Pro-life campaign picking up speed
By Diane Morey Hanson
© 2002 Credo

ANN ARBOR - The folks bringing the billboard-sized graphic images of aborted fetuses to college campuses and placing them on the sides of trucks rolling across the nation are out to change public opinion.

“That’s what we are all about here,” said Mark Harrington, executive director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Midwest. “The American people are not bothered by abortion, so we are out to bother the American people.”

Harrington spoke in Ann Arbor Feb. 12 to more than 40 at the Catholic Men’s Tuesday Breakfast at Domino’s Farms and again in the evening to a dozen more who came out to hear what the center’s “Reproductive ‘Choice’ Campaign” is all about.

The center, a grass-roots pro-life organization founded by Gregg Cunningham in California some five years ago, is out to confront the American people with the horrific realities of abortion by placing the controversial and disturbing images where they will most likely be seen—college campuses and busy roadways.

“We are expanding from southern California to northern California and to Ohio,” said Harrington who is based in Westerville, Ohio. “We are looking to add more trucks to our fleet.”

The truck convoy—Reproductive “Choice” Campaign—created controversy in Michigan last October on a trip that included Lansing, Detroit and Ann Arbor. The center hopes to be able to cover more area in the Midwest and the East Coast with the addition of another truck in a few weeks. “Our vision is to have a fleet of trucks in every major city in the U.S.,” added Harrington.

The huge images of bloody fetuses, aborted during the first trimester, have created tremendous controversy nationwide, which is just what the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform wants.

“We want to do for first-trimester abortions what the partial-birth abortion debate has done for third-trimester abortions,” said Harrington. “We can prove that a suction abortion is just as horrifying as a partial-birth abortion by using pictures.”

He said a recent New York Times-Wirthlin Poll of the American people revealed that 61 percent support first-trimester abortions, 15 percent thought second-trimester abortions were OK, and only seven percent approved of third-trimester abortions. Of all abortions performed, 90 percent are in the first trimester and only one percent in the third.

“We are winning on the margins,” said Harrington, “and losing where most abortions take place.”

Ironically, the same poll revealed that 58 percent felt that abortion should be illegal if there was evidence of a heartbeat and 61 percent if there was the presence of a brainwave. An unborn baby’s heartbeat is recognized at 21 days and the brainwave is measurable by EEG at five weeks—both well within the first trimester.

“It is a problem of ignorance and denial,” explained Harrington. “Ignorance is not knowing and denial is refusing to know.

“So, how do we convince them that this really is a baby? It’s through education. But if you can’t get the people to come to you, you have to go to the people. Should we continue to just ask if we can talk about it? We have 29 years of evidence (since the legalization of abortion) that it doesn’t work.”

The only way to bring about change is by confronting people with the realities of abortion, he explained, and pictures are the best way to do that. “Pictures are the best evidence we have to prove that, one, a fetus is truly a baby and, two, abortion at any stage is an act of violence.”

And they have evidence that their efforts are beginning to pay off.

Nine women reported to area pregnancy centers in Tennessee that they decided not to abort their babies after seeing the center’s graphic displays at the University of Tennessee. The Genocide Awareness Project has been displayed on some 35 college campuses so far.

And through their website—www.abortionNO.org—they have received countless messages confirming the transforming impact of their aborted baby pictures.

One woman wrote: “I was thinking of abortion because my children are going to be less than two years apart, but after reading everything and looking at the pictures I can’t do it.”

Another person commented: “Your photos changed me from pro-choice to pro-life. More has got to be done to educate the public on the true horrors of abortion.”

Another 22-year-old wrote that her boyfriend was pressuring her to have an abortion and she was considering it because she was in college. “But I was looking at the pictures and this is horrible,” she wrote. “I’m going to keep my baby.”

A woman who had gone through an abortion witnessed the convoy of trucks on a freeway and later checked out the website. “I think it is a very graphic and straightforward way to get the point across, but you are absolutely right about what abortion is and what it does. I think your campaign will help many women choose NOT to have an abortion.”

That’s just what the folks at the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform are praying for.