Fr. Pavone on the use of graphic images of abortion

[Ani_Ibi]

Who was a more effective proponent of civil rights—Martin Luther King, Jr or Malcolm X?

Ghandi or the mob?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

The coat hanger or the room sized portrait of the unborn martyred in the abortion mills?

They both grab attention. When you have someone’s attention, you can provide them with information to make genuine choices.

The threat of the coat hanger simply does not exist anymore in North American society. Unmarried pregnant women are no longer stigmatized, dismissed from their jobs, evicted from their homes. Yet the coat hanger threat works.

This is what we are up against: the coat hanger.

Folks do not have time in their busy lives to listen to a four-day conference on the technology and moral theology of the pro-life movement. They do have time for a glance at a room-sized poster, a handful of flyers, and a good word from one of the Lord’s faithful servants.

 

[estesbob]

estesbob;2658178:

Gracious of you.

All that it would take is for you to meet your own standard. One single peer-reviewed study that showing graphic photographs of real-life bloody mutilated corpses of aborted babies does no harm to preschoolers or is beneficial to them.

One single objective study that shows that displaying such images in areas where one can reasonably predict that preschoolers will encounter them prevents statistically significantly more abortions than showing the same pictures using some minimum discrimination to take reasonable precautions that young children will not see them without their parents’ permission.

Just one.

So we are to prove a neagative? Logical falacy Argumentum ad Ignoratium

 

[estesbob]

Proof. Evidence that these pictures harm chidren Hard data. One single study proving that these pictures harm chidren One single solitary objective measure. Just one Proving that these pictures harm chidren (but given your track record with citing evidence accurately on this thread, please include the source for verification).

 

[KarenNC]

Notice that Rosa Parks did not start the civil rights movement which is often claimed but the graphic image of a victim who had no “choice” in his victimization.

No one has claimed that Rosa Parks “started the civil rights movement.”

I presume you are speaking of the photos of Emmett Till. Do you have something that supports that the photos of his mutilated corpse were put on the covers of newspapers and magazines, blown up on the sides of tractor trailer trucks, blown up on posters and held on the side of the road to show to all passing cars, towed behind airplanes?

 

[KarenNC]

So we are to prove a neagative? Logical falacy Argumentum ad Ignoratium

No, I am asking you to show support for the repeated assertion that using these photographs in ways that anyone could reasonably know that young children will be exposed to them is more effective than using the photographs in any other way.

I am asking you to show support for the repeated assertion that such exposure to graphic images of violence and dead bodies is actively beneficial to young children.

These are the arguments that are being put forward in defense of using these images in these specific ways. I am asking for some evidence supporting those arguments.

 

[estesbob]

No, I am asking you to show support for the repeated assertion that using these photographs in ways that anyone could reasonably know that young children will be exposed to them is more effective than using the photographs in any other way.

I am asking you to show support for the repeated assertion that such exposure to graphic images of violence and dead bodies is actively beneficial to young children.

These are the arguments that are being put forward in defense of using these images in these specific ways. I am asking for some evidence supporting those arguments.

Barring any evidence they cause harm there is no reason not to show them. Those usng them claim they are very effective. You would censor them on the unsubstatiated claim that they will harm children.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

You know, Karen just keeps on saying the same thing. She has not been discussing anything. She has not been responding to any of the various things we have been saying, but instead using our posts to tautologize her own broken record.

I think this is an enlarging topic. But the standoff is not enlarging.

 

[Teflon93]

Well let me give you a great story. My partner that I do prolife work with has a young daughter, she sawone of his graphic photos in the garage when she was 4 years old. She asked him why the baby was broken. How sad… but she didn’t cry, she was curious and her daddy loved her the way a father should even before that moment and when she was told by her father about abortion she didn’t cry. She is happy her father is a hero and not a bystander. She would have been sadder still if her father had said well babies are being killed and these photos help save those babies better then anything else legally and morally but I don’t want to upset children like you. That would have been rediculous.

Malcom X would have been the rescuer of Operation Rescue. We have learned that this didn’t work either. MLK would have been CBR, that worked and history has told us that it is the only thing that WILL work. People need to swallow their pride and join their efforts. But that won’t happen until the established and ineffective prolife leaders accept they didn’t get it right and they need to embrace the effective tactics.

I certainly don’t disagree with you that we need to embrace effective tactics. Likewise, I think that concerns about children being traumatized given the violence inherent in our society are overblown. I also clearly agree that hurting someone’s feelings or shocking someone is nowhere near as grave a sin as being a bystander or worse in the murder of babies. No problems there from my end.

For me, it’s a question of what constitutes “effective”. While Malcolm X is famous for “By any means necessary”, he left out the most effective means Martin Luther King employed: acting with charity and love and appealing to the better angels of one’s nature.

In showing such things to children, we do open ourselves to questions of whether our judgment is sound and our concern for children sincere. That generally hurts the effectiveness of our appeal by allowing others to change the subject.

Now, will that inoculate the next generation against abortion? Perhaps, certainly at least for some of them. But it also tends to overestimate the number of women who seek abortion honestly not knowing what happens to the unborn child. Some are surely completely ignorant, others merely willfully so, still others act with full knowledge out of fear or shame or in a very few perhaps callous disregard.

I think you’ve nailed the fact that effectiveness is the heart of the question. Thanks to the wonderful ultrasound technology, pictures of live babies in utero are powerful witness to the rightness of our cause, offering many of the benefits with few of the risks that graphic photos present, not that these do not have their place as well.

 

[Teflon93]

If you recall Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Kurtz speaks of a pile of severed arms being used by his enemy for deterrance. The image was not of the arms being severed. The image was the relic. The tangible. The spirit-imbued remnant of a horror for which no words exist. This is what Kurtz deems to be “The horror! The horror!”

continued…

True—but the heads on pike’s in Kurtz’ camp were even more effective than the mental image evoked by his example.

And, as you’ve noted, images do work both ways; this is why the coathanger image has been so effective for the proabortion crowd.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Teflon93:

Thanks to the wonderful ultrasound technology, pictures of live babies in utero are powerful witness to the rightness of our cause, offering many of the benefits with few of the risks that graphic photos present, not that these do not have their place as well.

Pictures of live Jews (and Catholics and Gypsies and Rwandans and so on) do what to raise consciousness about genocide?

Is life to become yet another object of idolatry instead of something to be celebrated among the living and grieved among the tombstones?

What of death?

Teflon93:

He sees and understands that their death is grievous… Sirach 18:10

If God sees… if God understands… then who are we to presume not to see… not to understand… the grievousness of death?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Teflon93:

True—but the heads on pike’s in Kurtz’ camp were even more effective than the mental image evoked by his example.

The heads on pikes have an alienating, surreal effect. The entrance scene could have been painted by Dali. Kurtz’s story of the severed arms provides us with an emotional intermediary.

The children were to have been innoculated against disease. Instead Kurtz’s enemy cuts off the arms that were to have received the needles. It is this coldblooded technological efficiency in the face of parental care which is the horror for Kurtz – not merely the rage of war.

And it is this cold blooded technological efficiency which Beuys depicts. This is also what is going on in abortuaries. No heads on pikes outside our abortuaries.

 

[Teflon93]

Pictures of live Jews (and Catholics and Gypsies and Rwandans and so on) do what to raise consciousness about genocide?

They certainly help to reduce the dehumanization which is a necessary catalyst for genocide.

And again—I am not arguing that graphic images of the actual violence being done to children do not have their place. One must be careful how one uses such incendiary evidence, though—that’s all I’m saying. Showing these to young children may be needlessly provocative.

Is life to become yet another object of idolatry instead of something to be celebrated among the living and grieved among the tombstones?

What of death?

The culture of death is unfortunately already live and well in the West.

If God sees… if God understands… then who are we to presume not to see… not to understand… the grievousness of death?

Nope—I think it’s effective and perfectly licit to show adults, and perhaps even pubescent teens. Younger, though, starts to raise some questions in my mind as to effectiveness and licitness.

I wouldn’t show a 4-year old “Shoah”, either.

 

[Teflon93]

The heads on pikes have an alienating, surreal effect. The entrance scene could have been painted by Dali. Kurtz’s story of the severed arms provides us with an emotional intermediary.

The children were to have been innoculated against disease. Instead Kurtz’s enemy cuts off the arms that were to have received the needles. It is this coldblooded technological efficiency in the face of parental care which is the horror for Kurtz – not merely the rage of war.

And it is this cold blooded technological efficiency which Beuys depicts. This is also what is going on in abortuaries. No heads on pikes outside our abortuaries.

Sure. I was simply referring to the fact that we never see the severed limbs in “Apocalypse Now”; Kurtz merely talks about them. The heads we see. For some, the limbs are the more striking image, despite only occurring in their heada; for others, the concrete visuals of the heads on pikes are more striking. Coppolla recognized the need to appeal to both. As should we.

 

[seekerz]

You know Karen I can’t even post how Ifeel about your rediculous and pathetic arguments. Sorry but its the truth. You care more about people’s feelings then saving babies.
**
You can’t provide one single schred of evidence that hurting someone’s feelings is worse then killing unborn babies.**

Do you know why its ok to show the truth, because Jesus did it, He did say that He didn’t come to bring peace but conflict.

Not only that but there are so many Catholics who have had abortions because their cowardly mothers didn’t teach them right from wrong.

Its a good thing that babies get upset if they see pictures of abortion, it means they have a functioning conscience. What is sad is that by the time children are 10 they are mostly prochoice and engaged in online sex or watching stuff they shouldn’t be.

You want to not have to worry about this, then help end abortion and stop talking about it. Accept that some children will get upset as we seek to save the unborn ones.

Would Jesus agree with you using the words ridiculous and pathetic to describe someone else’s opinions?

I put in bold the part of you statement that I most wanted to respond to though: hurting someone’s feelings is bad and killing babies is bad. What does it matter which is worse? Am I allowed to commit little sins to avoid bigger ones?

Since when did it become acceptable to do something wrong to achieve something right. You have just proved Karen’s points most beautifully?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Sure. I was simply referring to the fact that we never see the severed limbs in “Apocalypse Now”; Kurtz merely talks about them. The heads we see. For some, the limbs are the more striking image, despite only occurring in their heada; for others, the concrete visuals of the heads on pikes are more striking. Coppolla recognized the need to appeal to both. As should we.

Yes, I am not disagreeing with you. I ask you to consider a motif in film that the horror unseen or partially seen is infinitely more difficult to bear.

Much of the creepiness in Alien never happens when we see the monster. Seeing the monster is almost a relief.

The creepiness is in the ambiance, the music, the subtext we pick up from the interaction of the characters while the monster is some lurking, yet unseen presence ready to spring.

We haven’t discussed this yet, but I believe that poster from New Zealand has some research on this. There have been some studies done in England which show that there is a higher rate of child abuse – and in juvenile delinquency – in families where there has been abortion.

Why? Many reasons. But certainly because of the elephant in the room effect. The children know that something is terribly wrong. Some may even know or at least suspect that they have lost a sibling. Yet this lost sibling is not like the kind of sibling that dies and is given a Mass at the church and then buried in a graveyard.

Without sufficient information – because it is a dirty little secret – children have no context, no safety net, and they simply make their own equations.

This is the horror that Coppola articulates with the ‘remembered’ pile of severed arms. This is what Beuys articulates with his meticulously neat arrangements of gas chamber artifacts and relics.

What is made into a ghost has infinitely more power over human apprehensions of danger than what is brought out into the sunshine to be seen.

These infants are not dirty little secrets. They are beloved human beings who should not be forgotten. I have seen small children go up to one of these posters when they thought the grown ups were not watching and gently touch them, cooing and whispering baby words!!!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Since when did it become acceptable to do something wrong to achieve something right. You have just proved Karen’s points most beautifully?

Those of you who have persisted in not applying the Principle of Double Effect including remote and proximal objects of the act are still stuck in thinking of this question in terms of relativism or of the means justifies the ends.

You argue from a lack of knowledge of what PDE is for. Actually Karen isn’t arguing. She is simply saying the same thing over and over and over again. Repetition does not truth make.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Ani Ibi:

Pictures of live Jews (and Catholics and Gypsies and Rwandans and so on) do what to raise consciousness about genocide?

Teflon93:

They certainly help to reduce the dehumanization which is a necessary catalyst for genocide.

How do pictures of LIVE progeny of genocide victims reduce the dehumanization which is a necessary catalyst for genocide?

Teflon93:

And again—I am not arguing that graphic images of the actual violence being done to children do not have their place. One must be careful how one uses such incendiary evidence, though—that’s all I’m saying. Showing these to young children may be needlessly provocative.

May? I won’t address this here. I posted something above on the response of young children.
Ani Ibi:

Is life to become yet another object of idolatry instead of something to be celebrated among the living and grieved among the tombstones?

What of death?

Teflon93:

The culture of death is unfortunately already live and well in the West.

I am not talking about the Culture of Death. I am talking about God’s view of death. Two different things. For example: did Pope John Paul II hide his death from us?
Ani Ibi:

If God sees… if God understands… then who are we to presume not to see… not to understand… the grievousness of death?

Teflon93:

Nope—I think it’s effective and perfectly licit to show adults, and perhaps even pubescent teens. Younger, though, starts to raise some questions in my mind as to effectiveness and licitness.

Licitness: the Principle of Double Effect comes down how in terms of licitness?

Teflon93:

I wouldn’t show a 4-year old “Shoah”, either.

Well, a 4-year old might not sit still for the Shoah.

 

[seekerz]

Those of you who have persisted in not applying the Principle of Double Effect including remote and proximal objects of the act are still stuck in thinking of this question in terms of relativism or of the means justifies the ends.

You argue from a lack of knowledge of what PDE is for. Actually Karen isn’t arguing. She is simply saying the same thing over and over and over again. Repetition does not truth make.

I never applied any principle other than my God-given commonsense, so please don’t assume otherwise.

All I’m saying is that if something is wrong, big or small, we should avoid doing it if possible - it’s that simple.

I’ve seen Karen argue that you can’t use wrong methods to achieve good ends which is what I believe the Church also teaches. That’s all I was commenting on.

I replied to that particular post because the tone (unlike yours) seemed unduly harsh and critical. People have a right to disagree without having mud thrown at them.

Some of us tend to disagree that the fight against abortion requires graphic images to be shown to small children. I don’t need studies to know that children can be taught to abhor abortion without the blood and gore of pictures. I have all the proof around me in the form of people who never were shown those pictures yet are pro-life.

For all I know, most pro-lifers arguing that children must be shown these picture are also living proof that this is not necessary in order to grow up pro-life.

 

[Teflon93]

How do pictures of LIVE progeny of genocide victims reduce the dehumanization which is a necessary catalyst for genocide?

Showing the dead bodies has little effect if the viewer does not believe them to be human. This is why dehumanization precedes genocide. In Rwanda, this was accomplished by deeming the victims “cockroaches” and repeating the slur endlessly.

May? I won’t address this here. I posted something above on the response of young children.

Yes, may. I don’t think graphic images are appropriate for young children, whether of abortion victims or genocide victims.

I am not talking about the Culture of Death. I am talking about God’s view of death. Two different things. For example: did Pope John Paul II hide his death from us?

The Culture of Death is precisely what we get when we’ve dehumanized the very old and very young sufficiently and start showing marked indifference toward the suffering and death of everyone in-between.

Millions of abortions are only possible because we have erected a Culture of Death over the past generation. Unfortunately, this also makes graphic images of real suffering and real death less effective through desensitization.

Licitness: the Principle of Double Effect comes down how in terms of licitness?

I don’t know what you mean here. By licitness I mean it is immoral to show certain images to young children. It is cruel to do so; they lack coping mechanisms for such things. We instinctively try to protect them from such things as a result.

Well, a 4-year old might not sit still for the Shoah.

A 4 year old is ill-equipped to watch disturbing footage of the Holocaust.

“Shoah” is an excellent, searing film all adults should see at least once, in my opinion.

Likewise, I wouldn’t show a 4-year-old “The Passion of the Christ”. It is too intense for them.