Huge Abortion Photos to be Flown Today Over University of Notre Dame to Stop the Abortion Cover-Up

[RobbyS]

And what are they hoping to accomplish with this? I think it’s very rude and uncharitable of them to openly mock the efforts of the pro-life students at Notre Dame.

I really feel for the undergraduate students here that are opposed to Obama. Not only are they labeled as “fanatics” by their peers even though they refuse shock tactics like this, they are condemned by outside groups such as these for not being fervent enough. I keep praying for them and ask everyone else to do the same.

For many students at ND, even the pro-life students, abortion is an abstraction not a reality. Too often “fanatic” is simply a person who takes an issue seriously. People who are “too” serious about any issue are likely to suffer the disaprove of “ordinary” people.

 

[ChristinaM]

For many students at ND, even the pro-life students, abortion is an abstraction not a reality. Too often “fanatic” is simply a person who takes an issue seriously. People who are “too” serious about any issue are likely to suffer the disaprove of “ordinary” people.

So, in other words, people who object to these photos don’t take abortion seriously?

 

[Kansas_Girl]

I remember about ten or fifteen years ago when all the news channels showed the baby seals being clubbed to death. That brought about an end to the clubbing because of all the outcries from an outraged public. One can always hope that pictures of aborted babies will have a similar effect.

As far as Notre Dame is concerned, I believe the President of that once great Catholic university is pretty much ashamed of its Catholic identity. He wants to prove that Notre Dame is just as hip and cool (and immoral) as any secular university. I think he believes being prolife is very unhip, uncool and downright embarrassing.

 

[katy]

I was a very young child when I saw my first pictures of Nazi camp victims on TV. I can still sort of see it in my head. I couldn’t understand why those people wound up that way (still can’t). Later I found out what had happened and couldn’t understand why no one seemed to care or speak up. It is one of the influences that made me decide that if anything like that came up during my lifetime, I would not just sit on the sidelines. And I don’t. Perhaps seeing those pictures would have a similar effect on children now.

 

[reggieM]

Perhaps when seeing the photos, some people might not think about how disgusting they look but rather how these beautiful children were killed in this way.

As Catholics, we are not afraid of dead bodies at all. We actually preserve them in shrines and exhume graves to look at dead bodies. We use bodies of the incorrupt saints to advertise holiness.

Why are these photos “disgusting” to you? Because these poor children did not get the honor of a burial service and were actually flushed down into the sewer? How do you think they feel when their lives are silenced and covered-up because people think they are “disgusting”? I don’t think the children themselves are disgusting at all. What happened to them is not their fault. The children didn’t want to have their heads cut off – they didn’t deserve that. We “objectify” the children by grinding up their bodies and pretending that they don’t exist. They are literally considered to be biological waste. They are considered a “problem” that shouldn’t have existed.

I also agree that WWII pictures of the holocaust helped to show the evils of the Nazis. The same was true of the baby seals who were clubbed to death. That was put on television and children could see it.

 

[aggiecatholic05]

Perhaps when seeing the photos, some people might not think about how disgusting they look but rather how these beautiful children were killed in this way.

As Catholics, we are not afraid of dead bodies at all. We actually preserve them in shrines and exhume graves to look at dead bodies. We use bodies of the incorrupt saints to advertise holiness.

Why are these photos “disgusting” to you? Because these poor children did not get the honor of a burial service and were actually flushed down into the sewer? How do you think they feel when their lives are silenced and covered-up because people think they are “disgusting”? I don’t think the children themselves are disgusting at all. What happened to them is not their fault. The children didn’t want to have their heads cut off – they didn’t deserve that. We “objectify” the children by grinding up their bodies and pretending that they don’t exist. They are literally considered to be biological waste. They are considered a “problem” that shouldn’t have existed.

I also agree that WWII pictures of the holocaust helped to show the evils of the Nazis. The same was true of the baby seals who were clubbed to death. That was put on television and children could see it.

thank you. so very nice to hear from someone else that actually seems to get it.

protesting pro-life demonstrations dos no good. it just strengthens the position of death.

 

[sedonaman]

To those who object to these pictures:

Why don’t you object to depictions of the Crucifixion?

 

[KathleenElsie]

thank you. so very nice to hear from someone else that actually seems to get it.

protesting pro-life demonstrations dos no good. it just strengthens the position of death.

When my grandchildren saw those pictures the 9 year old said “Now I know why you don’t like abortion”. The 8 year old asked “how could anyone do that to a baby like his sister” and the 3 year old asked “who broke the babies and why”. You see kids get it. Why can’t adults get it?

 

[aggiecatholic05]

When my grandchildren saw those pictures the 9 year old said “Now I know why you don’t like abortion”. The 8 year old asked “how could anyone do that to a baby like his sister” and the 3 year old asked “who broke the babies and why”. You see kids get it. Why can’t adults get it?

from the mouths of babes…

 

[sedonaman]

Posters here have the idea that there are only two possible opinions regarding abortion – black-belt pro-abortion and black-belt anti-abortion. This Manichaean view ignores a significant percentage who don’t care or are pro-abortion but whose minds can be changed if they only could see one.

Slavery was ended because Americans saw slavery, if not first hand then through the TV of the day – newspapers and books. Today, most Americans opt for the TV rather than reading to gain information. Therefore, they don’t have an image of abortion that is conveyed by:

Statement of Brenda Pratt Shafer, R.N.
Before the Subcommittee on the Constitution
Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives
Hearing on The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (HR 1833)
March 21, 1996
priestsforlife.org/testimonies/testimony.aspx?ID=1132

This nurse described herself as “very pro-choice” to the point that if her teenage daughters got pregnant, she would take them to get an abortion. After she actually saw abortion, she changed her mind. And if her mind was changed, so can a lot of others.

I challenge those who are against the pictures to read her testimony [short], and then tell everyone here the pictures are a bad idea.

 

[reggieM]

This nurse described herself as “very pro-choice” to the point that if her teenage daughters got pregnant, she would take them to get an abortion. After she actually saw abortion, she changed her mind. And if her mind was changed, so can a lot of others.

That is a good point. The pictures at ND are actually only of the children’s bodies after the abortion. That is quite terrible. But actually seeing an abortion itself is beyond that. There was a pro-life movie several years ago that showed an abortionist in action. That was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen on film I think. I still have a cold chill just thinking about it (and I saw it 20 years ago). It is so true – go see an abortion sometime. These photos are mild by comparison.

 

[sedonaman]

Also, there is plenty of evidence the proponents don’t even believe their own propaganda. If the aborted baby in Nurse Shafer’s testimony was not a baby, but just a blob, a tumor, why did the mother want to see it? Why did the doctor let the mother see it? Why did they have to clean it up and wrap it in a blanket? These acts speak volumes about the admission by the mother and the abortionist of the humanity of the baby.

Another thing. People naturally seek out that which is good and try to avoid doing evil. Therefore, evil must be presented as a good. Who can argue with “freedom” or “choice”? If abortion involved nothing more morally than choosing Coke over Pepsi, its proponents wouldn’t have to craft exotic arguments to sell it to the naïve and gullible. How many women would “choose” abortion if, rather than being called a woman’s “freedom to choose”, it was called what it is: a method of birth control, of racial/sex selection, and/or of culling out the weak, an admission that the individual is a slave to his/her passions and ultimately the state that funds it, and at the bottom, anti-family?
Also, the comparison of the two issues of abortion and slavery is a good one for two reasons: 1) neither lends itself to compromise, as the Supreme Court discovered in both Dred Scott and Roe; and 2) both treat persons as property.

What the law that allows unrestricted abortion is saying in effect is that human life begins when the pregnant woman decides to give birth. I’m not talking science here, but politics. Consider two situations: A pregnant woman who decides to give birth and another who decides to abort. The only difference between the two situations, as far as the embryos/fetuses/“its” are concerned, is that one is wanted in the former case and unwanted in the latter. Since the latter is unwanted, for the sake of politics, it cannot be a human person whose life has begun, for to take such a person’s life would be murder, so it is rationalized away to something else. The inescapable conclusion is that that something else is nothing more than the property of the woman until it is wanted by the woman, and only the woman.

If a pregnant woman decides to give birth, her unborn suddenly becomes a human being because it is protected as such by law; but she may subsequently decide to abort before it is born [and they are working on postpartum abortion, too], and as a result, “it” ceases to be a human being, is no longer protected by law, and reverts to being her property once more. During all this decision-making by the woman, and according to liberal thought, nothing of essence with regard to the embryos/fetuses/“it” has really changed; the only thing that did was the woman’s mind.

A fine mess, no?

One more thing. Ironically, a black person is the last one you would logically expect to support one person’s exercising property rights over another. If 0bama’s mother had made a different “choice,” he wouldn’t be alive to advocate abortion. If that’s not a fallacy, it ought to be.

So, yes we need the pictures to cut through the BS.

 

[KathleenElsie]

Also, there is plenty of evidence the proponents don’t even believe their own propaganda. If the aborted baby in Nurse Shafer’s testimony was not a baby, but just a blob, a tumor, why did the mother want to see it? Why did the doctor let the mother see it? Why did they have to clean it up and wrap it in a blanket? These acts speak volumes about the admission by the mother and the abortionist of the humanity of the baby.

Another thing. People naturally seek out that which is good and try to avoid doing evil. Therefore, evil must be presented as a good. Who can argue with “freedom” or “choice”? If abortion involved nothing more morally than choosing Coke over Pepsi, its proponents wouldn’t have to craft exotic arguments to sell it to the naïve and gullible. How many women would “choose” abortion if, rather than being called a woman’s “freedom to choose”, it was called what it is: a method of birth control, of racial/sex selection, and/or of culling out the weak, an admission that the individual is a slave to his/her passions and ultimately the state that funds it, and at the bottom, anti-family?
Also, the comparison of the two issues of abortion and slavery is a good one for two reasons: 1) neither lends itself to compromise, as the Supreme Court discovered in both Dred Scott and Roe; and 2) both treat persons as property.

What the law that allows unrestricted abortion is saying in effect is that human life begins when the pregnant woman decides to give birth. I’m not talking science here, but politics. Consider two situations: A pregnant woman who decides to give birth and another who decides to abort. The only difference between the two situations, as far as the embryos/fetuses/“its” are concerned, is that one is wanted in the former case and unwanted in the latter. Since the latter is unwanted, for the sake of politics, it cannot be a human person whose life has begun, for to take such a person’s life would be murder, so it is rationalized away to something else. The inescapable conclusion is that that something else is nothing more than the property of the woman until it is wanted by the woman, and only the woman.

If a pregnant woman decides to give birth, her unborn suddenly becomes a human being because it is protected as such by law; but she may subsequently decide to abort before it is born [and they are working on postpartum abortion, too], and as a result, “it” ceases to be a human being, is no longer protected by law, and reverts to being her property once more. During all this decision-making by the woman, and according to liberal thought, nothing of essence with regard to the embryos/fetuses/“it” has really changed; the only thing that did was the woman’s mind.

A fine mess, no?

One more thing. Ironically, a black person is the last one you would logically expect to support one person’s exercising property rights over another. If 0bama’s mother had made a different “choice,” he wouldn’t be alive to advocate abortion. If that’s not a fallacy, it ought to be.

So, yes we need the pictures to cut through the BS.

Maybe we also need some bumper magnets that show what abortion truly is. This way we can let others see what abortion truly is and not just “talk” about the issue.

 

[onetruechurch]

Does a Siamese twin (conjoined twin) have a right to kill the other twin because that person is “part” of his body and is making his life uncomfortable. The stronger twin should have the right to “abort” that nuisance. According to the theory that a mother has a right to kill the nuisance body growing inside her, the twin should simply kill that nuisance sibling. Isn’t it strange that back in the days when it was not common to separate the conjoined twins that the stronger twin never considered his sibling such a nuisance that he was deserving of death!

 

[Rach620]

I think that in some ways the debate on this thread is getting away from the particular issue at ND.

As I said in my previous posts, I do not altogether oppose the use of images of aborted children when witnessing about abortion to those who support it. But I think that there are very many differences between talking to someone who is pro-abortion, or teaching a child what abortion is, and using these images in that discussion VS plastering trucks and airplanes with dismembered, bloody children. In one circumstance it is acceptable; in the other, there is something not quite right, something objectifying about the way in which the images are presented and used.

A great many men and women have had their hearts and minds changed by seeing what abortion is or what it does, but I’ll have to say that all of the stories of conversion on this issue which I have read seem to involve seeing abortion first-hand, or being presented with the photos in a personal environment where someone is there to guide, explain, etc. Again, in my experience, in-your-face tactics where these pictures are plastered on trucks and trailed in the skies just don’t work on their intended audiences. They are perceived as radical and are often ignored. Students on campus do not perceive them as an invitation to discussion about the issue (from which conversion might come!) but as an even more radical display that makes them right in ignoring the pro-life point of view. However wrong they are in thinking this, I think we must be honest in understanding that this is their effect–the opposite of what is intended!

Also, an image of a dismembered child is not at all like images of the Crucifixion or displaying incorrupt saints. Christ on the cross and saints’ bodies whom death has not defiled give glory to God, His goodness and His grace. Images of murdered children witness to our horribly fallen world and to human evil.

protesting pro-life demonstrations dos no good. it just strengthens the position of death.

I agree, protesting pro-life demonstrations does no good–so why do the CBR, which sponsors the images on the planes, as well as Russell Terry and Operation Rescue, among others, feel the need to protest the pro-life demonstrations being carried out by Notre Dame students right now, labeling them as inadequate?

Case-in-point, from the CBR’s press release:

In a perversely paradoxical sense, it is the pro-life community at Notre Dame
which is responsible for the abomination which this invitation represents. By
steadfastly opposing the display of abortion photos on their campus, they have
allowed abortion supporters to create the misleading impression that abortion is a
nominal evil.

 

[sedonaman]

…

Again, in my experience, in-your-face tactics where these pictures are plastered on trucks and trailed in the skies just don’t work on their intended audiences.
…

How do you know who the intended audience is ?

 

[Rach620]

How do you know who the intended audience is ?

With these sorts of displays, I’d always thought it was those who support abortion, don’t think it ends human life, etc.

I’m guessing you’re about to tell me that pro-lifers are also the intended audience, particularly those who “don’t take abortion seriously enough”?

 

[cathgal]

I
As I said in my previous posts, I do not altogether oppose the use of images of aborted children when witnessing about abortion to those who support it. But I think that there are very many differences between talking to someone who is pro-abortion, or teaching a child what abortion is, and using these images in that discussion VS plastering trucks and airplanes with dismembered, bloody children. In one circumstance it is acceptable; in the other, there is something not quite right, something objectifying about the way in which the images are presented and used.

We don’t expect all pro-abort people to be changed by seeing images of aborted babies. If their hearts are made of stones, nothing can touch it. If not, mission accomplished. What do pro-lifers have to lose? Nothing. If the image affects them in any way, then they should question their pro-abort position.

It’s that simple. We don’t need to analyze what image is objectifying or not. After 40 years, do we need to even consider that! Perhap 40 years is not long enough for you.

We’re dealing with a bunch of pro-abortion people, not babies. Give 'em what they’ve been ignoring !

 

[Rach620]

We don’t expect all pro-abort people to be changed by seeing images of aborted babies. If their hearts are made of stones, nothing can touch it. If not, mission accomplished. What do pro-lifers have to lose? Nothing. If the image affects them in any way, then they should question their pro-abort position.

I’d argue we have credibility to lose, but that’s apparently just me. It’s not pro-life to send an aborted fetus in a jar to President Clinton, as Randall Terry did. It’s not pro-life to abuse images of aborted children, as many do. It does not defend the dignity of the human persons whom abortion kills. We are called to **bury **and to **reverence **the bodies of the dead.

CCC 2300 The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy;91 it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.

It’s that simple. We don’t need to analyze what image is objectifying or not.

Why not? As Pope John Paul II taught us, the human person is never to be turned into an object for use. As people who are pro-life (and Catholic!), and who therefore profess to hold the dignity of the human person and the value of human life as the root of all moral goods and above every other possible value, the question of whether or not these images are objectifying should be at the core of our consciences. If using them in this way is objectifying of those children who are depicted in them, then we cannot morally employ them in our efforts, however noble our efforts may be.

After 40 years, do we need to even consider that! Perhap 40 years is not long enough for you.

I’m not sure why you directed that personally at me.

We’re dealing with a bunch of pro-abortion people, not babies. Give 'em what they’ve been ignoring !

The city of South Bend is not full to the brim of “a bunch of pro-abortion people”. BABIES do live here–BABIES who drive around town with their parents and grandparents and who have not even been presented with the issue.

 

[Catholic20064]

I’d argue we have credibility to lose, but that’s apparently just me. It’s not pro-life to send an aborted fetus in a jar to President Clinton, as Randall Terry did. It’s not pro-life to abuse images of aborted children, as many do. It does not defend the dignity of the human persons whom abortion kills. We are called to **bury **and to **reverence **the bodies of the dead.

Why not? As Pope John Paul II taught us, the human person is never to be turned into an object for use. As people who are pro-life (and Catholic!), and who therefore profess to hold the dignity of the human person and the value of human life as the root of all moral goods and above every other possible value, the question of whether or not these images are objectifying should be at the core of our consciences. If using them in this way is objectifying of those children who are depicted in them, then we cannot morally employ them in our efforts, however noble our efforts may be.

I’m not sure why you directed that personally at me.

The city of South Bend is not full to the brim of “a bunch of pro-abortion people”. BABIES do live here–BABIES who drive around town with their parents and grandparents and who have not even been presented with the issue.

South Bend hasn’t sent any pro-choice people to Congress. All of the Congressmen (even the Democrats) have been pro-life as far as I know. A pro-choice congressional candidate couldn’t win in the 2nd District.