Antiabortion Effort in Europe, With U.S. Money, Widens Its Conservative Agenda

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The New York Times
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: August 14, 2005

WARSAW - For most of July, pedestrians in Lodz found themselves face to face with 14 grisly billboards pairing images of aborted fetuses with photographs of blood-spattered bodies - victims of genocide in Srebrenica and Rwanda, or toddlers killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Placed by a Polish antiabortion group, the traveling exhibition, which moved on to Lublin, exemplifies an aggressive, well-financed and growing conservative movement across Europe that opposes not only abortion but often other things related to sex, like sex education, contraception and artificial insemination.

Encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, enabled by the election of conservative governments in many countries and financed in part by antiabortion groups in the United States, the conservative push has made powerful inroads in countries where policies guaranteeing a wide range of reproductive services had been long entrenched . . .

Nowhere is the change more evident than here in Poland, where abortion was free - and freely accessible - under Communism. A relatively restrictive abortion law was passed in 1993 (it refers to the fetus as a “conceived child”) and a strong social stigma has since emerged, along with an antiabortion stance among doctors’ groups. The result: only 174 legal abortions were performed nationwide in 2004 . . .

The Roman Catholic Church has been particularly influential in former East Bloc countries, where it made rapid gains after Communism collapsed more than a decade ago . . .

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Someone should get the same bilboards and put them here in the US. Perferably outside the Culture of Perversion Senators’ and Congressmen’s offices.

PF
 
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WanderAimlessly:
Someone should get the same bilboards and put them here in the US. Perferably outside the Culture of Perversion Senators’ and Congressmen’s offices.

PF
Click to expand...
That would be a good place. Outside their homes so their families can see what they support too.

But how effective is showing aborted babies to the general public?

I may be wrong but I got the impression Ms Rosenthal mentioned those posters in the first paragraph to turn readers against the good work being done.

I have not been to a protest at an abortion clinic. How effective are the photographs? Do they change minds? I’m for whatever, within the bounds of law of course, produces more pro-lifers.

Like to hear from those who are more active in this than I have to say about using graphic photographs.
 
I’m all for the photographs being shown, but only to adults and possibly teenagers. I have three young daughters - I wouldn’t want them exposed to such a horrifying sight at this age (my oldest is 5). I saw the photos for the first time at 17, and they made a deep impression on me. Exposing young children to violent images to try and get them to oppose the violence may actually backfire by desensitizing them to it. I think it might be a good idea to hand out fliers with abortion photographs inside (and a blank cover) to high school and college-age girls in particular.
 
The images of aborted children really bring home what happens during the “termination of a pregnancy.” I’m for anything that puts flesh and blood onto the sanitized language of abortionists. Why not show people what abortionists are making money on? That said, showing these images to little kids could be traumatizing. I wouldn’t show pictures of a fatal car crash to a child, and I wouldn’t show them pictures of aborted children either.
 
Buried in the NYT’s article are the Church’s major push for concepts (abstinence and fidelity) that offend so many NYT followers
 
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