Fr. Pavone on the use of graphic images of abortion

[KarenNC]

Four year old:
“Why did the mommy not want her baby?”

Caring parent:
“Oh, I’m sure she did, honey. But maybe she didn’t have any money to buy food for her baby(or didn’t think she could be a good mommy or she was sick and she didn’t have someone to help her take care of her baby).”

I agree that this is absolutely the wrong tack to take, similar to all the advice not to tell children that their pet dog has been “put to sleep” because numbers of them become afraid that if they or someone they love goes to sleep they will die and never come back.

Combine telling your child the baby was hurt because “she didn’t have any money to buy food for her baby” with the child happening to overhear the next conversation you and your husband have about paying a bill or someone makes a joke or reference to needing money—exactly where do you honestly think that child’s mind is going to go? I highly doubt a 4 year old’s mind is going to be able to say “oh, right, this is about needing a bit extra for the credit card this month, has nothing to do with what that mommy did to that baby in the picture and what might happen to babies I know (or to me).” They simply don’t have the cognitive development to make that distinction.

Assurances that you love the child is hardly going to cover that, because you already told her that the mommy who “hurt” her baby wanted and loved it, too.

You set him up for future lessons on what can be done to ensure that mothers can’t say that because they don’t have ______ they have to kill their child.

No, you set him up for the understanding that when adults have problems like lack of money, illness or divorce they hurt and kill babies.

 

[seekerz]

Do you realize you jump all over the map with your reasons and you switch gears in the middle of discussions? It is so hard to have a conversation with you.

What’s hard to understand about basing my beliefs about abortion on God’s sovereignty and not on emotions?

Such beliefs are more likely to stand the test of time and they’re the kind I’d like to pass on to my offspring.

When their hormones begin to rage, emotion-based views of abortion are more likely to fly out the window than God-based ones.

 

[sprout]

Sprout, in post 915 I think it was, you had occasion, actually unmitigated gall, to accuse someone of ego being their motivation in this -]argument/-] debate. I guess it takes one to know one?

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD -------
just ask the ~50 million babies who have been murdered while you’ve been flaunting your ego.

I went back to Vern’s post you claim you were responding to (I have Vern on my ignore list so I don’t read his posts) the conversation goes like this:

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.

I’m not sure who originally posted the question since Vern didn’t reference it ( I think it was either Karen or Seekerz) but I doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the poster is referring to being forced to “have a conversation with my four year old about something that she does not have the experience or knowledge to comprehend”.

So these last several posts where you’ve been so nastily patronizing me have been, well, just that nasty and patronizing while at the same time patently false.

Now on top of that, when I give you back a little of your own medicine and confront you with the truth about yourself, your response is to say I have the “unmitigated gall” to accuse someone of ego being their motivation? This after you’ve consistently engaged in name calling several people on this thread when they’ve calmly disagreed with you?

Maybe you should see an optometrist about that log in your eye?

 

[Philothea53]

I have also been a stay at home mom since the birth of my daughter, including continuing to stay at home to homeschool her.

I have questioned your assertion that children ages 2-7 can’t see anything or recognize anything beyond the ends of their noses, would not recognize anything that they passed by while riding in a car and that preschoolers would be unable to see anything out of schoolbus windows, certainly. The additional information that you work in an elementary school leaves me further confused as to how you could make such statements, I admit.

Actually they are indeed parking these trucks outside homes and in the parking lots of apartment complexes.

Think this family (and their neighbors) are not held captive by the trucks?
operationrescue.org/photos/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=1669

The Truth Truck parked on Marguerite Reed’s street to let the neighbors know what she really does for a living.

Let’s look at where one site says “we go”
truthtruck.com/where_we_go.php
*We’ve been everywhere and done everything (Well, almost!). We’ve been to hundreds of cities, large and small, all across America

We go to the busy downtown areas … to the big shopping malls … to the crowded beaches … to sporting events … we get in city parades - wherever there are lots of people - we’re there!

We’ve been to the Super Bowl … the Olympics in Salt Lake City … the Democratic Convention … the St. Patrick’s Day Parade … Mardi Gras in New Orleans … the Daytona 500 in Florida … to the biggest abortion clinics in the country … even to the big Planned Parenthood fundraisers!

You name it, we’ve done it, or will do it.*

We have saved more babies and changed more people’s minds than with any other project we’ve ever conducted.

That is precisely what we are asking for----the option to make choices. These indiscriminate campaigns remove that option.

You can bet your bottom dollar ain’t nobody gonna tell my kids things that are wrong/improper/differ from my values. Not as preschoolers, not even as high schoolers. On the few times something did come up, I reassured my child then MADE DARN SURE IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

 

[Lou_F]

“Prudent is he who can keep silent that part of truth which may be untimely, and by not speaking it, does not spoil the truth of what he said.” - Pope John XXIII

 

[Ani_Ibi]

… Those tiny fingers on the coin are clearly human and would bring a chorus of who’s and why’s from any 5yr old I know.

You have even further convinced me that young children should not be exposed to these photos. I closed the windows as soon as I heard little footsteps approaching.

Because you don’t have the answers to the chorus of who’s and why’s. Notwithstanding that I gave you a link to material on how to prepare yourself.

You still have not answered any of my questions. When are you going to do that?

 

[seekerz]

“Prudent is he who can keep silent that part of truth which may be untimely, and by not speaking it, does not spoil the truth of what he said.” - Pope John XXIII

Priceless!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

"Ani Ibi:

You take issue with this response? Then what is YOUR ALTERNATIVE? How would you prepare your child to understand abortion? I’ve given you links so that you are not high and dry. What would you do? Rather than criticizing everyone else, the ball’s in your court…

You know what I take issue with in that response? …

That wasn’t the question. The question was: what is YOUR ALTERNATIVE? Answer the question please. Thank you.

 

[seekerz]

Because you don’t have the answers to the chorus of who’s and why’s. Notwithstanding that I gave you a link to material on how to prepare yourself.

Correction: because I choose not to give the answers to a young child, plain and simple.

You still have not answered any of my questions. When are you going to do that?

Which of your myriad of questions? Honestly, Ani Ibi…

P.S. Think I see the one you’re asking and my answer is this: the best preparation for a child is to learn of God’s love and of His total sovereignty over all life from conception to death. Once the relationship with God is right and suitably reverential from infancy, it would be pretty nigh impossible to grow up and choose to kill a baby.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

What’s hard to understand about basing my beliefs about abortion on God’s sovereignty and not on emotions?

Such beliefs are more likely to stand the test of time and they’re the kind I’d like to pass on to my offspring.

When their hormones begin to rage, emotion-based views of abortion are more likely to fly out the window than God-based ones.

You’re not passing along anything with respect to abortion – emotion based, God based, intellect based. So why be so critical of those who are passing on something?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

“Prudent is he who can keep silent that part of truth which may be untimely, and by not speaking it, does not spoil the truth of what he said.” - Pope John XXIII

How does this relate to the topic of the thread? And what is the context of what the good pope was saying? Thank you.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

seekerz:

Correction: because I choose not to give the answers to a young child, plain and simple.

But you also choose to suggest that the images not be shown to young children. How else to achieve that but to shut down the poster campaign. How do you intend to do that?

seekerz:

Which of your myriad of questions?

Start at the beginning and work your way down the list. This is a lesson in point of what happens when you procrastinate and obfuscate, seekerz. In a similar vein, you’ll have a quite a stupendous pile of unanswered questions ahead of you when your children come home from school one day and you overhear them talking to each other about what they were taught at school on abortion.

seekerz:

Honestly, Ani Ibi.

You said it, dude.

 

[seekerz]

Ani Ibi,

Just in case you missed the edit of my previous post, I’ll repeat my answer to your question:

The best preparation for a child is to learn of God’s love and of His total sovereignty over all life from conception to death.

Once the relationship with God is right and suitably reverential from infancy, it would be pretty nigh impossible to grow up and choose to kill a baby.

I’ll add that such a child, even if raised on a planet where there’s no such word as abortion in his/her vocabulary, would be able to recognize abortion as evil on encountering it.

Put another way, basic principles are all a young child needs. The specifics can come later.

And abortion is not so much about babies as about God. If one respects God, one naturally respects the work of His hands. My parents never, ever specifically told me that abortion was wrong yet once I became aware of the issue (as an adolescent) I knew it was unquestionably wrong.

 

[KarenNC]

I’m not sure who originally posted the question since Vern didn’t reference it ( I think it was either Karen or Seekerz)

Wasn’t me, sorry can’t help identify the OP right now.

 

[KarenNC]

But you also choose to suggest that the images not be shown to young children. How else to achieve that but to shut down the poster campaign. How do you intend to do that?

Well, I gave numerous examples of ways in which these images can be more discriminatingly used in post 812, but Ani Ibi seems to have chosen to stop responding to my posts about the time I gave her the point by point reasons that the principle of double effect doesn’t excuse the use of the photos indiscriminately.

 

[KarenNC]

The Truth Truck parked on Marguerite Reed’s street to let the neighbors know what she really does for a living.

And that in what way justifies trapping the neighbors in their houses if they want to avoid having their children see this? What does that do to your earlier assertion in post 810 that the only place anyone was actually going to see these images were at planned demonstrations “places were people who chose to be there would see the pictures.” How does having the misfortune to own a house on the same street as someone who holds a job that your groups find offensive qualify as choosing to be where they would see the pictures?

You know, I don’t really care if the person who hits me over the head with a shovel is doing so because he intends to kill a bee, even if he is allergic to bees. I care that he hits me over the head with a shovel.

We have saved more babies and changed more people’s minds than with any other project we’ve ever conducted.

Who is this “we” btw? In post 806 you said

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.

and in 810

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.

So how are you part then of the “we” that you defend for doing exactly this----something that you seem to be implying is actually only an exaggerated fantasy made up by those of us who had, I suppose, nothing better to do with our time over the last couple weeks than argue over something we didn’t believe existed?

How can that “we” of which you are a part claim that driving the trucks around, flying the planes, holding up the signs at the mall has “saved more babies and changed more people’s minds than with any other project we’ve ever conducted” if the part of the “we” you represent doesn’t really believe such a project actually exists?

 

[KarenNC]

We already are scaring little children half to death with movies such as “whatsname’s” film on Global Warming, which is fiction … “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Should we stop that film from being shown?

Last time I looked, “An Inconvenient Truth” wasn’t being played on the sides of trucks parked in front of power company workers’ homes.

IMDB lists it as “Rated PG for mild thematic elements”. Their parents’ guide for it is as follows:
imdb.com/title/tt0497116/parentalguide
no sex and nudity
no profanity
no gore and violence
no alcohol drugs or smoking
some thematic and overwhelming sequences (under frightening and intense scenes)

How do you think the bloody color photos of mutilated and dismembered babies would stack up to that? What rating do you think such a documentary would be given?

Compared with that film being shown to children in schools and being shown how polar bears are endangered (which they are not), a few billboards are nothing much.

You’re going to need to be a bit more specific on the name of the film if you want to compare it—not familiar with it.

 

[sprout]

The Truth Truck parked on Marguerite Reed’s street to let the neighbors know what she really does for a living.

This statement in bold headlines on Operation Rescue’s website above a picture of one of their trucks parked in a family neighborhood clearly shows their true “intent” for parking this truck in that neighborhood.

What does Operation Rescue claim their intent is?

to let the neighbors know what she [Marguerite Reed] really does for a living.

It’s not about sharing the gospel. it’s not about some moral good. no, it’s about letting the neighbors know what Marguerite Reed does for a living. So in a grandiose effort to inform the neighborhood of what Marguerite does for a living they’re intentionally going to expose all the children in that neighborhood to these violent images.

Couldn’t they just mail out flyers to the neighborhood saying “guess what, Marguerite is a receptionist at Tiller the Killer’s abortuary”?

No, they’re using these images of the dead, mutilated bodies of babies to terrorize the neighborhood because these people have the misfortune of living in the same neighborhood as an employee of Tiller the Killer.

This “intent” definately doesn’t pass the Double Effect muster.

Operation Resuce has lost their moral compass, and the prolife community needs to distance themselves from this group before they’re sucked down into the gutter with them and their reputation is irreparably damaged.

Take this for example:

We’ve been everywhere and done everything (Well, almost!). We’ve been to hundreds of cities, large and small, all across America

We go to the busy downtown areas … to the big shopping malls … to the crowded beaches … to sporting events … we get in city parades - wherever there are lots of people - we’re there!

We’ve been to the Super Bowl … the Olympics in Salt Lake City … the Democratic Convention … the St. Patrick’s Day Parade … Mardi Gras in New Orleans … the Daytona 500 in Florida … to the biggest abortion clinics in the country … even to the big Planned Parenthood fundraisers!

You name it, we’ve done it, or will do it.

**We have saved more babies and changed more people’s minds **than with any other project we’ve ever conducted.

we, we, we

really good at tooting their own horn, and patting themselves on the back. no mention of God. no humility. no fact checks (or ego checks) it’s all about them.

 

[Philothea53]

This statement in bold headlines on Operation Rescue’s website above a picture of one of their trucks parked in a family neighborhood clearly shows their true “intent” for parking this truck in that neighborhood.

What does Operation Rescue claim their intent is?

to let the neighbors know what she [Marguerite Reed] really does for a living.

It’s not about sharing the gospel. it’s not about some moral good. no, it’s about letting the neighbors know what Marguerite Reed does for a living. So in a grandiose effort to inform the neighborhood of what Marguerite does for a living they’re intentionally going to expose all the children in that neighborhood to these violent images.

Couldn’t they just mail out flyers to the neighborhood saying “guess what, Marguerite is a receptionist at Tiller the Killer’s abortuary”?

No, they’re using these images of the dead, mutilated bodies of babies to terrorize the neighborhood because these people have the misfortune of living in the same neighborhood as an employee of Tiller the Killer.

This “intent” definately doesn’t pass the Double Effect muster.

Operation Resuce has lost their moral compass, and the prolife community needs to distance themselves from this group before they’re sucked down into the gutter with them and their reputation is irreparably damaged.

Take this for example:

we, we, we

really good at tooting their own horn, and patting themselves on the back. no mention of God. no humility. no fact checks (or ego checks) it’s all about them.

No different than your I, I, I, when talking about the work you do. You expect them to say God was with them when they were doing this? I don’t recall you saying God was right next to you in any of the posts you have made about your prolife work. Double standard here?

Operation Rescue has not lost its moral compass. It has gone through some horrific struggles and kept their collective head up high and continued to do what they see as necessary to save the lives of babies being slaughtered in the so-called clinics in this country. They haven’t wavered and haven’t backed down.

I saw a signature line in one of the other threads I really like. Forgive me if I don’t post it exactly but if I remember right it said:

There is a reason St. Michael comes with a sword and not a bunch of daisies.

 

[Philothea53]

So how are you part then of the “we” that you defend for doing exactly this----something that you seem to be implying is actually only an exaggerated fantasy made up by those of us who had, I suppose, nothing better to do with our time over the last couple weeks than argue over something we didn’t believe existed?

How can that “we” of which you are a part claim that driving the trucks around, flying the planes, holding up the signs at the mall has “saved more babies and changed more people’s minds than with any other project we’ve ever conducted” if the part of the “we” you represent doesn’t really believe such a project actually exists?

Is this a veiled attempt to call me a liar? It sounds like it.

You’ve taken quite a few liberties in your assumptions here and applied implications that I never made. I did not imply at any time that this discussion stems from fantasy. I certainly never said that I don’t really believe such a project exists. I did say I have personally never seen the truth trucks even with the many miles I have spent on the highways. That doesn’t negate their existence or the truth of the message they are taking to the people.

I did say that possibly there is exaggeration going on. I do believe that there are some who are not really 100% prolife who would argue this point much more vigorously than actually required. I think this comes from either their desire to discredit those whose intention it is to educate the public and put an end to “choice” or just plain old overkill.

Just because I have never seen the trucks doesn’t mean I don’t feel solidarity with the brave men and women who have dedicated their lives, not just their weekends or an hour after their ‘real’ job, but those for whom this is their life’s work. I applaud their efforts.I applaud their commitment. I pray for their continued health and success.

I would ask that you stop for just a moment and think about what the underlying reason is for all this discussion. Please take a minute and read what I have written here. Don’t just gloss over it and dismiss it. I know you’ve heard it before but you can never hear it often enough. Not as long as abortion on demand is legal. Allow yourself to feel what I am saying.
At the end of the day, it’s all about putting an end to the senseless slaughter of children in the womb. For 34+ years our country has allowed women in various stages throughout their pregnancy a legal ‘choice’ to kill their children through suctioning, ripping apart, burning with saline. having scissors puncture their skulls and having their brains sucked out while their little arms and legs flail about - dear God, how could you not desire this to be stopped using whatever methods work?
This isn’t something that happens occasionally, like you seeing the truth trucks or planes flying overhead pulling banners! This happens to the tune of 1.3 million times a year in this country alone. Almost 50 MILLION babies have been murdered in the United States but you complain because you have to shield your child’s eyes or be a good parent and love them past an occasional uncomfortable situation.

Thank your Lord God you have your child with you. I thank the Lord God you chose life. I can only pray that through our efforts we can convince other women do the same.

I’m going to stop posting on this thread. I have a knot in my stomach from reading the arguments you all make that obviously don’t take into account the underlying truths of what abortion is and why certain tactics have to used. I believe you are as selfish as those who admit to being pro-abortion. I’ll continue to pray for all you.