I notice the writer used the term ‘fetus’ instead of developing baby…that lets the cat outta the bag right there!.
I am one of the ones who is consistently outspoken against the indiscriminate use of these photos in places where young children are likely to be unless their parents have some prior warning and opportunity to avoid them. I don’t believe you can say that I have ever attempted to deny that the pictures were of babies.
For the record, if you go to almost any of the threads on the use of billboard sized posters of blood covered dismembered and decaptiated dead babies, you will see that the objections are pretty specifically targeted for the most part. It is not “never use these at any time in any place”. It is “use some discretion and please try to adhere to societal norms of not showing these in places where you can reasonably expect that large numbers of children under the age of 7 are going to be, unless you give their parents some reasonable option to avoid them seeing such”.
Not “don’t show them to adults”. Not “don’t show them to teens”. Not “pretend it doesn’t exist”. Not “don’t show them to women considering an abortion”. Not “don’t show them in sex ed classes”.
Simply “don’t rub my young child’s face in pictures of bloody mutilated corpses of babies by the entrance to the toy store”. “Don’t leave them on the tables at the McDonald’s by the play space”. “Don’t presume that your desire to use this particular method in this particular setting trumps my obligation to parent and seek to appropriately protect my preschool or young elementary child from topics that are not developmentally appropriate”.
There are plenty of ways in which one can teach a child long before they are teens that babies are human before they are born and that it is bad to hurt them. My child understood that very adequately before she was 4 years old. It did not require that I show her these huge photos of bloody mutilated corpses of babies. As I have said before, the Catholic Church seems to believe they can certainly adequately instruct their children in both the churches and in Catholic schools about this without even mentioning the word “abortion” until the 5th grade, much less showing 4 and 5 year olds these photos.
please dont send me any Christmas card…(again sorry using the name of CHrist instead of an X)
“X” is not the English letter “x” is is the Greek letter “chi” and as such an abbreviation of Christ which has been in use since the 15th century
by the Church.
etymonline.com/index.php?l=x
*Xmas
“Christmas,” 1551, X’temmas, wherein the X is an abbreviation for Christ in Christmas, from first letter of Gk. Christos “Christ” (see Christ). The earlier way to abbreviate it was Xp- or Xr-, corresponding to “Chr-,” and the form Xres mæsse for “Christmas” appears in the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” (c.1100). *
crivoice.org/symbols/xmasorigin.html
*The exact origin of the single letter X for Christ cannot be p(name removed by moderator)ointed with certainty. Some claim that it began in the first century AD along with the other symbols, but evidence is lacking. Others think that it came into widespread use by the thirteenth century along with many other abbreviations and symbols for Christianity and various Christian ideas that were popular in the Middle Ages. However, again, the evidence is sparse.
In any case, by the fifteenth century Xmas emerged as a widely used symbol for Christmas. In 1436 Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with moveable type. In the early days of printing typesetting was done by hand and was very tedious and expensive. As a result, abbreviations were common. In religious publications, the church began to use the abbreviation C for the word “Christ” to cut down on the cost of the books and pamphlets. From there, the abbreviation moved into general use in newspapers and other publications, and “Xmas” became an accepted way of printing “Christmas” (along with the abbreviations Xian and Xianity). Even Webster’s dictionary acknowledges that the abbreviation Xmas was in common use by the middle of the sixteenth century.
So there is no grand scheme to dilute Christianity by promoting the use of Xmas instead of Christmas. It is not a modern invention to try to convert Christmas into a secular day, nor is it a device to promote the commercialism of the holiday season. Its origin is thoroughly rooted in the heritage of the Church. It is simply another way to say Christmas, drawing on a long history of symbolic abbreviations used in the church. In fact, as with other abbreviations used in common speech or writing (such as Mr. or etc.), the abbreviation “Xmas” should be pronounced “Christmas” just as if the word were written out in full, rather than saying “exmas.”*