Anti-abortion group brings message to Lima
By Heather Rutz
© 2002 Lima News

LIMA - For Mark Harrington, the graphic images are needed to gain people's attention and raise their consciences.

And so Harrington was downtown Monday, driving one of two trucks with billboard-sized advertising showing fetuses and embryos aborted in their first trimester. The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a national group with a regional headquarters in Westerville, is on a tour of the state with the campaign.

"The goal is to take the focus of the so-called choice and show what's being chosen - abortion. It gives meaning to the word, that you're choosing to kill a human being," said Harrington, the center's Midwest office executive director.

Harrington believes the images will, over time, change people's minds about the abortion debate.

"In any social reform movement, it's been shown that horrifying pictures are needed to demonstrate the injustice - whether it's reporters showing footage of the Vietnam War and putting that in family rooms or showing the brutality against blacks by white racists beating them with clubs. I understand that this is confrontational," Harrington said.

The group is in Findlay today. Planned Parenthood of Northwest Ohio in Findlay could not be reached for comment.