Pro-Life Use of Graphic Images

Abortion right activists denigrate pro-life activists for using graphic images of aborted fetuses. I understand how disturbing such images are. I myself don't like to look at such things and was shocked and angry the first time I saw images of aborted human babies. I think I was in high school when the pastor of my church literally put the pictures in my face without warning. I quickly looked away and didn't know what to think. Looking back on it now, I do think what he did by springing the pictures on me was wrong. Maybe he was thinking that this would shock me out of my complacency. Well, it did, but I do agree that springing these images on people without warning is the wrong thing to do and becomes a stumbling block to the pro-life movement if done this way.

However, I do think that using graphic images of the reality of abortion does have a place in pro-life argumentation, but they must be used carefully. What pro-life protesters who use these images should do is to have warning signs put up to tell people that graphic images are ahead concerning the reality of abortion. This gives people the opportunity to look away or to find another route to take if such images would disturb them. But there is nothing inherently wrong in using the images to describe the reality of the thing being discussed. Words are limited in revealing the horrors of moral atrocities. That is why images are so powerful in awakening us from our complacency (genocide, Apartheid, Holocaust, etc.). Think of the story of Emmett Till. Till's mother insisted that her son, who was brutally beaten to death, have an open casket at the funeral so that everyone could see what the murderous racists did to her son. The story of Emmett Till became a catalyst for the Civil Rights movement. Amen. So, I do think that pro-lifers can and should use such images to enhance their moral argument. I leave with a couple of quotes from the website: www.prolifetraining.com:

Gregg Cunningham of The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform says, "Abortion represents an evil so inexpressible that words fail us when attempting to describe its horror. Until abortion is seen, it will never be understood.

"Pro-abortion columnist Naomi Wolf observes, "The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the pro-lifers' practice of holding up to our faces their disturbing graphics....[But] how can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that the truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy."