Anti-abortion protest signs - how far is too far?

[Ani_Ibi]

Now if people can have such violent, out-of-control emotions that they lash out like this on a public forum, is it not possible that those emotions overcome them in other circumstances? And that those emotional outbursts would have a negative impact on children?

Very perceptive, Vern. For those who are at a loss as to how to broach the subject of abortion to their children here is some help:

Fr Pavone on Speaking to Children about Abortion

“Sharon, are there people out there who are bigger than you?” “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Are there people out there who are older than you?” “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Are there people out there who are stronger than you?” “Yes!” she exclaimed.

“Are there people out there who are more important than you?” “No!” she declared, with even more conviction in her voice. All the other children understood the same thing. And thus they understood the key problem in the abortion tragedy. Abortion builds on the lie that the smallest and weakest among us have less value and can even be discarded…

Teaching children about abortion is not as difficult as many think. Children are particularly receptive to the message of equality of all people, and to the truth that might does not make right. They have a keen sense of justice and fairness. They know what it means to need protection from dangers they can neither withstand nor understand. They know what a baby is, and they know it is wrong to kill a baby…

It is not necessary to teach children the details of reproduction before they learn that abortion is a bad thing. The basis for teaching about abortion is not the reproductive system, but the dignity and worth of every human person… The basis for teaching young people about abortion is the same basis on which we teach that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applies to any other category of people…

Here is how your children will learn about abortion if you do not prepare yourself to prepare your children:

Abortion lessons for schoolchildren

Schoolchildren should be given compulsory lessons about the benefits of abortion, ministers’ advisers on sex education claim…

And the abortion teaching should combat ‘myths’ that turn teenagers away from terminating their pregnancies, a report for ministers said. It cited the idea that abortion can lead to infertility as misleading.

The recommendation from the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy would mean - if accepted by the Government - that pupils would be taught about abortion from the age of 11.But they could also have abortion lessons in primary schools that teach children from the age of five…

Each year around 4,000 abortions are performed on girls under 16, with another 35,000 on girls between 16 and 19…

Let the parents give some facts to the teachers: you are three or four times more likely to die in the year after an abortion than if you had the baby. Your next baby after the abortion is more likely premature, small and with cerebral palsy. Younger girls having abortions are more at risk from bleeding, infection leading to infertility, psychological distress and depression. All this is learned from recent clinical studies of good repute. - Dr A. M. Houghton, Sheffield

So there’s no excuse now, is there?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Do you know what Vern? You are not worth the words. I am pulling out. I am sick of your extremism. You are not any better than a pro-choicer - just different in your approach! BTW you aren now on ignore and there to stay! Good riddance!

This demonstrates charity how exactly? Do you not feel pulled to apologize to Vern in any small way after your outburst?

 

[joab]

Very perceptive, Vern. For those who are at a loss as to how to broach the subject of abortion to their children here is some help:

Fr Pavone on Speaking to Children about Abortion

So Fr Pavone was SPEAKING not showing graphic pictures of abortion to children? Hummmm! Why did he not show them instead of telling them? Is there another way to educate children about the horror of abortion without showing graphic abortion pictures?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

SUNRISEDAWN:

I wanted just one person to come and touch me and say you don’t have to do this.

:hug1:

 

[Ani_Ibi]

joab:

So Fr Pavone was SPEAKING not showing graphic pictures of abortion to children?

If you will not bestir yourself to read the linked material then why do you expect your judgments of same to be taken any degree of seriousness.

joab:

Hummmm! Why did he not show them instead of telling them?

Actually he does. If you had read the linked material, then you would know this. Instead of you have spoken before you thought. Sad.

joab:

Is there another way to educate children about the horror of abortion without showing graphic abortion pictures?

You tell us.

 

[seekerz]

You have offered your OPINION repeated many times over. Some folks who agree with you have offered some very rude putdowns of other posters. Poor Vern has been called some disgraceful names. Philothea has had her integrity challenged; her evidence and conclusions characterized as ‘fantasy.’

I have an exercise for you: Go to the ‘Father Pavone…graphic images’ thread and read the posts by those on your side of the debate. Count how many times you read words like “stupid”, “dense”,“pro-abortion” and similar putdowns used to describe the other side or its opinions.

 

[KarenNC]

As for characterizing the opposing point of view as a “fight to death to be proved right” game?’: it has been you, Karen, and others who agree with you who have refused to engage in discussion. We have offered different approaches to the question in detail. We have offered references. We have offered reason.

I invite absolutely anyone with the patience to slog through the Father Pavone graphic images thread or this one and make their own independent judgement of the strategies employed and by whom.

You have yet to answer my questions. You have yet to apply the Principle of Double Effect. You have yet to explain to me the social contract, in which you are a participant.

It seems that those opposing the images have framed this as a ‘fight’ while we who support free speech have been patiently posting reason and reference.

Ani, if you want to discuss the principle of double effect, talk to me about it as I have given you a point by point explanation of exactly why this action fails to meet the criteria. I am beginning to doubt your sincerity in your repeated statements that you think it is relevant.

My detailed answer is in post725 and 726 of the Father Pavone thread
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=170857&page=49
I will be glad to cut and paste it over here if that will make it easier to discuss. However, as those responses were on page 49 of that thread and it is now up to page 65 and you still have failed to respond to it (despite the fact that I referenced it again on page 62 when you criticized another poster and said that no one would apply this), I begin to doubt that you really want to discuss it at all.

I also spent several posts over there discussing the social contract, but you have also failed to be willing to respond to any of those over there. Simply cutting and pasting your responses into a different thread seems a bit transparently an attempt to keep going an argument from a thread that is about to max out without actually having to respond to those who answer you.

 

[KarenNC]

Here is how your children will learn about abortion if you do not prepare yourself to prepare your children:

Abortion lessons for schoolchildren

So there’s no excuse now, is there?

And here’s exactly what I said about the credibility of this statement on the other board (but which you refused to acknowledge)

*First, let us acknowledge the fact that this article refers to suggestions for sex education in England, not America and comes from an entertainment guide to London. I have been discussing the social contract in American society and the action of abortion protesters in America. If you want to discuss a social contract you have to stay within one society. I cannot reasonably discuss with you actions of Americans based on the social contract of Chinese society, for instance.

I find no evidence in the information from the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy’s website on the Personal Social and Health Education guidelines that primary school education includes anything other than puberty, names of body parts, relating to others, being a good citizen, asking for help if needed and how babies are conceived and born
dfes.gov.uk/teenagepregna…Guidance%2Epdf (see pp. 21 and 22 of the pdf). Abortion is mentioned on page 18, and is encouraged to involve parents and ways for children to discuss this with their parents, as well as being open to being able to talk about moral and personal dilemmas about it.

Also, the quote from Dr. Sheffield was from a response to the original article, not part of the original article as implied by your quote, nor was Dr. Sheffield either the author of or a contributer to the article.*

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I have an exercise for you: Go to the ‘Father Pavone…graphic images’ thread and read the posts by those on your side of the debate. Count how many times you read words like “stupid”, “dense”,“pro-abortion” and similar putdowns used to describe the other side or its opinions.

No. I do not accept your ‘exercise.’

Why do I refuse? Because I do not feel obliged to do anything you ask of me when you have done nothing I have asked of you. Show some good faith in these discussions and that might change.

You haven’t bothered to read the material I have linked. You barely read the material I post. You have not answered my questions. You have not applied the Principle of Double Effect. You have not explained your understanding – or lack therefore – of the social contract.

How can you with a straight face presume to ask me to meet your demands?

When you learn to pull your weight in a discussion, then I think you might find other people being happy to cooperate with you. So far from you all we have been offered is YOUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY. Let the record speak for itself.

As for me, I don’t stoop to the level of namecalling. If you don’t like what I post that doesn’t mean that what I post is not fair comment. Your approach to what you don’t like hearing or seeing is to censor it.

You carry on about teaching your children that God rules and that that is sufficient preparation for them for the eventuality that they accidentally stumble upon posters depicting aborted babies or that the get taught in school at the age of 5 how to get an abortion.

In the same breath, you question the right of free speech in displaying posters of aborted babies. That is bald self-contradiction on your part. You want to have it both ways.

And this is what is sad about your point of view. Not just the inherent contradictions and illogic.

But also the reality that what you are actually teaching your children by your own attitude and example is that if they don’t like the message then it is OK to eliminate the messenger and that if they have an adverse emotional response to something then that emotion is someone else’s fault.

What you are not evidently teaching them by your own attitude and example is to consider and weigh differences of opinion instead of stamping their feet and stonewalling for what they want. What you are not evidently teaching them by your own attitude and example is that their emotions belong to them and to no one else.

A question that comes up for me is where you learned what you are teaching?

And the reason you give for taking this attitude and giving this example is that you are ‘not prepared’ to do it any other way: it is going to be YOUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY despite the evidence showing the illogic of YOUR WAY. But then how would you know that evidence if you don’t read it?

WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IN WHICH YOU ARE A PARTICIPANT?

 

[seekerz]

No. I do not accept your ‘exercise.’

Why do I refuse? Because I do not feel obliged to do anything you ask of me when you have done nothing I have asked of you. Show some good faith in these discussions and that might change.

You haven’t bothered to read the material I have linked. You barely read the material I post. You have not answered my questions. You have not applied the Principle of Double Effect. You have not explained your understanding – or lack therefore – of the social contract.

How can you with a straight face presume to ask me to meet your demands?

When you learn to pull your weight in a discussion, then I think you might find other people being happy to cooperate with you. So far from you all we have been offered is YOUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY. Let the record speak for itself.

As for me, I don’t stoop to the level of namecalling. If you don’t like what I post that doesn’t mean that what I post is not fair comment. Your approach to what you don’t like hearing or seeing is to censor it.

You carry on about teaching your children that God rules and that that is sufficient preparation for them for the eventuality that they accidentally stumble upon posters depicting aborted babies or that the get taught in school at the age of 5 how to get an abortion.

In the same breath, you question the right of free speech in displaying posters of aborted babies. That is bald self-contradiction on your part. You want to have it both ways.

And this is what is sad about your point of view. Not just the inherent contradictions and illogic.

But also the reality that what you are actually teaching your children by your own attitude and example is that if they don’t like the message then it is OK to eliminate the messenger and that if they have an adverse emotional response to something then that emotion is someone else’s fault.

What you are not evidently teaching them by your own attitude and example is to consider and weigh differences of opinion instead of stamping their feet and stonewalling for what they want. What you are not evidently teaching them by your own attitude and example is that their emotions belong to them and to no one else.

A question that comes up for me is where you learned what you are teaching?

And the reason you give for taking this attitude and giving this example is that you are ‘not prepared’ to do it any other way: it is going to be YOUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY despite the evidence showing the illogic of YOUR WAY. But then how would you know that evidence if you don’t read it?

WHAT IS YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT IN WHICH YOU ARE A PARTICIPANT?

My exercise, to be honest, was more for the reasonable people reading this thread, so they might see the holes in your accusations of ‘the other side’ using putdowns as an argument strategy.

You dismiss my request because you know how much mud-slinging has occurred by people determined to establish their ‘right’ to offend the sensibilities of children.

So don’t bother doing the exercise. Reasonable readers who are not already convinced by the extremism on some of the posts here, will go to the thread I suggested to see for themselves.

Another tactic they might notice, is the tendency to change topic (or in the most recent case, change threads) when your side is unable to counter the sound logic and Christian principles enunciated in our posts.

Decency wins every time.

 

[holly_potter]

I voted “it depends” because it does depend on the circumstances.

Yes, it is necessary to see those images, to fully comprehend what abortion does. But it shouldn’t be done without some forewarning.

Here at my university, “blunt force” pictures like these aren’t welcome. Neither are any other “blunt force” events, like blatantly religious preachers that come every now and then, or the same-sex events. It usually turns into a debate, the students skirting verbal abuse.

So, keeping this in mind, the new pro life group I’m an officer of on campus; our goal is to educate people, not to shock them. Students, I find, are more willing to allow other view points when done factually. Too weak (unfortuately, that means religious) is ignored, and too strong just turns people away without them giving us a chance.

A purely factual, scientific approach in this case will convince far more people. The whole point isn’t to shock, the point is to use means that will reach the majority.

That’s why it depends.

(And why does pro-life debates always degenerate into name-calling and accusing? How sad is that? And we’re supposed to be adults, for Pete’s sake!)

 

[Ani_Ibi]

…A purely factual, scientific approach in this case will convince far more people. The whole point isn’t to shock, the point is to use means that will reach the majority…

1. is photojournalism not factual?
2. who did Fr Pavone hope to reach with the posters?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

seekerz:

My exercise, to be honest, was more for the reasonable people reading this thread, so they might see the holes in your accusations of ‘the other side’ using putdowns as an argument strategy.

If that is true – to be honest – then why did you address the ‘exercise’ to me? (Speaking about having holes in an argument strategy!)

Also, I take it that you do not include me among the reasonable people in the thread, since you claim not to be addressing me even though you did address me. (Speaking about having holes in an argument strategy!)

So let the record speak for itself. Many posts by the way are on the Fr Pavone thread so count that as part of the record.

seekerz:

You dismiss my request because you know how much mud-slinging has occurred by people determined to establish their ‘right’ to offend the sensibilities of children.

Please do not descend to mindreading or attributing motivation. Knowing the hearts of people is for God alone.

I have dismissed none of your posts. Instead I have answered you point by point.

You on the other hand have ignored the vast majority of what I have said. You have even presumed to condemn evidence which your posts demonstrate you have not bestirred yourself to read. (Speaking about having holes in an argument strategy!)

By the way, are you ‘prepared’ yet to set out your understanding of the social contract in which you are a participant?

No one has claimed a “right to offend the sensibilities of children.” This is more of your misrepresentation of the points of view with which you disagree, since it appears that you do not have any evidence or arguments of your own.

seekerz:

So don’t bother doing the exercise.

I had no intention to – as I very clearly stated. When you learn to participate in the discussion – rather than just stonewalling, building strawmen, and tautologizing – then that may change. So far you have not.

seekerz:

Reasonable readers who are not already convinced by the extremism on some of the posts here, will go to the thread I suggested to see for themselves.

They may. That would be THEIR choice not YOUR demand.

seekerz:

Another tactic they might notice, is the tendency to change topic (or in the most recent case, change threads) when your side is unable to counter the sound logic and Christian principles enunciated in our posts.

Indeed. And a very good example of being unable or – more accurately – unwilling to counter sound logic and Christian principles would be your own posts. Let the record speak for itself.

seekerz:

Decency wins every time.

If decency wins every time, then why do you continue to misrepresent what other folks post?

If decency wins every time, then why do you post ad hominem innuendos about unreasonable people – such as me – instead of addressing unreasonable posts, such as your own? That doesn’t sound very decent! (Speaking about having holes in an argument strategy!)

 

[seekerz]

Ani Ibi, I don’t know you but as my sister in Christ I extend my love to you. This is a discussion, where people have different views and that freedom is respected. Simple.

 

[vern_humphrey]

Ani Ibi, I don’t know you but as my sister in Christ I extend my love to you. This is a discussion, where people have different views and that freedom is respected. Simple.

That’s how it should be, but that’s not how I have found it to be. The attacks on those who use these images have been vicious and bitter.

 

[seekerz]

That’s how it should be, but that’s not how I have found it to be. The attacks on those who use these images have been vicious and bitter.

And the attacks from the other side have been what Vern? Did you see people being described as “dense” and “pro-abortion”? How would you feel if I accused you of being pro-choice? Would that not be classified as a “vicious” attack.

This is just surreal!

 

[vern_humphrey]

And the attacks from the other side have been what Vern? Did you see people being described as “dense” and “pro-abortion”? How would you feel if I accused you of being pro-choice? Would that not be classified as a “vicious” attack.

This is just surreal!

There are several threads on this subject, and here’s a sample of a few comments I got:

Out of interest, are you the type that blows up clinics to prevent abortions? Do you consider that to be an acceptable way to save babies? That would save babies but have harmful consequences. I am curious - would you go that far?

Do you know what Vern? You are not worth the words. I am pulling out. I am sick of your extremism. You are not any better than a pro-choicer - just different in your approach! BTW you aren now on ignore and there to stay! Good riddance!

Once again, you are forcing me to have a conversation with my four year old about something that she does not have the experience or knowledge to comprehend.

“Why did the mommy not want her baby?”

“Because she was gang-raped, honey.”

“What’s gang-rape?”

So, you see, abortion is that act that you are portraying, but I am left with trying to explain all the actions that preceed the abortion.

Unless you want to make it easy for me and post gang-rape pictures.

Let me make one thing clear – there is no thread attacking people who oppose these pictures.

 

[seekerz]

There are several threads on this subject, and here’s a sample of a few comments I got:

Let me make one thing clear – there is no thread attacking people who oppose these pictures.

Oh, it’s okay to write insulting* posts* just not okay to have insulting threads. I imagine the mods don’t quite see it that way…

If the poll numbers are accurate, this thread should actually be largely in your favor.

 

[PLAL]

Well people are not going to stop showing graphic pictures of abortion. If you really want the graphic pictures to end, then you really need to get involved in the Pro-Life Movement so we can put an end to legalized abortion!

Showing graphic pictures of abortion may not be for you. Leave that work to those who want to do it. But there are other things you can do like…

1. Get Project Gabriel started in your Parish.
2. Start a Catholic Crisis Pregnancy Center in your community.
3. Fast & Pray for the end of abortion. This is the most important!

4.Start 24-Hour Perpetual Adoration in your Parish if you don’t already have it. Sign up for at least an hour each week for Eucharistic Adoration in your Parish. Pray for the end of abortion!

1. Pray at the Abortuary nearest to you.
2. Have Abstinence-Only Education Speakers to speak at your schools (like Jason Evert, Christopher West, Fr. Thomas Loya).
3. Promote and Vote for Pro-Life Candidates.
4. Start a Youth For Life Group.
5. If you have a large family, go to the park with all the kids & have fun with them. Others will witness the value of being open to life.

These are a few of the many things you can do to help the Pro-Life Movement! There are many others. I just listed a few.

If you are not already involved in Pro-Life, then your already half dead.

 

[Linnyo]

These are great suggestions plal. Thankyou.

Well people are not going to stop showing graphic pictures of abortion. If you really want the graphic pictures to end, then you really need to get involved in the Pro-Life Movement so we can put an end to legalized abortion!

Showing graphic pictures of abortion may not be for you. Leave that work to those who want to do it. But there are other things you can do like…

1. Get Project Gabriel started in your Parish.
2. Start a Catholic Crisis Pregnancy Center in your community.
3. Fast & Pray for the end of abortion. This is the most important!

4.Start 24-Hour Perpetual Adoration in your Parish if you don’t already have it. Sign up for at least an hour each week for Eucharistic Adoration in your Parish. Pray for the end of abortion!

1. Pray at the Abortuary nearest to you.
2. Have Abstinence-Only Education Speakers to speak at your schools (like Jason Evert, Christopher West, Fr. Thomas Loya).
3. Promote and Vote for Pro-Life Candidates.
4. Start a Youth For Life Group.
5. If you have a large family, go to the park with all the kids & have fun with them. Others will witness the value of being open to life.

These are a few of the many things you can do to help the Pro-Life Movement! There are many others. I just listed a few.

If you are not already involved in Pro-Life, then your already half dead.