Putting a Human Face on Abortion: A Defense of Graphic Pictures

I've been working in the pro-life movement since 1972 and I can't count the number of times people have objected to those "disgusting" pictures. (I agree, they ARE disgusting.) What I find interesting is that many of those same people would have no trouble with the graphic pictures at the Holocaust Museum. "We must never forget!" they'd say. And I couldn't agree more. Social movements generally go nowhere until they put a human face on the victims of atrocities. Think of the powerful impact of photos showing dogs and fire hoses being used against peaceful civil rights marchers in Birmingham and Selma. It outraged the nation! Remember the photo of  the villagers in the ditch who were massacred at My Lai during the Vietnam war. That picture became a rally point for the peace movement. Photos of the execution of Blessed Miguel Pro by the Mexican tyrant Plutarco Calles, publicized to discourage the rebels, actually inspired the Cristeros in Mexico to redouble their efforts.

Graphic pictures show the reality of evil in a way that nicey-nice pictures never do. Beautiful pictures of developing babies inspire the heart to love and tenderness. Unfortunately, those who ooh and ahh over them often turn around and justify a woman's "right to choose." The little ones in life are lovely, but their murder is an abstraction. And so the victims must be moved from the theoretical and the abstract into the reality, the brutal reality, of their cold-blooded murder.

The ones who make the loudest noise against the "fanatics" who show the pictures are the people committing the atrocities. Planned Parenthood has spent millions in PR campaigns to hide the reality of abortion. Even the word has morphed into "choice." Everybody knows that "choice" means abortion. PP isn't, after all, promoting adoption. And yet by never saying what the choice is -- to kill a baby in the womb -- they pretend it's something septic and actually healthy. As if a "surgical procedure" done for social reasons can ever be about health. PP wants to keep women barefoot, ignorant, and non-pregnant. They fight every woman's right to know law to make sure mothers never see their babies on the ultrasound. Too many change their minds and make the wrong "choice."

So all you pro-lifers out there, SHOW THE GRAPHIC PICTURES WITHOUT APOLOGY! The murdered babies reflect the image of Christ in His suffering. And the next time you are in a Catholic church, meditate on that graphic image hanging over the tabernacle, the bloody body of our crucified Lord. The killers missed him in His infancy, killing the Holy Innocents instead. But we see exactly what  price He paid for our salvation when we see him  suffering the Roman method for aborting troublesome adults.