And Ms. Cunningham (not Lois, my domestic partner) must surely know that the time between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) is reverenced by observant Jews as "The Ten Days of Penitence." A country which is killing one out of every three of its unborn children has much for which to repent. Of even greater significance is the fact that during these particular Holy Days, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. was sponsoring a special exhibit entitled "Remembering the Children [of the Holocaust]." If during this sacred time it is appropriate to "remember the children" of Nazi genocide, it must surely be appropriate to "remember the children" of abortion genocide (is it possible that more Jewish children will be killed by the latter than the former?).
Also on Tuesday, the Kansan featured a front page photo article headlined "Abortion display stimulates protests." The sub-heads read "Students take notice" and "Anti-abortion advocates use graphic photographs to get their point across." The article begins:
Cool weather and intermittent rain showers did not dampen the intensity of the abortion debate on campus yesterday as a large anti-abortion display was set up on the front lawn of Strong Hall.
* * *
Sally Puleo, St. Charles, Ill., junior and vice president of the KU Pro-Choice Coalition, called the display propaganda.
‘Abortion is about my body, not anything else,’ Puleo said. ‘How dare any group make me feel guilty about any decision I may or may not make?’
* * *
Executive Director Gregg Cunningham said ‘... Public opinion during the Vietnam War was changed using very horrific images beamed night after night into people’s homes .... Many people became angry with the press, but they also became disaffected with the war.’
Ms. Puleo’s anger leaves us to wonder why these pictures would "make her feel guilty" if, after looking at them, she still believes that "abortion is about my body, not anything else?" Yet this theme recurs time and again in the remarks of angry KU women. Rebecca Fenton, a Woy Woy, Australia junior wrote in the Kansan: "No one has the right to make anyone feel as uncomfortable as my friends and I were made [to] feel by these images." But how could mere "images" make them feel that "uncomfortable" if they are right about abortion? Erika Jacobson, Glendale, Arizona graduate student made a similar observation in a letter to the same paper:
The recent debate and violence on campus surrounding the anti-abortion display has sparked in me an anger that is unrelenting.
* * *
The reason this issue will not be resolved is because people like you ... hold up your signs and pictures and try and make people feel bad about themselves.
If pictures of something Ms. Jacobson supports "make her feel bad about herself," then perhaps she should reconsider her support of that something!
Speaking for the entire editorial board of The University Daily Kansan, Jennifer Roush opined that CBR "... should exhibit their beliefs in a more tasteful manner ...." She added that "At least one student became physically ill after exiting the dining hall and seeing the display." But pictures which depict sickening behavior will, of course, sicken viewers who still have a functioning conscience.
And the letters kept coming. Isa Gonzalez, a Parsons senior wrote in the same paper:
The focus of my anger is the pro-life displays that were in front of Strong Hall on Monday.
* * *
I saw these images as I was on my way to class in Wescoe and was horrified.
Could the pictures be "horrifying" because the acts are "horrifying?" And could Ms. Gonzalez be "angry" because she doesn’t want to believe her own eyes? She goes on to say "Many people would probably be disgusted if I posted a giant photo of a dissected human body, myself included. Does it then follow that we shouldn’t dissect human bodies ...?" Of course not but Ms. Gonzalez misses the point. Blood shed to heal (as in dissection) makes us feel queasy if we have a weak stomach. But blood shed to kill (as in abortion) makes us feel shame if we have a guilty conscience. The intensity of the anger elicited by these pictures is more about culpability than squeamishness.
To what lengths would some students go to discredit these powerful pictures? Diane Wahto sent us an e-mail making the bizarre allegation that our tiny fetuses, some hardly larger than a twenty-five-cent piece, were really Southeast Asian combat casualties: "Actually, the images you have are infants who were the victims of napalm in the Vietnam war." Well Ms. Wahto, I can attest that I and a colleague of mine personally took or supervised the taking of every one of our photos, and all of them were taken at abortion clinics. None of these facilities were on battlefields and none were even close to Vietnam. Some of the babies whose photos we exhibit were killed with chemical burns (and all of these were killed in utero, with placenta, umbilical cords, etc. plainly visible in the photos) but most were torn apart with suction or sharp curettage procedures. Napalm burns bodies, it doesn’t tear them apart. And to the best of our knowledge, even the most vicious abortionists have not yet begun to perform abortions with napalm. But thank you for helping us prove the point that abortion is a hideous way to die.
The next day, The Lawrence Journal-World ran a story entitled "Protest persists over abortion display at KU" with a sub-head which read "In a news conference Tuesday, KU student leaders expressed their ongoing dismay over a graphic anti-abortion display." The lead paragraph begins:
Campus unrest mounted Tuesday over the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s use of photos depicting lynchings and the Holocaust to promote an anti-abortion message at Kansas University.
* * *
Jonathan Macklin, KU senior and BSU [Black Student Union] executive board member, said the images irresponsibly force people to relive a terrible time in the country’s history.
* * *
Hillel president Seth Weisblatt ... said the center’s juxtaposition of Nazi death camps, racial lynchings and aborted fetuses ‘watered down’ and ‘trivialized’ the horrors experienced by Jews and blacks.
* * *
Thad Holcombe, campus pastor of Ecumenical Christian Ministries ... [added] that the group’s [CBR’s] methods trivialize racism, and that fundamentalists who declare their views to be the word of God are not trying to foster dialogue.
Mr. Macklin appears to miss the point that any study of America’s past "forces people to relive" many "terrible times in the country’s history." In fact, the most effective way to teach history is to use visual images to make it come alive, "terrible" though it might be. That’s why history books are filled with pictures -- many of them "terrible." What he really seems to think is "terrible" is the unavoidable conclusion -- compelled by our pictures -- that abortion is genocide, as unjust as any ever visited on African Americans. And his dispute is not just with us, but with the pro-life African Americans who help display these photo murals everywhere (including KU) we teach this "terrible" truth.
Mr. Weisblatt claims to believe that the suffering of Jews and blacks is "watered down" by comparing abortion genocide to the genocide by which these former groups were (and continue to be) victimized. But in his eloquent "Letter From The Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King also compared different forms of genocide by likening the brutalization of blacks in America with that of Jews in Nazi Germany. And the linkage was immediately rejected by those who believed that it minimized their own suffering. Dr. King’s critics were wrong then and Mr. Weisblatt is wrong now. Americans want desperately to believe that abortion is a "marginal" evil; perhaps at worst the lesser of two evils. But our photo murals make clear that abortion is an enormous wrong, on the same order of magnitude as any "crime against humanity." And since Americans are coping with abortion through denial (of what abortion is and does), they find these pictures deeply disturbing -- not because the photos "trivialize" the horror of extermination and lynching but because they make it impossible to maintain the pretense that abortion is a "trivial" evil.
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