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seekerz
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Would you have a school bus driver educate your child on abortion while keeping one eye on the road?
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Philothea53
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Okay, I am taking a deep breath…If I remember correctly we were talking PREschoolers. But, on the off chance a PREschooler is on a school bus they very probably could not even see out the windows. Secondly, if, by the slimmest chance that child did see something that caused him to be upset the bus driver could, should and would pull over and care for the child. In fact, where I live all school buses have a monitor on the bus to care for any problems that arise so the bus driver can continue to drive and keep his eyes on the road.
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Philothea53
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I still see it as a stupid question. Furthermore, I believe it was grasping at straws. I can’t help but think that it wasn’t thought out before being asked.
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KarenNC
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Frankly, so far, what we have been shown in addition to his claims are the stories of others. All of this, honestly, carries no more objective weight than the stories offered by the other side.
Ani Ibi keeps bringing up the principle of double effect (and then apparently ignoring the fact that anyone actually answers, but that is another post). In order for an action to be allowable when the means are questionable, all* the requirements have to be met, including that any harmful effects are allowable only if there is not another way to reach the desired goal.
I have provided you with the studies of researchers, people who are professionals in research into the psychological effects of actions on people, not just testimonials, that I consider support my position that showing graphic color photos of bloody mutilated corpses of babies is considered inappropriate and harmful in our society. I have further asked for similar evidence from your side to justify that these means are indeed the only possible way to reach the desired goal, that they are required in spite of the evidence of potential harm.
Others have pointed out the backlash that they have seen against the prolife movement based specifically not on the images themselves but the indiscriminate display of them. They have pointed out that such a backlash has, in their experience, actually driven away people who were on the fence and damaged the credibility of the entire prolife movement. I am not sure why their experiences are considered less accurate or true than your own.
As I pointed out, even the vast majority of the testimonials given either by the Priests For Life or the Center for Bioethical Reform are not related to the indiscriminate use of these photos but rather testimonials to the effectiveness of more targeted means–websites, participation in prolife marches and rallies, showing them to women who are imminently considering abortion by positioning oneself outside an abortion clinic, educating teens and others in retreats, sex ed classes, etc.
Absolutely no-one is claiming that these images are inaccurate, without impact or that they have no place in the effort to reduce and prevent abortions. The question is whether these images shown indiscriminately are actually more effective or more detrimental to that effort. All the testimonials in the world will not tell us that. Objective data approriately gathered to be representative can give us at least an indication.
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vern_humphrey
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“Indiscriminate” is your word, not the word of the people who use those images. If you would stop using that word, there would be no “indiscriminate use” and the problem would go away.
It seems to me far more effort is being put into denouncing people who use the pictures than the people who make them possible. And little or no effort is being put into developing the parenting skills needed to prepare children for the real world.
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KarenNC
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I am talking children ages 2-7. Again, I have to wonder about your experiences with children in this age range as you seem to be very severely underestimating their visual acuity and ability. It does not square up with my experiences of my child, the children in my family or the other children in this age group with whom I have been in daily contact for the last 5 years, or previously, even among most of the children with developmental disabilities with whom I worked prior to having a child.
Large numbers of these children are in daycares, preschools, kindergartens, with babysitters, in summer day camp programs, on field trips, etc either full or part-time. These may be privately or publicly funded. You are then so sure that the views on this particular subject held by every teacher, every bus driver, every aide, every bus monitor, every every extended family member, etc are in full accordance with the views you want conveyed to your child on this subject that you are happy to entrust such instruction to them?
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KarenNC
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Problems don’t “go away” because people choose to describe them as other than they are. I would expect someone who has the lengthy experience you have stated in the prolife movement would be very familiar with that fact.
Indiscriminate
1 a : not marked by careful distinction : deficient in discrimination and discernment b : haphazard, random
2 a : promiscuous, unrestrained b : heterogeneous, motley
In what way does flying these images behind an airplane or driving them around cities on the sides of trucks or holding up signs beside major roadways not meet the above definition in terms of who you expect to view them?
Basis for that claim?
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Philothea53
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It just occurred to me that what you are asking for is that the prolife side take time, money and resources to do a study to prove to you that the use of the photos has been successful.
We don’t feel a study is needed. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it would be nigh onto impossible to even do a study on the success rate because so much in the abortion industry is protected information, but Father Pavone at Priests for Life and the Center for Bioethical Reform and National Right to Life and even the abortion industry all know, from being in the trenches, so to speak, that there have been successes in ways that all the other methods have not been able to produce.
I’m not sure where this thread can go from here but today is the first day of a three day weekend for me. I think I’m going to go spend some time enjoying it.
God bless you. Have a safe weekend.
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Philothea53
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Before I go away, I have to agree with Vern. We need to remember what it is we are discussing. I’s not about studies and semantics and who is the better debater. It’s all about the indiscriminate (can I use that word?) murder of babies in the womb by the most horrific methods. It’s all about the people who participate in this as ‘choice’. It’s all about doing what needs to be done to bring this grisly practice to an end.
Abortion kills children.
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Ani_Ibi
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Let’s look at something for a bit.
Given that your child looks out the window and sees the neighbour’s dog run over by a delivery van, how would folks help the child?
Would you remove all the windows from your house and brick over the openings? Would you lobby against window manufacturers? Would you remove all delivery vans from your street? Would you lobby against delivery van manufacturers? Would you require that all dogs be chained inside fences? Would you ban dogs?
Now, given that your child is walking with you on the way home from church and sees a room-size poster being carried from the church basement to a pro-life rally, how would you help the child?
Would you seize the posters and burn them? Would you lobby to have poster-carriers barred from your church? From the street on which your church is located? Would you lobby against poster manufacturers? Would you require that all children be chained inside fences?
Define the problem. Step me through the solution for the problem. Is your solution simple, repeatable, legal, effective, empowering for your child?
Thing is that there is a huge range of solutions for the problem of children being puzzled/disturbed by poster images. And yet some of you are only talking about one solution: banning them.
Really I believe the solution of banning posters serves to disempower the child. It removes the problem from inside the child (his emotions, his thoughts, his interpretations) to a group of anonymous people beyond the child’s control. This teaches the child to be helpless; it teaches the child to value and desire membership in a victim culture.
It does not teach the child to identify and honour her feelings, to think things through, to ask questions. There are three responses to any stress situation:
fight, flee, flow.
Some of you are attempting to justify only teaching children the flee response to abortion: if you don’t like the images of aborted babies, then run away run away run away! Hide hide hide!
Children can be taught to love these aborted babies. And in fact I have seen children act lovingly toward the images in these posters. No one has addressed that point I made several pages ago. I guess that was an inconvenient truth, eh?
Children can be taught that their fear, anger, horror, sorrow are VALID human responses. Children can be taught to channel those emotions in positive ways.
Please give concrete examples of what you would do with YOUR CHILD if your child happened to see a room-size street poster of an aborted baby. Thank you.
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Philothea53
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Okay, I’m leaving, honest 
But before I go, how many of you have ever even seen the truth trucks in real life or the airplane flying the banner or a side of the road demonstration using the large pictures? To be honest, I never have. I live east of the Mississippi now, but I lived in California for 40 years - never saw them once. I’ve seen them at organized demonstrations, been part of the group holding them, but otherwise - never. Methinks this argument might be arguing for arguing’s sake.
But before I go, how many of you have ever even seen the truth trucks in real life or the airplane flying the banner or a side of the road demonstration using the large pictures? To be honest, I never have. I live east of the Mississippi now, but I lived in California for 40 years - never saw them once. I’ve seen them at organized demonstrations, been part of the group holding them, but otherwise - never. Methinks this argument might be arguing for arguing’s sake.
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Ani_Ibi
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I’ve seen them at a rally to stop Morgantaler from being awarded an honorary doctorate at a university. I see them annually on the largest street in Toronto. Sort of the Times Square of Toronto. There have been lots of children at both locations. The university is where I saw very small children going up to the posters (when they thought the grownups weren’t looking) and talking baby talk to the aborted babies as if they were talking to dolls.Okay, I’m leaving, honest
By the way, where are you going?
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KarenNC
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No, I am asking for honesty. I am asking that they show even some good faith effort to back up their claims with credible evidence, with something more substantial than any infomercial can provide for the latest gadget “as seen on TV.”
I am asking that those who use such strategies stop claiming that such actions do not “intentionally” target young children, that they are really only targeting the parents and admit that they frankly don’t give a flip who sees it as long as they think they might be reaching their goal.
I am asking that they stop claiming that such exposure is only regrettably necessary in order to actually achieve their goal and they would do it otherwise if such was successful when they can offer no credible objective evidence that this method is indeed any more successful than any other.
I am asking that they stop paying lip service to the idea that they are protecting all children and admit that once the child is born, their interests change dramatically about the need to make even token efforts to protect them from what our society has deemed a harmful environment during their young childhood.
I am asking that they get off their moral high horse about the nobility of their cause and quit claiming that such gives them the right, indeed the obligation, to run roughshod over anyone and everyone at will in the name of that cause, heedless of the consequences and despite the warnings from their fellow workers that their efforts are actually counterproductive to the end goal.
I am asking that they actually hold themselves to the higher moral standard that they claim in terms of their intentions toward others and quit sinking to the lowest common denominator (or worse, lower than the minimal societal standards that are observed even by Hollywood and the pornography industry).
I am asking that they admit that what they are doing is a classic example of “the ends justify the means.”
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Ani_Ibi
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While a certain amount of that might be useful in comparing the methods already in use within the pro-life movement, that is not what is happening on this thread.
What is happening on this thread is comparing room-size posters of aborted babies to doing nothing or to hiding same from the eyes of children.
There is no need to undertake a rabbit chase. We need only look at the effectiveness of doing nothing or hiding same from the eyes of children.
Then we compare that with what Fr Pavone is claiming. How complicated can that be?
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Philothea53
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But these were planned demonstrations, were they not? Places were people who chose to be there would see the pictures. My question is about the ‘indiscriminate’ use that Karen has been harping about (sorry, but harping is how I see it.) You know, driving to the mall, on your way home from school with the kids, picnic at the park, etc. As I said I personally have never seen them and I spent a lot of time on California freeways, too. I spend a lot of time on the road. My car is three years old and I have over 52,000 miles on it. I’ve traveled to all the states on the east side of the Mississippi above the Mason Dixon line except for Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire and many below said line. I have never seen one large picture unless I was part of the planned demonstration.
(i’m not actually going anywhere, just getting off the computer. Eventually. No, now. Bye. Have a great weekend. Although I’ll probably pop in once in a while - I can’t resisit
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Philothea53
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Then you are asking more than you are going to get. You ask for us to take our time and focus away from what we are doing, what we know to be the right thing, to defend ourselves to you. We don’t feel the need to do that. We shouldn’t need to. We have seen up close and personal the effectiveness of what is being done and will continue to do so. We have probably spent more time defending ourselves than we should have when there is still so much work to be done. We are at an impasse.
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KarenNC
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Depends. Is there a group that is running up and down my street throwing dead dogs in front of my child’s window in an attempt to protest vans that run over dogs?
Again, hardly the same as putting that image on the side of a truck and running it all over town in a deliberate attempt to show it to as many people of whatever age as humanly possible.
I have done so over and over. It is showing these images in venues where there is not either the reasonable expectation by a reasonably informed adult that such images are likely to be shown or any reasonable attempt by adults to take even token measures to alert parents that such images may be ahead so that they can make an informed decision.
Examples of using these photos with reasonable discrimination:
put the photos inside the magazine or newspaper rather than on the cover.
Show the photos at actual abortion clinics pointed toward the people entering rather than on the street corner by the mall.
Hand the card or brochure with these photos directly to an adult rather than leaving it on a restaurant table or in a public restroom.
Include the images in sex ed classes.
Show the photos at publicized prolife rallies and marches.
Put them in direct mail with the images inside rather than on the envelope.
Put the images on the internet in a website clearly labeled as to what they are. Follow the example of most groups and have something that allows the person to choose not to go to the photos if young children are in the room. Give links to these sites from other related sites while noting what they are.
Don’t put large fliers of the photos on to cars in grocery store parking lots that clearly have a booster seat in the back so that there is the reasonable expectation that the person will have a young child with them when they return.
Stop parking the trucks in front of churches, houses, apartment complexes just because someone who works in a clinic happens to attend church or live there. You know where they are—send it directly to them. You have no evidence that their fellow churchgoers or neighbors are unaware of or indifferent to abortion.
Don’t hold up these signs at long strings of cars of people going to pick up their children from school. It is reasonable to assume that many of them may have other and younger children in the car.
Don’t tow large banners with these images behind airplanes.
Give me one single post in which I have said that these images should be banned rather than used with discretion, please.
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Ani_Ibi
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Well everyone chooses to be where they are unless they are in the midst of being kidnapped. Folks in Canada cannot demonstrate without a permit. That is as much for their own protection as for that of others. Then there are police hidden in the backstreets should anything untoward erupt. So, yeah, the demonstrations were planned. In the case of the university, there were more police than there were participants, media, and onlookers combined!
What is unplanned about that? What is indiscriminate about that? Thing is that Karen’s languaging just doesn’t make sense. I don’t know the details of your consitutional law, but I sure as hek know the details of mine. I also know that we hold many principles in common. Including the Principle of Proportionality – not the Principle of Double Effect – which governs the application of constitutional law.
The POP says that, where two rights conflict, no one right can absolutely abrogate another right. A proportional balance must be found. In other words, Karen cannot under constitutional law ban these posters from public display.
She may, however, claim the right to a peace officer directing her child and herself away from the sightlines to the posters. But this would have to be tested at the Supreme Court level. Good luck to those who have a couple of million dollars to invest in that!
The question is: does Karen have a right under your constitution to not see the posters?
Vern is our constitutional expert. Ask Vern to comment on the Principle of Proportionality in US law.
Neither have I. But I have been thinking that, if I had the money, I would buy a pixel board over the 401.
Bye! Have a great weekend.
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KarenNC
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I have, on numerous occasions. We have the misfortune to be located near one of the headquarters of Operation Save America (they moved here recently–I did not deliberately choose to live nearby–my family has been here for well over 200 years).
I and my friends and family have seen the photos outside the mall.
I have had the big graphic fliers plastered on my car.
I have seen the cards with the photos left laying around in public restrooms.
They have parked the trucks in front of churches in my community without permission and held up signs and harangued people coming into and out of area churches, including those who had been there for the National Day of Prayer.
I have been fortunate that we moved out of the larger community when my daughter was still very small and that I am hypervigilant because I know that these things may pop up at any given moment in any given setting. I cannot, however, choose to never leave my home.
Organizations such as Operation Rescue and the Center for Bioethical Reform all proudly display photo galleries of the things they use and the tactics they employ. They are not imaginary.
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sprout
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I’ve been at the beach and seen the banner being pulled by an airplane. Fortunately it was too far away and high up in the sky for the children to notice and we made sure to keep them busy.Okay, I’m leaving, honest
I took the occasion to apologize, as a prolifer, to my friends and family for the banner and we got into a nice discussion about extremists. They all know I’m prolife, most of my friends and family are also prolife, but at the time I was the only prolife activist among them.
I’ve been to the grocery store and returned to my car to find a card with the image of an aborted fetus on my windshield.
Ive already discussed my experiences with the violent graphic images at abortuaries.
I live in Southern California. Fortunately now in my area whenever we have organized Prolife events it is routinely requested “no graphic images” but this wasn’t case up until 3 or 4 years ago. I’m not sure why the change, but I suspect it may have to do with a certain organization moving it’s operation to Karen’s neck of the woods.
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