Looks horrible?  It is horrible!

 Why use the graphic signs showing abortion victims?  “They’re scary”, “They’re bloody”, “I don’t want to see these images”, “That’s disgusting”, or “You’re just trying to trigger us”.  Just a few of the arguments I’ve heard while doing prolife outreaches at campuses and abortion clinics.  

My response?  

First of all, you should be horrified that we are eliminating our children by dismembering them inside the womb – a place that is supposed to protect and nurture a child for forty weeks.  But here’s the thing:  most people don’t know what abortions look like.  We have been repeatedly lied to about the humanity of the child so that many think that the child in the womb is just a blob of cells that can’t feel anything.  Society now decides who lives and dies, playing God while disguising this gruesome act behind words.  It’s just a choice, a harmless little choice.  

Why do we use the images?  The images start conversations, change hearts and minds, and even save the babies’ lives.  We use the images to show the humanity of that child whether it be out there in front of abortion clinics, or on the streets doing activism educating tin he public forum.  Those babies on the signs are silent witnesses who cry out against this injustice we know as abortion.

I agree:  the images of abortion victims are bloody and disgusting.  Because abortion is a nasty, bloody, horrific act that intentionally killed that little baby who did nothing wrong but exist.  Just for existing we decided to give her something worse than what a death row inmate would get – we rip her limb by limb without anesthetic.  Imagine if we did that to death row inmates. Imagine the uproar!  But not for the child in the womb where society claims it as a “choice”.   

Sometimes when an abortion supporter on campus would tell me that abortion is okay, I would point at the sign with the picture of Ruth (a third trimester abortion victim) and ask “So you think that this is okay?”  That starts a conversation.  It can go all sorts of ways but often the abortion supporter would respond, “Well third trimester seems a bit late.”  Then we would  move to a sign with a ten week abortion victim.  When they see the victims younger and younger and see those little hands and feet, it’s hard for them to dehumanize the child any further.  Though we get people who try to say the child is still not human by trying to justify the humanity by size, level of development, the environment where the child is growing, or the degree of dependency.  (Go check out Sam’s blog post about that!)

“But there are teens around!  Kids shouldn’t be seeing these bloody images!” Yes, I understand that kids see the images during public outreaches.  But have you ever thought about what kind of video games that are out right now?  Video games about war, even movies that are just as bloody!  So if you are so disturbed by the bloodiness and the gore of the image of an abortion victim, then why aren’t you protesting gaming and movie industries?  Those high schoolers and college students, they are the main targets for the abortion industry.  We are there with the signs to show this atrocity for what it is.  When Planned Parenthood or any other abortion pusher goes into our high schools and colleges claiming that the human being they are intentionally killing is really just a blob, we want students to be forearmed:  Having seen the clear truth, they will know that preborn children have feet, hands, arms, legs, brain, eyes, and a heart that beats.

I agree with you that the images of abortion victims are absolutely horrible. If we can agree that the images of the victims are horrible and disgusting, then surely we can agree that abortion itself is a horrible act, right?  Well, I hope you agree.  I personally hate looking at the pictures, just thinking how much pain that baby went through.  Then I realize, if abortion wasn’t happening, we wouldn’t need to use these pictures.  In the 1940s people used pictures of the Holocaust victims to reveal what was happening in concentration camps, because a picture is truly worth a thousand words.  I’ve seen the pictures save lives on campuses and at abortion clinics.  You and I may have differences in how we sidewalk counsel or educate society about abortion in a public area, but I consider the images of the children killed by abortion as our greatest resource.  They may never know the impact they had on society, but I wish the babies – the children who fell victim to abortion – knew how many lives they have saved just by people seeing the tragic end of their short lives.