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The Face of 'choice' -
Anti-abortion campaign featuring dead babies turns heads
By Julie Foster
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
By driving hundreds of miles of Los Angeles freeways in trucks with billboard-sized photos of aborted babies on every side, a new campaign uses old tactics in an attempt to refocus the debate over abortion.
The pictures show tiny, severed body parts of first-trimester fetuses, some just 7-, 8- and 10-weeks-old. Arms, legs, fingers, toes and faces are clearly visible next to coins, giving observers an idea of the babies' sizes. The photos are all accompanied by the word "Choice."
This photo of an embryo aborted at seven weeks appears on the back of one of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's trucks.
On Monday, June 25, a confidential number of the trucks rolled out of the Los Angeles-based Center for Bio-Ethical Reform with the photos plastered on all sides. The group's new anti-abortion "Reproductive Choice Campaign" is intended to "make abortion impossible to ignore or trivialize," said CBR's director Gregg Cunningham.
"Every time people hear the word 'abortion,' a picture appears in their head that is horrifying, that is shocking," said Cunningham of the program's goal. He doesn't want the public to hear "abortion" and "think of a euphemism like 'reproductive choice.' We want the word 'abortion' to be stigmatized. We want the word 'choice' to mean something."
The face of a baby aborted at 10 weeks of gestation.
After studying successful social reform campaigns, CBR developed what Cunningham calls "immutable principles of social reform" that are common to every social reform movement from child labor and slavery to women's rights, peace movements and environmental causes.
"What we've determined is that successful social reform is typified by the skillful use of horrifying pictures which are used to dramatize social injustice," he said.
In the United States, trying to change the climate surrounding abortion means trying to "teach people who don't want to learn," the activist remarked. "Society doesn't want to know about the social injustice it is doing." As a result, "social reformers have got to force feed facts into the heads of people who don't want those facts in their heads because they don't want to feel guilty," he continued.
The pictures are intended to confront abortion advocates with the truth about what they are advocating. Such activism presupposes social reformers' willingness to undergo persecution, said Cunningham, who refuted an oft-cited argument against such direct and often offensive campaigns.
Body parts of another 10-week-old fetus shown next to a dime for scale.
"The assumption that has animated project choices among pro-life activists for 30 years is that if we do anything offensive we won't be effective," he said. "That concept is utterly anathema" to CBR's understanding of social reform. "Social reform never works when it doesn't dramatize injustice, confront the culture, invite persecution."
Cunningham noted the practices of oppressive groups throughout history, including the Ku Klux Klan. Before it began an episode of publicly beating and harassing African-Americans and other minorities, the KKK would destroy cameras to avoid not necessarily evidence of their actions, but the brutality of their practices, he said.
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "determined to drag that abuse out of the darkness and into the light," noted Cunningham. "The press became sort of his co-venturer in all this because the press was very sympathetic to the cause of civil rights." But when it comes to the issue of abortion, the press is anything but sympathetic to opponents of the practice, he said, referring to perceptions about unborn babies reinforced by media outlets of all kinds – news, movies, television, magazines, etc.
"The public is convinced that the fetus becomes sufficiently fully formed to be entitled to rights of personhood … sometime subsequent to the end of the first trimester of pregnancy," he said.
The public has also made clear through various opinion polls that it considers partial-birth abortion indefensible. Partial-birth abortion is the name given to late-term abortions performed by partially delivering a baby, puncturing the baby's head while in the birth canal and suctioning out its brain. However horrifying the public believes partial-birth abortion to be, many people do not believe that the early embryo and fetus are anything more than blobs of tissue – a belief the abortion industry has effectively ingrained into the public psyche.
"Is it a baby or isn't it? Is it an act of violence or isn't it?" he asked. "Until we have agreement on those two questions, we will just have a screaming match between partisans."
"The idea that it's not a baby is demonstrably false, and the way you demonstrate that to people is by pictures. The problem is that the media is so hostile to our point of view," that it is impossible for us to get the pictures out there, Cunningham asserted. "We can't get this imagery into the public mind" because the media industry won't show the photos.
The activist alleged media aversion to such photos is intentional not just to spare young children from seeing them, but for political reasons. And he may be right. As reported by WorldNetDaily, even Fox New Channel – the network that prides itself in its "We report, you decide" motto – refused to let its former television personality Matt Drudge show a photo of "Baby Samuel."
Samuel Armas made headlines last year when he became the youngest person, at 22 weeks of gestation, to undergo a new in-utero surgery to reduce the effects of spina bifida. During the procedure, the surgeon pulled Samuel's tiny hand out of the uterus for a photo that gave Americans pause. But Fox refused to allow Drudge to display the photo to viewers of his now-canceled television program. Fox claimed the "straight editorial decision" was made because Drudge was planning to use the photo "as a jumping-off point to talk about partial-birth abortion," said Fox spokesman Brian Lewis.
This picture of 'Baby Samuel' was banned by the Fox News Network.
Cunningham said his group is getting around such media action by using its trucks to "take these images directly to the American people."
Paid and volunteer staff drive the trucks all over southern California. On Tuesday alone, the trucks could be seen on five major freeways connecting the metropolitan Los Angeles area. The day before, trucks rode on the Pacific Coast Highway, U.S. 101 and four additional highways, traveling from Santa Monica to San Bernardino and from Santa Barbara to San Diego.
While the trucks have initially been driven only in the southern California area, plans are in the works to expand their driving routes to the state's Central Valley and Bay Area. By fall, CBR expects its operation to have moved out of state, as well. Long Island, six boroughs of New York City and a half-dozen cities in central and south Florida are targeted to see the trucks, and Detroit is also a near-future possibility, Cunningham said.
The trucks are operated every business day, and the long-term project is scheduled to continue indefinitely. Though CBR considered commercial truck venues for the project, the organization ultimately decided to run the project completely independently since many commercial enterprises fear vandalism and boycotts when getting involved in social causes. CBR owns the diesel-engine trucks, which are used fleet vehicles, each with about 100,000 miles. Diesel engines are preferred, said Cunningham, since they can typically run up to about 400,000 miles before a major overhaul is needed.
And the trucks are working both mechanically and socially. CBR has a "massive captive audience of ever-growing numbers of people. They can't change the channel; they can't turn the page," he continued. "If you give me a glance, I'm going to put a picture in your head, and you'll never be able to get it out."
Cunningham euphemistically refers to motorists' reaction to the trucks as "the digital divide." Truck drivers are often either given a "thumb's up" or "the finger." Another sign that the campaign is working is the occurrence of obscene phone calls to CBR's office. But motorists aren't the only ones upset, the activist added.
Abortion advocates have called CBR complaining about the trucks. One woman even said she was making a courtesy call to inform the group she would be taking every legal action necessary to get the trucks off the road, Cunningham said.
"The irony of all of this is that political liberals have pioneered the vehicle of social reform using pictures," he remarked. "Now you've got conservatives attempting to effect social reform. They're squealing when we use their tactics," he added. "This is so frightening to them, in part because they know it works."
In a statement about the truck campaign, CBR comments on its attempts to minimize the number of children seeing the disturbing photos: "It should also be noted that we believe it is important to protect children from exposure to disturbing photos, whether those photos depict aborted babies or any other shocking subject. That is why we base the trucks which exhibit our anti-abortion billboards in a location that is entirely industrial/commercial in its zoning. We will go out of our way to choose routes which minimize the time we must spend near residential neighborhoods. We will concentrate the truck routes on freeways rather than city streets. We will not knowingly drive past elementary schools, playgrounds, daycare centers, etc.
"There is, however, no operating location in which we can guarantee that no child will ever see these painful images. The same risks to children exist every time the television is turned on. Sickening images are likely to appear, even during early prime time. The same is true with disgusting photos on the covers of magazines openly displayed at the checkout stands of supermarkets. Billboards are also increasingly likely to exhibit images inappropriate for young children."
Cunningham said the photos have been so popular among anti-abortion activists that CBR is in the process of creating similar photos to be mounted on cars, trucks and minivans. The group is also developing aircraft tows to fly over beaches on the Atlantic coast, the southern California coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
"Any place large numbers of people assemble out of doors, we're going to be there with tow banners with pictures of dead babies and the word 'choice,'" stated Cunningham, who noted only one possible failure of CBR's campaign.
"The pictures don't work if you don't have a functioning conscience," he said.
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