Joyce Arthur complains of the Show the Truth tour that made its way through Southern Ontario. As you may know, Show the Truth shows pictures of aborted fetuses to show what happens to the unborn child during an abortion.
Truth be told, I'm really ambivalent about Show the Truth. However, I find some of the criticisms against its methods to be groundless.
Joyce writes:
But the "Show the Truth" tour has absolutely nothing to do with truth. It's pure propaganda. How is showing a hugely magnified fetus, totally removed from its original context, supposed to tell us anything about abortion?
She asks that so innocently. As if abortion weren't about fetuses as all.
What do pictures of fetuses say about abortion?
Maybe that abortions are not performed on "blobs of tissue", but actual human beings.
That abortion destroys a human being, maybe?
Something that's totally erased from these pictures, indeed from the entire debate, is the women who make the difficult decision to have an abortion for various compelling and personal reasons.
As if the taking of innocent human life could be "weighed" against other considerations.
It's interesting, because poor-choicers do the exact opposite: they completely avoid any talk of the interests of the unborn child. As far as hardcore abortion ideologues are concerned, the fetus is not a consideration.
The reason these photos are shown is to, indeed, remind people, that there is another human life involved in this.
What gives the protesters the right to show graphic photos of fetuses that once were a private part of a woman’s body and life?
Fetuses were never part of a woman's body. And they aren't now. We don't know whose babies these are no more than you could if it were a picture of a gall bladder.
If being “pro-life” is supposedly all about respecting life, then why are the protesters treating both women and fetuses with such outrageous disrespect?
Wait a minute...isn't Joyce Arthur the one who wrote "Fetuses are not that important"?
Why are they important when they are photographed dead, but they're not important when their lives are being snuffed out?
These women effectively threw away these fetuses. They're nothing more than medical waste in the eyes of the patients and the medical system. No privacy is violated-- nobody knows whose these babies belonged to. If my gallbladder--which I had removed in 2003-- showed up in a picture on the internet-- I'd be none the wiser.
The outrage is a little contrived.
She writes:
The vast majority of abortions are done in the early stages, when the embryo or fetus is the size of a cashew or much smaller.
As if size were a consideration of humanity.
The reason these photos are enlarged is so that everyone can see them.
Yet, the protester photos are grossly enlarged, and usually depict later-term fetuses.
True. But in Canada, late-term abortions occur. It's still part of the reality of abortion in Canada.
I’ll let Dr. William Harrison, an abortion provider from Arkansas tell the story:
After the video was over, [a friend] said to her, "I suppose you are accustomed to seeing this." She, appropriately appalled by what she had just seen, replied, "I have never seen anything like that in my life!" Well, I've never seen anything like that either, and I see the face of abortion almost every working day.
One might ask why there’s such a huge discrepancy between what abortion doctors see every day, and the photos shown by anti-abortion protesters.
What exactly do they see? Why don't they show what they see? That would contribute to the discussion.
Wait-- they wouldn't want to do that, now, would they?
If people want to know what a late-term abortion looks like, here's a specialist in Fetal-Maternal medicine showing what a prostaglandin abortion:
But in fact, anti-abortionists cannot prove their photos are of abortion at all. They have no documented legitimate sources for most of them, if any. For all we know, they could have been created in Photoshop - and until they prove otherwise, that's probably what we should assume.
How about this: if you actually want to totally disprove that they are not of abortion-- show what aborted fetuses look like.
That would settle it, wouldn't it?
The protesters unwittingly sabotage their cause, because the only truth the public sees is the face of fanatical extremism.
And she's complaining?
No. If it completely profited the pro-abortion side, she wouldn't be complaining.
The truth is that abortion pictures show what happen to the unborn child. For decades, the debate has been about the woman. Now Show the Truth is showing the other side-- what happens to the unborn child.
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