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Controversial billboard trucks roll on - Abortion-rights groups react to photos of mutilated embryos
By Julie Foster
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
The group behind southern California's mobile anti-abortion billboard campaign is continuing to expand its truck routes in the face of accusations that the group inaccurately depicts the embryos' ages on the display.
Jon Dunn, president of Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino Counties, told the Orange County Register the mobile billboards give inaccurate embryo and fetal ages to make them appear more developed.
As reported by WorldNetDaily, the mobile campaign, sponsored by the Center for Bio-ethical Reform, consists of a fleet of trucks driven in southern California's rush-hour traffic where the giant photos are seen by motorists. CBR's executive director Gregg Cunningham said Dunn's accusation is false and that the ages of embryos are accurate.
Other criticism of the photos comes from drivers who call CBR's phone number listed on the trucks. CBR's headquarters in Anaheim receive countless calls day and night in response to the mobile campaign.
"Callers are in a rage about this," remarked Cunningham, who said he has not seen this level of anger, even in response to Operation Rescue's controversial blockades of abortion clinics. "If abortion is OK, what is it about these pictures that makes you so angry?" he asks.
The most common negative message CBR receives in reaction to the trucks is that the campaign has "backfired." Many callers say the billboards motivated them to write a check to Planned Parenthood, Cunningham said.
Yet for every one negative call or e-mail received about the campaign, CBR gets 50 calls from supporters, he continued, which is far from "backfiring."
"Planned Parenthood is awash in money," he explained. "If Planned Parenthood gets more money, it won't change what they do. If we get more money, it will change what we do astronomically. We are severely strained by a lack of funding. If our trucks encourage pro-lifers to give us what we most need and encourage pro-aborts to give Planned Parenthood what it least needs, that's a pretty workable trade-off from our point of view."
And with more support comes an expansion of CBR's mobile campaign. The group expects to roll its trucks into Michigan by early September, and other locations around the country are being scouted as well.
But pro-abortion activists dismiss CBR's campaign as a repackaging of an old tactic.
"This doesn't sound like anything new. They've been parading around with these kinds of pictures for years," said Glenn Mones, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "The bottom line is that most Americans believe that the government shouldn't interfere with the private medical decisions of women, and this isn't about to change that."
Yet while some pro-abortion-rights activists downplay the effect the campaign will have on the abortion debate, others express their disapproval of the trucks. Indeed, Women's E-news – a project of the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund – named the truck campaign its "outrage of the week." Choosing to play up the campaign's effect on traffic instead of the issue the billboards address, Women's E-news said the "grisly convoy" has "caused more than a few near misses" on the highway.
Cunningham said critics resort to false claims because their position in support of abortion is untenable. Pro-abortion activists make two assumptions, he continued. They assume what is being aborted is not a baby and that abortion is the lesser of two evils, the first evil being to force a woman to continue an unwanted pregnancy.
"When people see these pictures, those two assumptions are shattered," he said, since the pictures show that the product of abortion is demonstrably a baby and that abortion is an act of violence. "They can't defend it."
In response to criticism that the pictures are disturbing to children, Cunningham asks adults to evaluate the reason behind any such disturbance.
"Our very point is that these pictures are disturbing because abortion is an act of violence. It does kill a baby," he said, noting many in the pro-abortion-rights movement believe the procedure is merely a morally inconsequential way to solve an unintended pregnancy.
"Even a 3-year-old can look at a picture of a first trimester baby, recognize that it is a baby and that something terrible had happened to it," he added.
In its efforts to educate the public about abortion, CBR has faced additional criticisms about the photos, including accusations that the photos themselves are fakes. The group has retained legal representation through the Thomas More Center for Law & Justice – a non-profit, public-interest law firm – to file defamation lawsuits against those who persist in the accusations. Through its lawyers, CBR will send a demand letter to Dunn, asking him to retract his statement that the photographed embryos were aged incorrectly or face a defamation lawsuit.
Cunningham believes a defamation lawsuit would help his cause. Taking such a case to court would mean publicity and a chance to get the photos seen by even more people. A trial could only serve to bring the issue front-and-center into the minds of Americans, he said. On CBR's website, Cunningham explains how his group would argue in court.
"We will present affidavits from our photographers and certifications of authenticity from technical experts who have examined our original negatives, transparencies and videotape. We will also rely on the expert testimony of physicians who have formerly practiced abortion medicine," he wrote.
An example of such authentication is found in a letter from physician and attorney Anthony P. Levatino. He wrote:
I, the undersigned, having performed induced abortions earlier in my career, have examined the photos depicting the aborted human embryos and fetuses used by The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform in their public education projects. It is my professional opinion that the photos depict aborted human embryos and fetuses and that the depicted aborted human embryos and fetuses are accurately captioned as to age, in weeks since fertilization.
The pictures "are the abortion industry's worst nightmare and things are about to get a whole lot worse," Cunningham wrote. "Impugning the accuracy of our pictures is the same sort of tactic used by neo-Nazis in response to condemnation of the Holocaust. Skinheads just say death-camp photos are fake. The Holocaust never happened. The Final Solution is a slanderous, anti-Aryan fairytale.
"The pro-abort version of this pathetic propaganda is to say aborted baby pictures are 'doctored' or even 'computer generated.' The real embryo is just a 'blob of tissue' they say. 'Termination' is not an act of violence. 'Choice' is the lesser of two evils. Not very creative but how else can genocide apologists rebut photographic evidence of their complicity in crimes against humanity? Their only hope is to change the subject and attack the integrity of their adversaries," wrote Cunningham.
CBR does not divulge how it obtains its photographs of aborted embryos and fetuses. However, the group does say it rejects civil disobedience on "tactical grounds" and violence on "moral grounds." The group's website states it uses "only lawful means to acquire imagery." In the event of a lawsuit, CBR will reveal the sources of its photographic evidence to a judge in a private meeting.
The images are not just used in CBR's mobile-billboard campaign. The group has also taken them to college campuses where pedestrian traffic is targeted. Known as the "Genocide Awareness Project," it is a traveling photo-mural exhibit that compares the contemporary genocide of abortion to historically recognized forms of genocide. Its purpose, says CBR, is to make it as difficult as possible for people to deny that abortion is an act of violence that kills a baby. GAP is unique in that participants in the program do not shout messages at passers-by and use no sound equipment. The photos are message enough, the group says.
"If the pictures are real, [abortion advocates'] position on abortion becomes indefensible, and they know that," he said. "If something's so horrifying we can't stand to look at it, perhaps it should be unlawful; perhaps we shouldn't be doing it." |
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