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In other words, the pro-life movement is like the protagonist in actor Bill Murray's movie "Groundhog Day;" seemingly doomed to relive the same day over and over again. It's not 1975 anymore, and we don't have to be trapped into reliving the same projects in perpetuity.
Thank heaven we have finally broken out of our "Groundhog Day" cycle by acquiring high grade, shocking pictures of aborted embryos and early fetuses and thank heaven that we have learned how to use them. Their display incontestably teaches everything a person needs to understand to conclude that abortion is indefensible. If that's not enough to change someone's mind, their problem is spiritual rather than educational, in which case we can only urge and pray for their salvation.
GAP has begun to change public perception of early-term abortion in much the same way the "partial birth" debate has turned America against late-term abortion (Credit The National Right to Life Committee primarily for effective work on this front). GAP dims the once bright line dividing early and late termination of pregnancy.
Early abortion pictures are far more troubling to the culture than late-term photos because the latter depict someone else's abortion (the "rare" one which even many pro-aborts self-righteously condemn). But early photos depict your abortion; the "common" one you struggle to convince yourself was a "necessary evil," or at worst, the "lesser of two evils." And they make your abortion (or the one to which you support a right of access) look indefensibly more evil than you ever dared imagine. These pictures enable us to stop merely arguing conclusions about abortion and start proving the facts which compel those conclusions.
WHY WE'RE LOSING
But incredibly, the "pro-life" movement largely refuses to use abortion images of any kind, so it matters little that the pictures save lives, motivate repentance and inspire involvement. How do they defend this suppression of evidence?
Most pro-life "activists" are involved in crisis pregnancy service delivery. Many are themselves post-abortive and unresolved issues related to their own experience cause them to recoil from disturbing images. For many others, a pregnant woman is more real than her unborn child, so pursuit of her spiritual or emotional well-being is accorded a higher priority than saving her baby's life. Still other crisis pregnancy service personnel simply fail to understand the value of abortion pictures or have never been trained to use them appropriately. CBR is heavily involved in this important area through the work of Lois Cunningham, a public health nurse and experienced crisis pregnancy medical clinic director, who is currently our Director of Crisis Pregnancy Outreach. But the crisis pregnancy approach is reactive, dealing with a problem one crisis at a time, after it's already upon us. We also need proactive projects like GAP which get out ahead of the problem and intercept it before it gathers unstoppable momentum.
The dirty little secret of the pro-life movement is that most of our organizations care more what the public thinks of them than what the public thinks of abortion. And the pro-aborts, who are as frightened of pictures as pro-lifers are of criticism, have figured this out. They gleefully paralyze easily intimidated "pro-lifers" with accusations of "insensitivity," or even "violence," when we dare to make abortion real. CBR scoffs at this silliness but the mere threat of such allegations causes the "compassion" wing of the pro-life movement to run screaming from the room. They are simply unwilling to pay the high public-relations costs imposed on groups which fully expose the horror of abortion.
Is it really "compassion," however, to care more about the feelings of the born than the lives of the unborn? Was Martin Luther King less effective because he provoked the anger of bad people who hated his goals and good people who hated his tactics? Dr. King advanced the cause of civil rights precisely because he wasn't trying to win a popularity contest; he was forcing a reluctant nation to face social injustice. His method was to incite racists who were brutalizing African Americans in private, to do it in public, where their savagery could be documented with pictures he could then use to outrage people of conscience. He knew this process would be effective but costly and he was one of the few activists who had the integrity and the courage to pay the price. Had leadership of the civil rights movement been abdicated to "civil rights moderates" who shrank from confrontation, it would still be 1963 for black America.
Another group of social reformers who paid a terrible price to achieve their ends were the journalists who opposed the Vietnam War. Time Magazine, November 23, 1998, describes their sacrifice:
By ... [1975], the public and most of the American press, including Time, had turned against the war. That was due in no small measure to the words and pictures from the correspondents sent to Vietnam to cover the conflict .... For their trouble, many were killed or wounded, and most were criticized as biased at best and unpatriotic at worst. [Emphasis added.]
The pictures were worth innumerable words. Focusing the attention of a disinterested culture on irrefutable visual evidence of social injustice invariably causes social unrest (i.e., anti-war riots) but it also speeds social reform. Pictures of Los Angeles motorist Rodney King's beating by the LAPD advanced the campaign against police brutality beyond any result which could have been achieved by words alone. Yet even before the ensuing riots, the press was vilified by some for broadcasting these shocking images too often and by others for broadcasting them at all. The high cost of exposing injustice motivates many to suppress evidence of injustice which the public is eager to ignore.
Are pro-lifers willing to pay the high cost of victory? The pro-aborts are. Warren Hern is one of the most savage late-term abortionists on the planet. Here is what he says about the price he and his killer colleagues are willing to pay:
At the rally, the antiabortion fanatics showed up shouting my name and calling me a murderer. They had numerous signs showing my name and various descriptions of me, none of them flattering. As I began to speak, they began to shout. I spoke above them .... I felt defiant ... [CBR note; shouting by pro-lifers is a stupid tactic].
Our only option for taking the high moral ground was to place our own lives and bodies on the line. We must risk our lives for our cause by continuing to provide safe abortion services in the face of the threats and attempts to intimidate. Only our own moral courage in doing what we see as right and ethical could be an effective counterpoise to the religious fervor of the antiabortionists ["Life On The Front Lines," Warren Hern, Women's Health Issues, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 137-138, Fall 1993].
Hern and his kid-killing kindred are willing to be criticized, reviled and even murdered to advance their cause. Pro-lifers are afraid to even be criticized. The people who are killing babies are more committed than the people trying to save them. This may be one of the reasons the pro-life movement is ignored by most Americans and not taken seriously by the bulk of the rest. We don't have the moral authority to command attention and respect because we're trying to win on the cheap.
We respect, appreciate and wish to work with any pro-life organizations which condemn violence. But many pro-life groups are reluctant to associate themselves with anyone who rocks the boat - and they're convinced that pictures will surely capsize the pro-life dingy. Most or these organizations are so timid that they consciously cover-up the horror of abortion for fear of offending. They are the contemporary counterparts of the "civil rights moderates" whose passion for appeasement sabotaged Dr. King from one side while violent groups like the Black Panthers (corresponding to today's anti-abortion assassins and bombers) sabotaged him from the other. They, of course, deny cowardice and argue that "expose'" just doesn't work. But Au contraire. We win when we fight abortion as a concrete act of violence and we lose when we merely dispute it as an abstract right of choice.
We also lose when we allow most Americans to cling to a mythical "middle ground" on abortion. James Morrow, writing in the May 17, 1999, issue of U.S. News & World Report describes this imaginary neutrality:
... James Gilmore carved out a middle-ground position that helped him get elected as governor of Virginia. He said he was opposed to abortion but accepted Roe v. Wade - the Supreme Court's 1973 decision upholding a woman's constitutional right to an abortion - as the law of the land .... Indeed, many GOP candidates since have followed his lead.
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