California Antiabortion Group Launches Mobile Billboard Campaign in Southern California to 'Make Abortion Impossible to Trivialize'
© 2001 Kaiser Newtwork

The Los Angeles-based Center for Bio-Ethical Reform on Monday launched the "Reproductive Choice Campaign," which involves driving on Southern California freeways a number of "large, box-body trucks on whose sides will be displayed billboard-size, color photos depicting aborted human embryos and early fetuses." Designed to end the "massive denial about what abortion is and what it does," the campaign will take advantage of the high concentration of traffic in the area and plans to run the trucks every business day on Southern California highways. An estimated 500,000 people are expected to see the photos on each truck per hour, as "the freeway is the last place where viewers can neither turn the page nor change the channel." Routes will then be added in Central and Northern California, with a "nationwide expansion" projected by year's end. The center reports that the campaign is a "long-term project which will continue indefinitely," with the intent to "make abortion impossible to ignore or trivialize." According to the center, "[I]t is vital to convince the public that the first term baby is as fully entitled to rights of personhood as a more mature fetus and that even an early abortion is as indefensible an act of violence as any ' partial-birth' abortion . Extensive focus group research has proven conclusively that our pictures are the most effective means by which to achieve that goal." Acknowledging that children should be protected from exposure to "disturbing photos," the billboard trucks will be based in industrial or commercial zones, and not spend too much time near residential neighborhoods or "knowingly drive past elementary schools, playgrounds, daycare centers." But the center notes that there is "no operating location in which we can guarantee that no child will ever see these painful images." The group says, "We respectfully refuse to allow people who are not pro-life to cover up the truth about abortion. ... Abortion is not exacting enough of an emotional toll on American society" (Center for Bio-Ethical Reform release , 6/25).