the Nazi killings and the Vietnam War, individuals did little until pictures of the horrors were published and the reality of the situations could be clearly seen. The same principle is at work here.

Concealing the Truth

Liberals rail against censorship and "suppression of opinion" when it is a cause they support. Otherwise, they have no problems putting legislative bans on abortion protests and allowing violations of the first amendment. The secular media devotes unending time and resources showing abortion center bombings and other examples of "pro-life violence" but ignores the repeated attacks on peaceful protestors by abortionists and the police. Nor do we ever see the most violent process of all — the abortions themselves.

Why is it that an abortion is the most common surgical procedure in the country but we never see it for what it is? On television, heart surgery and other operations are shown regularly — why aren't abortions? Why is it that pro-life groups are the only ones willing to show what abortion is and what it does?

The political opinions of media celebrities are repeated ad nauseam when it comes to liberal causes like the occupation of Tibet, animal "rights", vegetarianism and abortion rights. But the opinions of those who oppose abortion (Mel Gibson, Kathy Ireland, etc.) are never known. When Mother Theresa accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, she said "the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion"² but the secular media still painted her as merely a humanitarian social worker.

As long as so much effort and money continues to be put towards the work of Satan, Catholics must fight it in every way they can. This includes not only protests, mailings and advertisements but a tactic our opponents would never consider utilizing — praying the most holy rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Peter Miller
Seattle, WA
10/26/2001