CBR’s Aerial Billboards Fly Over Liberty University

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THE CENTER FOR BIO-ETHICAL REFORM

September 11, 2009

The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) condemns the murder of defenseless, pro-life activist James Pouillon, shot by a cowardly passerby while Mr. Pouillon displayed aborted baby photos outside a high school in Owosso, MI.  The New York Times (“Anti-Abortion Protestor Shot to Death,” September 11, 2009) today quotes law enforcement authorities as follows concerning the shooter’s admitted motive in Mr. Pouillon’s murder: “Prosecutors said the suspect, who is 33, singled out Mr. Pouillon because he disapproved of the victim’s protests in front of children at the school.  ‘There was some displeasure with how open he was,’ said Sara Edwards, the chief assistant prosecutor for Shiawassee County. ‘He tended to carry big signs with very graphic pictures of fetuses.’”

Ironically, every student at the school in front of which Mr. Pouillon displayed aborted baby photos was old enough to have an abortion, without parental permission or even parental notice (pursuant to “judicial bypass” procedures imposed by the Supreme Court in every state).  But the shooter apparently believed they were not old enough to see an abortion.  This non sequitur reflects delusional thinking of the most bizarre sort.  Students who are old enough to have an abortion are certainly old enough to see an abortion.

CBR intends to confront the very dishonest double-standard in this country regarding the public display of graphic images.  Disturbing pictures of all kinds are seen by children every day in America.  Even parents who don’t allow their children to watch violence on television or play violent video games, often take them to the grocery store where check-out lines are flanked with magazine racks whose publications feature cover photos which are inches away from young faces. These photos often exhibit bloody images of dead and dying victims of violence, terrorism, natural disasters, etc.  The news organizations responsible for these shocking photos virtually never publish abortion pictures.

Angry parents are often in massive denial about this reality and almost always dispute these facts, so we have put up scores of examples of disturbing news photos on our website (www.abortionNO.org) under “PUBLIC EDUCATION PROJECTS” and then “USING GRAPHIC IMAGES IN PUBLIC.”  Some of those magazine covers and newspaper photos are as gruesome as any abortion photo and they have been seen by countless children whose clueless parents never even noticed.  The reason they complain about our disturbing photos but not the disturbing press pictures is because many feel more guilt when answering their children’s questions about abortion, with which they may well have some humiliating personal experience, than the feel when questioned about a terror attack for which they bear no responsibility at all.

Although CBR does not specifically target very young children for the display of abortion photos, there is no public venue which is reliably free of the presence of young children and public venues are often the only places we can reach women before they become pregnant and lose their objectivity about abortion.  We care about the feelings of born children but we care even more about the lives of unborn children.

CBR has had innumerable women tell us that nothing less shocking than our abortion photos would have sufficed to dissuade them from killing their children.  Many more have told us that had they seen these photos before aborting, instead of after, they wouldn’t have done it.  Large numbers have confided that it took the photos to force them to stop trying to justify a sin they needed to confess and of which they needed to repent, spiritually.  And virtually every person we have ever met in serious pro-life activism had admitted that it was pictures which activated them, making it impossible for them to remain complacent.

Parents and teachers frequently cover-up the horror of abortion.  This is a form of child abuse and/or neglect.  We aren’t going to allow adults to hide the truth from children who will thereby be more likely to kill a baby out of ignorance.  It is the responsibility of the pro-life movement to stop this cover-up whether parents like it or not.  The staff of CBR is frequently threatened and/or attacked for displaying similar photos to students and the public generally (see examples of such threats and attacks detailed on our website), and Mr. Pouillon’s murder only strengthens our resolve to show the truth.

The Associated Press reported (“Mich. Man leaves town after cops say he was target, September 12, 2009) that Mr. Pouillon “was a polarizing figure in Owosso….” Praise God for that fact. CBR’s principal objective is polarization. This battle will be lost when the abortion wars are allowed to end. Most Americans cling to the illusory notion that there is a “middle ground” position on the issue of torturing babies to death. Pictures of babies being tortured to death force those people out of the fictional middle, if they have a functioning conscience.  Our pictures demand a response.  They insist that viewers get off the fence and take sides. 

It should come as no surprise that the press has consistently refused to publish the abortion photo which Mr. Pouillon was holding at the time of his murder. That is the cover-up which allows Americans to remain in the “middle” regarding abortion and it is why we must carry on the important work Mr. Pouillon helped pioneer.

But perhaps the ultimate irony in Mr. Pouillon’s murder are the remarks of Matthew Trewhella, a man who claims to be a “pastor” but who is also associated with an anti-abortion organization called “Missionaries to the Preborn.”  Mr. Trewhella condemns the murder of Mr. Pouillon (detnews.com, “With suspect in custody, police searching for clues in Owosso shootings,” September 11, 2009) but as a leader of this organization, Mr. Trewhella, on the “Missionaries” website (www.missionariestothepreborn.com), calls Paul Hill, convicted and executed for the murders of abortion providers, “the sanest and bravest man of our age.” He says Hill’s murders were motivated by “rational, Biblical reasons….” He says he did not visit Hill in prison “to condemn what Paul did ….” He adds that Missionaries to the Preborn” will not “disparage those whose use force” in anti-abortion activism.

Mr. Trewhella’s refusal to condemn the murder of abortionists robs him of all moral authority in condemning the murder of a pro-life activist.  He is not alone in this moral confusion and the result is tragically predictable. Mr. Trewhella may not have pulled the trigger, but he surely contributed to Mr. Pouillon’s death by glorifying and encouraging abortion-related violence.

We can only pray that an endless cycle of reciprocal violence will not now be initiated.  The rule of law is the only responsible way to settle policy differences, irrespective of the dispute at issue.

Gregg Cunningham

Tonight, President Obama’s health care address to a joint session of Congress was interrupted by Rep. Joe Wilson, (R.- S.C.), who shouted, “You lie!” when the president falsely claimed that “illegal aliens would not benefit from his proposals” (APNewsMyWay.com, September 9, 2009, “Obama:  Time for ‘bickering’ is over on health care”).  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, (D. – CA) seemed stunned and the AP reported that “first lady Michelle Obama shook her head from side to side in disapproval of the interruption.”  The story added that the “outburst” was “unusual.”  I would argue that it was “unusual” because Mr. Obama’s lies are so seldom rebutted.

Thank God for Rep. Wilson’s outburst because the official Republican response was delivered by Rep. Charles Boustany (R. – LA) who not only ignored the president’s lie about illegal aliens but he also gave the president a pass on the lies he told about “death panels” and “abortion funding” in the bill.

This is not the first time the President has lied about illegal aliens and health care.  He also said it’s “not true” that illegal immigrants “will get health insurance under reform” in a recent radio address (RealClearPolitics.com, Mr. Obama, August 22, 2009, “Debunking Phony Health Care Claims”).  But it is true.  HumanEvents.com reports (“Immigration Distrust on HealthBill,” August 27, 2009) that:

Section 246 of the bill [HR 3200] – dealing solely with insurance subsidies – states:  ‘Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.’

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It says they should not receive the bill’s new insurance subsidies.  It doesn’t say they can’t receive taxpayer-paid health care.  It doesn’t say they can’t receive other benefits from HR 3200, such as expanded Medicaid.

The article adds that, “There are other avenues for illegal aliens to receive health care at public expense” and that “All efforts to add enforcement language to HR3200 were defeated by mostly party-line votes.  We can expect that the bureaucracy would look the other way under Obama’s control ….”  The story also warns that “The House bill not only makes a major expansion of Medicaid eligibility but also restricts (in Section 1702) inquiries about immigration status.”  This is the worst form of official corruption.  Democrats take money from law-abiding taxpayers and use it to buy votes from illegal aliens, lying about it all the while.  And the state-owned media covers-up the whole charade.

Human Events further reports that:

Federal regulations [7 CFR 273.4 (b)] explicitly require that immigration authorities must be notified if they learn that an illegal alien is within a household applying for Food Stamps.  However, a ‘Catch 22’ was created by the Clinton Administration.  In an ‘Interagency Notice (65 Fed. Reg. 58301, Sept. 28, 2000), bureaucrats were told that unless a person has already had a hearing and been formally determined to be an illegal immigrant, no government agency really ‘knows’ that they are illegal – so they need not be turned in. 

In other words, the burden of proof isn’t on the illegal alien to establish that he is legal, it is on the liberal, Democrat, government bureaucrats to prove that he is illegal.  And with twelve million illegals in the U.S., even if liberal, Democrat, government bureaucrats were willing to enforce the laws they are obligated to enforce, the sheer volume of illegal alien criminality would quickly overwhelm the administrative courts in which their status would have to be adjudicate`.

Democrats have run these kinds of scams for a long time.  For instance, The Heritage Foundation (“The Threat of Non-Citizen Voting,” July 10, 2008) reports that:

Thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote in some states and tens if not hundreds of thousands … may be present on the voter rolls nationwide.  These numbers are significant:  Local elections are often decided by only a handful of votes and even national elections have likely been [decided] within the margin of the number of non-citizens illegally registered to vote.

Democrats also say they support laws prohibiting voting by illegal aliens but they just as frequently oppose the enforcement provisions without which the prohibitions are meaningless.  Ironically, Rep. Eugene Green (D-TX) voted against requiring photo IDs to vote and then required photo IDs for admission to town hall meetings at which he feared criticism from people outside his district (as newsbusters.com puts it, August 11, 2009, you couldn’t make this stuff up).  If federal law can’t keep millions of illegal aliens out of the country, can’t keep them from getting jobs, can’t keep them from getting driver’s licenses and social security cards and welfare, how is it going to keep them from getting health care?

The “death panel” process about which Mr. Obama lied tonight is more euphemistically called Comparative Effectiveness Research.  Martin Feldstein says in the Wall Street Journal (August 18, 2009, “ObamaCare Is All About Rationing”) that it is designed to “reduce costs by rationing care.”  For many, that will mean death.  This strategy is consistent with Mr. Obama’s repeated expressions of skepticism concerning whether his grandmother’s cancer should have disqualified her for hip replacement surgery.  He also questioned whether the elderly mother of a town hall questioner should have been given the pacemaker her doctor recommended.  In a Bloomberg.com piece titled “Ruin Your Health With Obama Stimulus Plan,” Betsy McCaughey says influential Obama health care advisor Tom Daschle believes that “seniors should be more accepting of the conditions which come with age instead of treating them.”

As for the abortion funding lie which even Rep. Wilson allowed to go unchallenged, FactCheck.org says (August 21, 2009, “Abortion:  Which Side Is Fabricating”) “… the president goes too far when he calls the statements that government would be funding abortions ‘fabrications.’” 

How slavishly is the state-run media shilling for Mr. Obama?  The Washington Post’s coverage of his address tonight not only ignored Rep. Wilson’s heckling but the story made no mention of Rep. Boustany’s official Republican response.

Another AP story on tonight’s address was headlined “Obama heckled by GOP during speech to Congress.”  It detailed various Republican interruptions of Mr. Obama’s remarks and referred to “The nastiness of August” reaching “from the nation’s town halls and into the U.S. Capitol.”  But “nastiness” may now be the only for us to cut through media censorship and be heard in opposition to Mr. Obama’s attempt to socialize medicine.  When Harvard Professor Henry Gates was shouting down Officer James Crowley, (giving rise to Mr. Obama’s stupid assertion that Officer Crowley “acted stupidly” in arresting Mr. Gates), New York Times columnist and race-baiter Bob Herbert wrote an essay titled “Anger Has Its Place.”  He said America’s reluctance to discuss racial issues (on what planet has he been living?) gives blacks the right to “rant and rave … to confront and … do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist criminal justice outrage.”  I would agree that “anger has its place” and that place is every place where our lying president lies!   

UPDATE:  Rep. Wilson has now apologized to the White House for the “inappropriate” manner in which he called the presidet a liar.  CNN.com quotes many Democrats and Republicans who condemned Rep. Wilson for being disreapectful but none is condemning Mr. Obama for lying.  That is why heckling may be the only effective way to make a point in a political climate which values etiquette over integrity.

UPDATE:  The Senate Finance Committee nogotiators now announce that they will insert enforcement language in the Senate version of the health care bill.  This will be a version of the same language Democrats repeatedly rejected when offered by Republicans before Mr. Wilson called Mr. Obama out as a liar.  The press is reporting that the White House will support these enforcement mechanisms.  There is, indeed, a place for rudeness in the public square. 

THE CENTER FOR BIO-ETHICAL REFORM CONDEMNS ASSOCIATED PRESS JOURNALISTIC HYPOCRISY

Lake Forest, CA, September 4, 2009:

The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) condemns the journalistic hypocrisy of the Associated Press (AP).  The “disturbing” photo of a U.S. Marine dying in combat is not deemed too “disturbing“ for publication because the AP believes it is in the public interest to “convey the grimness of war and the sacrifice of the young men and women fighting in it.”  The AP, however, has steadfastly refused to publish similarly disturbing photos of abortion.  They apparently believe that it is in the public interest to suppress images depicting the “grimness “ of abortion and the “sacrifices” being made by the young boys and girls who are being slaughtered for the convenience of their parents.  The AP publishes bloody photos of the war against the Taliban because they are anti-war.  They censor bloody photos of the war against the unborn because they are pro-abortion.  That is why they will publish this:

But spike this:

1st Trimester, 10 Week Abortion

Here is another related story on which I comment below:

Pictures of war can carry more moral meaning than thousands of words

The US Defence Department may disagree, but the images speak for themselves

TimesOnline

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article6828145.ece

Here are key phrases from this article on the photo of our Marine dying on the battlefield in Afghanistan which I believe have strong abortion relevance are as follows:

“Defenders of the photograph accused Mr. Gates of attempting to sanitize the conflict, by concealing the grim reality of the war at a critical political juncture.” Our adversaries constantly strive to sanitize abortion.  

“The photograph violates one of the oldest taboos, by intruding into the sacred privacy associated with the moment of death. It was published in defiance of the wishes of the dead man’s family and it raises uncomfortable questions about the dividing line between voyeurism and reportage.”  We are constantly being accused of violating privacy rights with our abortion photos privacy means nothing to anti-war activists.

“ … [T]heir [photos’] power to shape our collective consciousness is immense. Knowing this, the authorities that wage war have always sought to control the public image of warfare.”  Image control is the factor which will also determine the outcome of the abortion wars.

“This desire to control the imagery of war reflects the capacity of photography to convey the blunt truth about conflict in a way that no other art form, including the written word, can achieve.”  This is why the political left loves shocking photos when they can be used to make the public anti-war but hates them when we use them to make the public anti-abortion.

“Robert Capa’s photograph The Fallen Soldier similarly evokes the Spanish Civil War: it is irrelevant who the soldier was, and where he had fallen; nor does it matter that the photograph may have been faked, for its power lies in not in the literal evidence it offers, but the greater meaning it conveys.”  We are constantly being accused of “faking” our photos but this writer says the symbolic significance of a faked photo can redeem it despite the fact that it literally untrue.

“The picture’s power lies less in its shock value than its demand for a response:”  The element of our photos which makes everyone on all sides of this issue squirm is that these pictures demand a response.

“ … [D]aily, dirty, arbitrary violence.”  It is the terrible, random, arbitrariness of abortion which makes its violence so “dirty.”

“[H]is [picture’s] influence on history is likely to be profound and lasting.”  We are also using pictures to influence history in a profound an enduring way (as regards public opinion which dictates public policy).      

OF COURSE, NONE OF THIS MATTERS TO A PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT IN WHICH STUPIDITY AND COWARDOUS ABOUND.  IF ONLY OUR PRO-LIFE FRIENDS WERE AS BRIGHT AND BOLD AS THE ANTI-WAR CROWD.

Dear Friends,

This is what Tiller’s patients should have been shown.  It is an outrage that Dallas Morning News called it “Choosing Thomas,” as though a child is something to objectify and choose or reject at will.  This short video is the heart of God where these little ones are concerned.  It goes to the heart of why we do what we do.

Dear Mr. Pettiford,

Tell your five-year-old daughter what I told mine when she first saw an aborted baby photo:  Tell her that some parents do very bad things to their children but that she has been blessed with parents who love her and will always protect her.  Tell her that what she saw happened to a baby before the baby was born.  Tell her that it never happens to children who are already born so she has nothing to fear from this bad thing.  Tell her that violence is almost never the best solution to life’s problems and that love is always better than selfishness.  If she asks why parents would do such a terrible thing, tell her that the answer is selfishness.  She understands selfishness because you frequently warn her against it.  If she asks what you and your wife are doing to protect other people’s children from abortion, I hope you have an answer which will set the right example for her. 

If she remains upset, I hope you will derive comfort from the certain knowledge that the lives of other children were saved today by the same airplane which upset your daughter.  Had we not flown our plane today, these children would have been killed.  Think about that.  If you still believe allowing a born child to be upset is a greater evil than allowing an unborn child to be killed, we will pray for your soul.

As for our planes over middle schools, please don’t call yourself a “pro-life supporter” if you think middle school students shouldn’t be shown the truth about abortion.  I can assure you they aren’t getting that truth from their teachers or pastors or parents as a rule.  Children as young as nine-years-of-age are getting abortions today and they are getting them behind their parents backs.  The officials at that middle school can take a child straight to an abortion clinic without parental notice or consent.  I am a lawyer but don’t take my word for this.  Ask your own lawyer. 

Get used to these pictures because you are going to be seeing a lot more of them.  We will be displaying them outside churches whose members are “pro-life supporters” who are doing little or nothing to stop abortion.  These are the kinds of Christians who want the horror of abortion covered up so they aren’t bothered by the slaughter.  The problem is that we have given cities like Knoxville a pass on abortion for far too long.  We aren’t going to just focus our efforts on people who support abortion.  They are largely lost souls who have placed themselves beyond reach of reason.  We will, instead, be focusing on the people in the middle who don’t understand how bad abortion actually is.  We will also concentrate on people who oppose abortion attitudinally but not behaviorally.  We can’t stop abortion by ourselves but we do have the power to make sure it is no longer swept under the rug.

I will be praying that you will become as eager to stop Planned Parenthood as you are to stop us. 

Warmest regards,

Gregg Cunningham                             

From: ped08@comcast.net [mailto:ped08@comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 6:58 PM
To: Gregg Cunningham
Subject: Shocking

I just wanted to let you know how absolutely disgusting your ads are. I was driving down the road today and saw one of your banners being pulled behind an airplane. Thought it was a little rash and then go a phone call from my wife explaining that my 5 year old daughter had also seen the ad a couple minutes after I did when your plane flew over my house. This is rather upsetting to me. How do you explain to a 5 year old exactly what she is seeing? I am a pro-life supporter and I could only imagine what an aborted fetus looked like. Now I know by seeing that banner fly right over me while driving. I have viewed your site and have seen some of the ads that you run and have noticed that you guys spend most of your time at college campuses. But I think it is rather extreme for a plane to fly over my house which is in a nice country town right outside of Knoxville, TN boasting one of your disgusting ads. If you want to spread your words and photos with other adults that is more than okay, seeing as this is a free country. When my 5 year old is affected by your ad then you have gone too far. I will do all that I can to make sure that ads like yours are where they belong, for mature adults not for our children. I do not think that your organization has thoroughly thought through the actions that ads like these can have on young children. I was told by a handful of 13 year old kids that this same plane has flown over their middle schools the last couple of days. Is this really necessary? I think that education is the key to our youth, not scare tactics or shocking photos. I will admit that abortion has to be a gruesome and vile act but at the same time it is for mature audiences and mature audiences only.

Warmest regards,

Craig Pettiford

Dear C.,

You asked me the other day, regarding the Joker poster, if we can ever go too far in attempting to provoke outrage and as I am sure you agree, the answer is “yes.”  If we do go too far, we will lose credibility.  If we lose it with the public I would argue that it is no big deal because we don’t have much with them and exposing truth is more important than building credibility with that crowd anyway.  If we lose it with our donors, however, the results could be more dire.  But our donors have shown themselves to be made of sterner stuff.  On the other hand, if we don’t go far enough, babies will die.  Without provoking outrage, we are both invisible and irrelevant. 

It seems to me that we go too far if we make personal attacks on Mr. Obama.  Those kinds of attacks would be gratuitous and excessive and have nothing to do with any policy question fairly at issue.  Accusing him of kicking his dog and cheating on his wife or taxes are obvious examples.  Someone told me the other day that she thought we were going off track into “Randall Terry’s” domain because the Joker poster is not “realistic.”  She apparently referred to the fake blood, etc.  But I see the Joker poster as a type of political cartoon.  It dramatizes injustice and exaggerates for emphasis. I once watched a TV interview with one of my favorite political cartoonists, Steve Kelly.  He was working for the San Diego Union.  The program host asked him if fairness entered into his calculations when working on a cartoon idea.  Without missing a beat, he deadpanned, “Oh yes, if it is fair, I won’t do it!”  I laughed out loud but that will not be our philosophy at CBR.  It has to be fair and I think the Obama Joker poster is.

Heath Ledger’s character in the latest Batman movie (“Dark Knight”) is sinister and erratic.  Beneath his soothing exterior, Mr. Obama is all of that and more.  I believe he is a truly evil man.  He kills newborns without remorse and muses over whether his grandmother should have been allowed the hip replacement surgery she wanted.  I haven’t seen the Batman movie but in trying to decide if we wanted to use this caricature of Mr. Obama (and to get the makeup right once I decided to go with this approach), I watched many YouTube clips of Ledger playing the Joker.  His portrayal is disturbing for many of the reasons that Mr. Obama’s agenda is disturbing.  To put Mr. Obama into the Joker character is merely to expose his true persona.  I would argue that his natural features are the mask and the Joker makeup is his true visage.  With the essay with which we accompany our poster, we provide the context which justifies, as the level of facts and analysis, our portrayal of Mr. Obama.  Our president is much more like the malevolent Ledger character than the benign spoof who was the Joker in the 1960 TV series.

With all due respect, this isn’t Randall Terry.  This is more Michael Ramirez, my all-time favorite political cartoonist.  When you are taking a beating, as we are, you have got to take risks.  This strategy is risky because modulating conflict is always more art than science.  But the risks inherent in not taking risks are much more perilous than the risks involved when losers heave a well-considered “Hail Mary” pass.         

Dear C.,

I am always glad to get the benefit of Ken’s thinking (or that of any other lawyer) and I will look forward to his message but I can assure you that violating prohibitions against interference in business relationships requires more than intent.  It requires impermissible behavior.  I can intend to prevent customers from entering the Safeway store but if all I am doing to stop them is stand in the parking lot and pray silent, imprecatory prayers, I am not violating the law because prayer is not unlawful (yet).  On the other hand, if I tackle customers and hog-tie them and drag them back to their cars, I could be arrested.  The same is true with holding a sign.  My right to display a sign is constitutionally protected, even if my intent is to prevent customers from entering the store. 

Not all “turmoil” is against the law.  Attacking people physically is unlawful “turmoil” but inciting passersby to even unlawful “turmoil” is not unlawful if our only act of incitement is the peaceful display of abortion pictures.  Our incitement would not be unlawful unless, for instance, we blocked the entrance or threatened customers or our signs contained “fighting words.”  In our case, if we really wanted to be cautious, we could merely warn businesses that our lawful display of lawful signs tends to case unlawful “turmoil” without intending that our lawful display of lawful signs cause that unlawful “turmoil.”  The fact that we are aware of the probability that our lawful behavior is likely to incite an unlawful reaction (praying silently on the sidewalk outside an gay, atheist anarchists’ convention could get you punched in the face) doesn’t make our prayer unlawful.  Even the fact that we want to get punched in the face doesn’t, in and of itself, make or prayer unlawful.

There is an enormous body of labor law, for example, which permits striking workers to hold signs outside of businesses for the express purpose of discouraging patronage.  Those signs may permissibly say “SAFEWAY UNFAIR TO WORKERS” but they may not falsely accuse Safeway of selling products tainted with botulism toxin or e-coli bacteria.  That would be an impermissible interference in business relationships.  It is not against the law for us to accurately inform customers that the owners of a business or the property on which a business is being conducted are tolerating or contributing to the performance of abortions and showing them what abortions look like.  It is not against the law for us to encourage customers to go elsewhere.  We can even do this on the private property of a mall if we confine our activity to the immediate vicinity of the offending store.  It is not against the law for us to pray (a constitutionally protected activity) that our photos will cause even unlawful “turmoil” in the parking lot or on the streets or even in the store.  If the “turmoil” we incite by engaging in is lawful behavior is unlawful, the culpability belongs to the people engaging in unlawful “turmoil” and to hold us accountable for the behavior of passersby it would be to confer on the passersby a classic “hecklers veto.” 

It would be against the law for us use painfully amplified bull-horns which create “turmoil” by deafening customers etc.  But it would be the sound laws which would be violated, not the content of the amplified speech or the purpose in speaking.  My point is that we can’t violate the law by intending to interfere in business relationships if the interference is not unlawful apart from our intent.  It would LOVE to litigate that issue if anyone were dumb enough to arrest us or sue us.  But if Ken’s point is that we want to make sure we know applicable state statutes and local ordinances, of course I agree.  But if those laws purport to prohibit the holding of an abortion photo sign in the parking lot of a business involved in abortion, directly or indirectly, those laws would be unconstitutional either on their face or at least as applied and we would challenge them if they were enforced against us.       

Lord bless,

Gregg Cunningham                              

Thanks for the encouragement Lila.  I am thankful that you continue to move in the right direction strategically.  I response to your question, these HumanLife.org people are quintessentially typical of the pro-life movement; nice, well-intentioned people who think they have to be popular to be effective.  The fatal flaw in their tactic is that they rely for their very existence upon the good will of pro-abortion campus newspaper editors.  If they tick off the editors, they won’t run the pro-life tabloid insert.  When you give rights of censorship to people who hate you, your project gets designed around what your adversaries will tolerate, not what will change hearts and save lives.  Our adversaries won’t tolerate the truth about abortion so HumanLife.org must cover up that truth if they are going to get their insert stuffed. 

Every image and word of text CBR publishes is carefully designed to expose, not cover up, the truth about abortion.  We establish the humanity of the unborn child and the inhumanity of his slaughter.  Every delivery medium we use communicate those images and text (the web, our trucks, our planes, our static sign displays, etc.) is carefully designed to be unstoppable.  We give rights of censorship to no one.  Instead of trying to avoid conflict, as most pro-life groups do, we go out of our way to provoke conflict, because first of all, we want to polarize the public to drive the broad mass of Americans out of the middle.  Secondly, conflict forces the news media to engage.  When we published our ObamaCare Joker poster as a press release, 5000 news organizations roundly ignored it.  When we put it on the side of a truck and drive it around a middle school as the students are arriving, we will get so many people so angry that we will generate newspaper, TV and radio news coverage for a week.  Everyone will be saying two things:  CBR is terrible and the pictures are terrible.  We are only too glad to let people think we are terrible if it also convinces them that abortion is terrible.  The difference between being ignored and dominating several consecutive news cycles is conflict.  It is parents and teachers administrators infuriated that we are making it much more difficult for them to lie to children about what abortion is and does.

One very good way to gage the relative effectiveness of our GAP signs versus HumanLife.org’s newspaper inserts is how many times and with what ferocity do the newspapers get trashed before they can be delivered, versus the intensity and frequency of the attacks on our GAP projects.  The inserts cause less anger because they are so much less threatening to the other side.  The newspaper inserts express the opinion that abortion is not a good choice.  Our GAP signs prove the fact that abortion is an act of violence which kills a baby.  That is VERY threatening to the other side and they know it and they act accordingly.  I would be very nervous about any project which provoked relatively little anger from the pro-aborts and public.

Gregg Cunningham

Maryann the Obama administration is filled with people just like this John Holdren (science czar) guy who have said and done outrageous things earlier in their careers and now offer lame excuses for which the press gives them a pass.  It doesn’t matter whether it is this scientist who says he can’t fairly be held accountable for his book which considers (without condemning) forced abortion, etc. because it was just an academic treatise and it was thirty years ago and he had two coauthors.  Well if it was his coauthors who seemed to have no problem with forced abortion and not he, why didn’t he say so in the book?  Why didn’t he say so after the book was published.  If he believed in forced abortion then but changed his mind later, why did he wait until he wanted a senior government job to announce that fact?  This is like Tim Guitner getting a pass as IRS chief when he has cheated on his taxes and Sonya Sotomayor getting a pass as Supreme Court nominee when she has repeatedly made racist remarks.  It is like senior White House health care advisor Ezekiel Emanuel postulating denial of care to patients with dementia in article in which he qualified those remarks by saying he didn’t “fully” support such a policy.  Radical liberals don’t care about truth.  They don’t care about preserving the integrity of our institutions.  They care about power. They will do whatever they need to do to get it and use it to achieve their autocratic goals.  And the state-owned, state-run news media will run interference and carry water for them.  There is a very disturbing pattern here.  I fear we are witnessing the end of a once great nation.    

Gregg Cunningham                             

Dear Ms. Maddow,

You recently remarked on Meet The Press that you don’t think Mr. Obama has done anything which fairly invites a comparison between his administration and National Socialism. I suppose if you reject the proposition that abortion is genocide, you have a point. But many millions of Americans accept that notion and they have every right to express that point of view, even if they do it rudely. Is our discourse becoming coarsened? Sure. But torturing babies to death is also pretty coarse.

Anyone who walks a video camera around a Netroots convention can film the occasional nut-job advocating war crimes trials for global warming deniers or kangaroo courts in which to prosecute the “treasonous” acts (a capital offense) of Bush and Cheney. Those are threats of violence of a different sort. I have seen the conservative crowds at town meetings and they are no more likely to shout down a congressman than pro-aborts are inclined to heckle a pro-life speaker (which I have observed first-hand, many, many times). At least conservatives aren’t beating people up like the violent, union thugs deployed to eject them. The left venerates disruptors when they are liberal and castigates them when they aren’t. But when the political deck is as heavily stacked as it is today against conservatives, they have to shout to be heard. And sometimes it takes a provocative sign to be the loudest voice in the room. You will be seeing a lot more of these in the months to come.

Regards,

Gregg Cunningham

Dear Mr. U,

Thank you for taking the time to read our press release and comment. Because you do not cite a single specific example to substantiate your claim that we are misrepresenting ObamaCare, I can only assume that you did not read the essay (www.abortionno.org/pdf/ObamaCareEssay.pdf) described in the press release. Every representation we make in the essay (no, it isn’t a parable) is documented with detailed quotes which we reference with cites to the original sources. Much of the essay analyzes direct quotes from Mr. Obama and his senior officials. Impugning our mental health is no substitute for a reasoned dialogue, Mr. Uicker. Even if we are crazy, Mr. Obama is still not telling the turth, as our essay conclusively proves. Don’t take my word for that fact. Read the essay. Then once you have your facts straight, please feel free to write again. By the way, I thank God I am not in need of mental health treatment, because at my age, if ObamaCare were to become law, I might end up in front of one of some rationing board (a.k.a. Sarah Palin’s “death panels”).

Lord bless,

Gregg Cunningham

From: Bill U
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 11:25 PM
To: Gregg Cunningham
Subject: Article on New Obama-Joker Poster as Outrageous as Obama-Care

I just read the article at this address: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/1318011251.html

I suppose, from the heading that this article is the sentiments of Mark Harrington at the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform.  The article also is apparently at least partly written by Gregg Cunningham.  As such, I don’t know to which gentleman to address this.  Please share this email with either responsible party.

I think whoever wrote this is sick and needs help.  There is ample information available from official and reputable sources that what you claim in this article is false.  In fact, there is such evidence available to infer that if you are capable of reading an email or writing a sentence, you must know these claims are inaccurate.  One can only deduce that whoever wrote this article or hosted it on a website is maliciously propagating lies.  The nature of these lies (e.g. “Obamacare” - which itself doesn’t exist, I figure you must mean HR3200 - defines abortion as “essential care”,  or Obamacare promotes euthanasia) are so twisted and contrived, that I don’t think the author has a grasp of reality.  I think this person needs some kind of mental health assistance or an intervention of some kind.

Strangely, this website is represented as somehow Christian.  Are the hosts doing some kind of representation of how to help the mentally ill - some kind of performance art or parable?

Please explain this shocking web site.

Thanks,
Bill U

Dear C.,

You asked me the other day, regarding the Joker poster, if we can ever go too far in attempting to provoke outrage and as I am sure you agree, the answer is “yes.” If we do go too far, we will lose credibility. If we lose it with the public I would argue that it is no big deal because we don’t have much with them and exposing truth is more important than building credibility with that crowd anyway. If we lose it with our donors, however, the results could be more dire. But our donors have shown themselves to be made of sterner stuff. On the other hand, if we don’t go far enough, babies will die. Without provoking outrage, we are both invisible and irrelevant.

It seems to me that we go too far if we make personal attacks on Mr. Obama. Those kinds of attacks would be gratuitous and excessive and have nothing to do with any policy question fairly at issue. Accusing him of kicking his dog and cheating on his wife or taxes are obvious examples. Someone told me the other day that she thought we were going off track into “Randall Terry’s” domain because the Joker poster is not “realistic.” She apparently referred to the fake blood, etc. But I see the Joker poster as a type of political cartoon. It exaggerates for emphasis. I once watched a TV interview with one of my favorite political cartoonists, Steve Kelly. He was working for the San Diego Union. The program host asked him if fairness entered into his calculations when working on a cartoon idea. Without missing a beat, he deadpanned, “Oh yes, if it is fair, I won’t do it!” I laughed out loud but that will not be our philosophy at CBR. It has to be fair and I think the Obama Joker poster is.

Heath Ledger’s character in the latest Batman movie (“Dark Knight”) is sinister and erratic. Beneath his soothing exterior, Mr. Obama is all of that and more. I believe he is a truly evil man. He kills newborns without remorse and muses over whether his grandmother should have been allowed the hip replacement surgery she wanted. I haven’t seen the Batman movie but in trying to decide if we wanted to use this caricature of Mr. Obama (and to get the makeup right once I decided to go with this approach), I watched many YouTube clips of Ledger playing the Joker. His portrayal is disturbing for many of the reasons that Mr. Obama’s agenda is disturbing. To put Mr. Obama into the Joker character is merely to expose his true persona. I would argue that his natural features are the mask and the Joker makeup is his true visage. With the essay with which we accompany our poster, we provide the context which justifies, as the level of facts and analysis, our portrayal of Mr. Obama. Our president is much more like the malevolent Ledger character than the benign spoof who was the Joker in the 1960 TV series.

With all due respect, this isn’t Randall Terry. This is more Michael Ramirez, my all-time favorite political cartoonist. The Obama/Joker poster which is being plastered up as grafitti around Los Angeles was still making news in LA Times and on Drudge as recently as today.  We need to catch that wave of media attention and ride it with our much more professional version of Mr. Obama as the Joker. When you are taking a beating, as we are, you have got to take risks. This strategy is risky because modulating conflict is always more art than science. But the risks inherent in not taking risks are much more perilous than the risks involved when losers heave a well-considered “Hail Mary” pass.

Gregg Cunningham

PRESS RELEASE

August 17, 2009

The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform

Contact: Mark Harrington

P.O. Box 219

Lake Forest, CA 92609

Office Phone, 614-759-5195

Cell Phone, 614-419-9000

www.abortionNO.org

info@cbrinfo.org

NEW OBAMA-JOKER POSTER AS OUTRAGEOUS AS OBAMA-CARE

Senior White House advisor David Axelrod spam-blasted a “viral” email Thursday, August 13, 2009, intended to “debunk” what he called the health care reform “lies and distortions” which are currently “flying unchecked under the radar.” The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR) announced today that it is responding with its own email reply campaign, intended to debunk the lies and distortions contained in Mr. Axelrod’s email message.

The following statement was issued by CBR director Gregg Cunningham:

Americans don’t want to pay for mandatory insurance which defines baby-killing as “essential care.” They are turning against “‘end-of-life” counseling which is more coercive than consultative. It is becoming increasingly clear that this horrifying plan is designed to reduce the numbers of preborn children who could ruin their parents’ careers and the numbers of elderly parents who might spoil their children’s retirements.

CBR will urge every recipient of the CBR Obama-Care email to also read the short Obama-Care analysis at http://www.abortionno.org/pdf/ObamaCareEssay.pdf. CBR will also encourage recipients to forward this message to their entire email list, as David Axelrod is encouraging be done with his White House message. CBR is additionally working to persuade every opponent of Obama-Care to forward this email message, with the Joker image, to the address, flag@whitehouse.gov. This address was established by the White House to enable snitches to inform on fellow Americans who are expressing “fishy” opposition to this dangerous and disingenuous plan. CBR believes that the “fishiest” aspect of the health care reform debate is the dishonesty with which Mr. Obama and his socialist friends are trying to ram it down the throats of the American people.

The website www.abortionNO.org provides important information on health care policy, including the analysis at http://www.abortionno.org/pdf/ObamaCareEssay.pdf, which exposes the scurrilous deceptions being practiced by Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats. The far left’s campaign to hijack the nation’s health care system is diabolically clever. Mr. Obama is the increasingly scary pitchman whose game is “hide the ball.” He diverts attention from the malfeasance of congressional co-conspirators who draft abortion and euthanasia bills which carefully avoid trigger words such as words “abortion” and “euthanasia.” These Culture-of-Death lawmakers quietly confer on unelected bureaucrats the authority to later broaden abortion access and ration elder care (amounting to constructive euthanasia). All-the-while, the state-run media parrots White House talking points and Democrat Members of Congress hide from constituents whose patriotism and virtue they question when any dare resist.

On June 29, 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported (“Obama’s Health Future”) a conversation Mr. Obama had at an ABC-televised “town hall meeting.” He was speaking with the daughter of a 105-year-old woman who had initially been denied a pacemaker five years ago but successfully fought the denial. The device succeeded in giving her five more years of life. The daughter asked Mr. Obama if his plan would consider the “spirit” of a patient in making funding decisions for treatment and the president pointedly refused to say “yes.” In a mildly scolding tone, he lectured that “…at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but asking for the painkiller.”

In the United States, a pacemaker costs about $40,000. Approximately 100,000 patients receive them each year. The total cost of their treatment amounts to some $4 billion. That sounds like lot of money but it is actually less than Americans spend annually on chewing gum ($5 billion). Can we really not afford to give a pacemaker to a spirited senior citizen? In recent years, Americans have spent, per annum, $24 billion on DVDs, $28 billion on candy, $36 billion on tobacco products, $40 billion on coffee, $52 billion on pets, $91 billion on gambling, $93 billion on non-alcoholic beverages, $100 billion on alcoholic beverages, $183 billion on consumer electronics, $390 billion on restaurants, and $457 billion celebrating Christmas. One trillion is a thousand billion, so these discretionary acquisitions have cost us, in the aggregate, about $1.5 trillion per year. That is almost exactly the amount the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Mr. Obama’s health reform package would cost over ten years. It is approximately two-thirds the $2.3 trillion we spend on health care each year and that list doesn’t include sporting goods or vacation travel or countless other non-essentials on which Americans spend hundreds of billions of additional dollars.

The idea that we are so improvised that we must give pain pills to elderly Americans who need pacemakers is absurd.

The Democrat National Committee claims that if we do nothing about health care, insurance premiums will rise faster than paychecks, insurance companies will dictate treatment, insurance company profits will soar as they deny coverage, and insurance companies will require copayments and out-of-pocket expenses which will become increasingly unaffordable. But giving us a choice between doing nothing and doing Obama-Care is a false dilemma of the worst sort.

Real health care reform would amend medical malpractice tort laws to ban junk lawsuits. It would enact prohibitions against insurance exclusions based on pre-existing conditions. It would require portability of health insurance for people changing jobs. It would create a coherent system of electronic prescriptions and records. It would pay doctors based on performance instead of the numbers of procedures they perform. It would revise the tax-code to enable Americans to economically purchase insurance as individuals. And it would increase competition by allowing the marketing of health insurance coverage across state lines. These reforms would improve every aspect of health care, without the government taking control of every aspect of our lives. But that is exactly why Mr. Obama and his left-wing allies oppose reform which empowers patients instead of politicians.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that Mr. Obama’s dangerous experiment with America’s health care system will increase costs by $1.6 TRILLION over the next ten years. Two senior White House economic advisers recently let the cat out to the bag and disclosed the already obvious fact that Mr. Obama will raise taxes on every American now living and millions still unborn (if his plan doesn’t abort them first) to pay for this boondoggle. Americans can stop this scandal if they read the PDF on the CBR website and send it to their friends and family. It will also send a message to Mr. Obama if opponents of Obama-Care send this email message to the State Security thugs at flag@whitehouse.gov.

This battle isn’t going to end with the defeat of the current range of health care “reform” bills. The dreadful people promoting these frightening initiatives will be back. They understand the power of incrementalism. Problematic provisions such as those relating to end-of-life issues may be modified but if so, the new language is probably going to be deceptive and these provisions are likely to remain troubling because of the utilitarian bias of the bureaucrats who will administer the legislation. Where such language is removed altogether, look for it to pop back up from another committee or floor amendment or conference committee or administrative regulation. This is a struggle between good and evil and it will never end.

Here is an email message I just sent in answer to a friend’s question about whether pro-life Christians should lead a tax revolt against the excesses of the Obama Administration: 

Dear Eric,

By my lights, this question of whether pro-life Christians have an obligation to lead a tax revolt against the horrifying corruption of the Obama Administration is easily answered:  You are asking, in good faith, the question the chief priests and scribes asked Jesus, in bad faith, in Luke 20:22:  “Is it lawful for us to give tribute [pay taxes] unto Caesar?”  Christ, of course, held up a Roman coin bearing Caesar’s likeness and answered that money which belonged to Caesar should be given to Caesar.  Mr. Obama’s money doesn’t bear his image, but it is surely his since he is printing vast numbers of dollars which are bogus monetary instruments of his own fraudulent creation.  

As you are no doubt aware, the “Caesar” to whom Christ referred was Tiberius and he was a cruel man who presided over a barbaric, pagan empire.  The payment of Roman taxes subsidized a legal system which permitted infanticide that was widely practiced and universally accepted.  Slavery was rampant and the slaves were often terribly abused.  Women were frequently abducted from conquered lands for sexual exploitation and the populations from which they were taken were brutally plundered by confiscatory taxation.  Sexual debauchery was normative behavior.  Political assassinations, imprisonments and torture were routine.  Gladiators slaughtered one another for sport before huge, cheering, arena crowds.  I could go on but you get my point.  Obama may be as bad as Tiberius but he is certainly no worse.  And if Our Lord disapproved of tax revolts against Rome’s atrocities, I imagine he would disapprove of tax revolts against Washington’s.

This makes sense to me because there is little I could do to save babies from federal prison.

I am sometimes asked if I think Mr. Obama is the anti-Christ and I really don’t.  But Satan mocks God at every turn and in that sense, Mr. Obama could be the anti-John the Baptist.  Isaiah prophesied concerning John in Isaiah 40:3, when he said, “He is a voice shouting in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming!’”  The more I learn of Mr. Obama, the more plausible it seems that he could have been sent to prepare a pathway for the coming of the anti-Christ.

Dear Mr. Fordham,

Thank you for taking the time to write.  With all due respect, you are fulfilling the prophesy written by Isaiah in 5:20 when he said “Woe to those who call … good evil, who turn… light into darkness….”  Killing babies is evil, showing them is good.  Please visit our website to read the enormous numbers of testimonials from people whose minds were changed concerning abortion after seeing our abortion photos.  And by the way, you criticize our work for being inconsistent with scripture but you don’t cite one single verse to support that claim.

You ask if we would display a photo of a murdered three-year-old?  Of course not.  Killing three-year-olds is already against the law.  Abortion is legal and we need to convince voters that an embryo is every bit as entitled to rights of personhood as they already know that three-year-old to be.  Many won’t believe that unit they see our photos.  They also need to be convinced that abortion is an evil on the same order of magnitude as killing a three-year-old.  Many won’t believe that until they see it with their own eyes.

You say these photos should only be available to see on our website but most of the people who need to see them never go to our website.  So we must take the photos to them.  You express concern about born children seeing these pictures.  Disturbing pictures of all kinds are seen by children every day in this country.  Even parents who don’t allow their children to watch violence on television (as in violent cartoons, etc.) or play violent video games, often take them to the grocery store where check-out lines are flanked with magazine racks whose publications have cover photos which are inches away from young faces and often exhibit bloody photos of dead and dying victims of violence, terrorism, natural disasters, etc.  Angry parents are in massive denial about this and almost always dispute these facts, so we have put up scores of examples on our website under “PUBLIC EDUCATION PROJECTS” and then “USING GRAPHIC IMAGES IN PUBLIC.”  Some of those magazine covers and newspaper photos are as gruesome as anything we use and they have been seen by countless children whose clueless parents never even noticed.  They reason they complain about our disturbing photos but not the disturbing press photos is because many feel a lot more guilt answering their children’s questions about abortion, with which they may well have some humiliating personal experience, than a terror attack for which they bear no responsibility at all.

As noted above, we have had countless women tell us that nothing less shocking than our abortion photos would have sufficed to dissuade them from killing their children.  Many more have told us that had they seen these photos before aborting instead of after, they wouldn’t have done it.  Large numbers have confided that it took the photos to force them to stop trying to justify a sin needed to confess and of which they needed to repent.  And virtually every person I have ever met in serious pro-life activism had admitted that it was pictures which made it impossible for them to remain complacent.

The lives of other children were saved the day the girl you saw was upset by our pictures.  Had we not displayed our pictures that day, these children would have been killed.  Think about that.  Little girls as young as eight and nine-years-old can become pregnant and be rushed to abortion clinics without having any idea what is about to be done to the baby they are carrying.  In many Islamic countries, little girls who are raped are then murdered by family members in “honor killings,” to spare born people emotional trauma.  In America, we kill the children of rape victims for the same reason.  If killing the mother is barbaric, how can killing the baby be any less so?  Why are we punishing victims instead of perpetrators?  If you still believe allowing a born child to be upset is a greater evil than allowing an unborn child to be killed, we will pray for your soul.

Then you essentially ask “Would Jesus use bloody pictures to make His point?”  Jesus controlled every aspect of his arrest, trial and execution.  He arranged to have Himself beaten nearly to death before stumbling through the most crowed part of Jerusalem on the most crowded day of the year.  His bloody body horrified throngs of Passover pilgrims which included large numbers of families with young children.

He then permitted himself to be stripped naked and tortured to death in full view of still more passersby, including more children.  The Romans used executions to intimidate subjugated peoples.  They located crucifixion cites for maximum public exposure.  Our Lord accommodated Cesar by going out of His way to make this disturbing spectacle of His death as public as possible.  And in the process, He chose as the very symbol of our faith, a bloody instrument of torture.  His point was to disturb us with the gravity of our sin but bless us with the grace of His forgiveness, despite the fact that many children would be traumatized in the process.  Did He get this wrong?

The press uses disturbing photos to expose injustice and it is seldom outlawed until they do.  But the press won’t show the horror of abortion.  So we show it for them.  If the First Amendment allows them to do it, why should be be held to a different standard.  Disturbing photos are what got child labor abuses outlawer.  They are what got racial injustice outlawed.  Who should have the power to censor the press in publishing and broadcasting disturbing images?  What should the standards be?  If we applied your standards, black people would still be beaten to their knees for trying to register to vote.

You challenge us to give you a Biblical basis for showing abortion photos:  Try Ephesians 5:11, “Expose the deeds of darkness!”

Gregg Cunningham

From: Fordham
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 3:41 PM
To: Gregg Cunningham
Subject: ‘Choice’ truck

Hello,

I realize that for the most part this will fall on deaf ears since organizations like yours don’t care for negative feedback in any way.  On my way home from work I was accosted by images on one of your anti-abortion trucks.  I’m sure that there is a part of you that believes somehow that you are fulfilling the Lord’s work in this way and I just simply do not agree.  As someone who not only grew up in the church, but studied the Bible to great extent, I see no passage, no verse that leads me to believe that this is in any way falls in line with the teachings of Christ.  If you want to use biblical passages on your web site to further your cause, I suggest you follow the bible and the teachings of Christ to the letter.  Otherwise, take the verses off.  If you are not going to be an example of the love and compassion Christ gave to people, despite their morals, sin or lifestyle, then DO NOT associate yourself with Him.
I do not think that plastering images of aborted fetus’ and displaying them in public is morally correct.  It’s one thing to have them on your web site where people can choose to view them, but to allow little children, who are innocently walking along the street, to be forced to consider things that are beyond their age is inappropriate.  Who are you to force yourself upon our innocents in such a way?  And yes, there was a young girl walking directly ahead of me while your truck drove by.
Also, if you believe that these fetus are children then why are you displaying their mangled and bloodied bodies in the first place.  These are somebody’s children and you are unabashedly exploiting them.  Would you post pictures of the mutilated body of a kidnapped and murdered 3 year old in order to stop kidnapping?  Probably not, but tell me what the difference is? 
It is unfortunate that in most cases, the women who abort their babies need tolerance, love and compassion and you are perpetuating an atmosphere of anger, hatred and violence.  Abortion is one aspect of our ever increasingly morally ambiguous world.  What we need more than ever is people who are committed to rising above and being an example of something brighter and better.  If you are not doing that, then in some ways, you are no better than those who you are trying to harm.

Sincerely

Dear AP,

Thank you for taking the time to write, but with all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about.  Please go to our website and read the many, many testimonials from people whose minds were changed by seeing the horror of abortion which churches have been covering-up for decades.  They are just the tip of the iceberg.  We have never, ever, received a note from someone who told us that they would have never gotten an abortion until they saw our photos.  No one has ever said that the sickening horror of the images convinced them to rush out and kill their baby.  But enormous numbers of women have told us that without our photos their baby would be dead.  Enormous numbers have told us that had they seen our photos before, instead of after they killed their baby, they wouldn’t have done it.

Would you dare tell Jews who show Holocaust imagery that they are showing disrespect for dead Jews?  That would be idiotic and insulting.  Shocking pictures are the best way to make the Holocaust real and dramatize the evil it represents.  The same is true with abortion.  If you think God would have us show respect for the dead at the expense of saving the lives of the living, you are very confused spiritually.

For the record, the pastor in front of whose church we are displaying abortion photos is not telling the truth about why we are there but the simple truth is that we are no longer going to give pastors a veto over the imperative of exposing abortion.  If he won’t show his congregation the truth, we will.  Babies are dying because he and countless other pastors are withholding the truth about abortion – the truth which can’t be told with words alone.  We have a First Amendment right to hold up these signs on any street corner in America.  We waited far too long to engage Christians on this issue.  No more.  We are going to pray alright:  But we are going to pray for you.  You say you oppose abortion.  What are you doing to stop it?  If little or nothing, I think I prefer our way to yours.

Lord bless,

Gregg Cunningham                            
The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform

From: AP
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 10:06 PM
To: Gregg Cunningham
Subject: Your Organization’s Tactics

I have recently seen a Suburban being driven around Salem, Oregon, displaying graphic pictures of aborted fetuses.  I find it ironic that a group that purports to reverence human life would show such a lack of respect for the deceased.  I do not support abortion.  I believe a life is ended when an abortion is performed, and I believe the life that has been ended should be respected enough that the murdered child’s body is not displayed in such a disgusting fashion on the side of a vehicle or on picket signs.

If it is true that your group is picketing Salem Heights Church because the pastor refused to allow your group to make a presentation to the church, you should be ashamed of yourselves.  What a disrespectful way to make a point.  Attempting to hijack the pulpits of Salem to promote your disgustingly expressed, if well intentioned, agenda probably isn’t the best way to win the Christian community to your cause.  If I have been misinformed on the reason your protesters have camped out near the church for the past two Sundays, I apologize in advance.

Please prayerfully reconsider your literature and advertising.  While shock tactics are effective in getting people’s attention, they do not always have the desired effect.

AP

Dear Andrew (our U.K. regional director),

This little Brit teenager (see web survey below) has just seen the abortion video on our website and is devastated.  has obviously had an abortion over which she feels excruciating guilt. We have just diminished her ability to manage that guilt by rationalizing her “choice.” She says she had “a reason” for her abortion which makes the termination other than “monstrous.” That is an odd word choice unless she now feels like a monster. She says if we weren’t “idiots” who have never been pregnant we might understand her plight. She doesn’t realize that we know many women who have killed the babies they conceived in unplanned pregnancies and they bitterly regret it. She is careful, however, to not state her compelling “reason” for killing her child. She knows full well that her “reason” won’t stand against the horror of our abortion video. She can only justify what she has done if she can dismiss that video as depicting an abortion which wasn’t “legal.” If our video depicts her abortion, she is without defense and she as much as admits this. But if the video abortion wasn’t “legal,” why does she admit that it makes her “feel bad” by demanding that we “stop making people feel bad?” Since she leaves no email address, we can only pray for her but she represents the target audience for our signs, which you are showing all over England. When people try to stop you, remember this sad, little girl. I know I will.

Lord bless,

Gregg Cunningham

—–Original Message—–

Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 4:49 PM

From:  CBR Web Surveys

To: CBR Web Surveys Group

Sex: female Age: 16

Hometown: london

Return Email: fuckyou@hotmail.youmum

1) Do you support legal abortion or oppose legal abortion? Support Legal Abortion

2) Has this website influenced your thinking concerning abortion? “no”

– If so, how? It has not i just want to say that you people make me sick. It is womens right to her body you pricks and if she chooses to have an abortion it is for a reason. It is not monsterous . Try being in a pregnant situation yourself you idiots. Stop trying to make people feel bad. That video was obviously not a legal abortion.

3) Had you ever seen abortion images before? “no”

– If so, where?

4) How much thought have you given to abortion? “moderate”

5) How much time have you spent at this website? “0-10″

6) How did you find this website? A answer from yahoo

As the world now knows, Walter Cronkite died today.  I spent three days working with the legendary newsman at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, in the summer of 1987.  I was an Air Force Reserve officer, on temporary duty at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Political/Military Affairs Division) and had been assigned to provide staff support for the war game which the JCS conducted with the Commanders-in-Chief of the major military commands that year.  Mr. Cronkite was a media advisor to Department of Defense officials during the exercise. 

In addition to testing the effectiveness of military strategies and tactics in a difficult war-fighting scenario, the exercise involves prominent journalists and former government officials who consult with the Defense Department to assess the ways in which press coverage of a similar military action might influence the public’s reaction to the conflict and by implication, alter national security policy.  The simulated engagement is designed to ensure that everything which can go wrong, does go wrong, with the U.S. invariably losing the war.  A hopeless scenario isn’t much fun but may be the best way to learn what will and won’t work.         

My very modest role in this important event was to serve as the military liaison to Mr. Cronkite and other members of the panel.  Despite his towering stature, I was prepared to dislike him.  Tonight’s obituaries praise him for the evenhandedness with which he reported the news but I vividly recall my irritation at the bias which seemed so evident as I watched him anchor the CBS Evening News.

I would often grind my teeth during my 1968-69 tour in Vietnam as Mr. Cronkite told Americans that the war in which my friends and I were risking our lives was a terrible mistake and a lost cause.  It does not boost troop morale when “The Most Trusted Man In America” is telling the nation that their war is utter folly.  I disagreed with him then and do now but for three long days in the summer of 1987, I must admit that he impressed me with his humanity, his humility and his clarity of thought.  I abhorred his politics but found myself admiring him both personally and professionally.

His manner was business-like but he occasionally revealed a subtle, clever sense of humor.  I later read a story he apparently liked to tell about his elderly mother, Helen, who died in 1993 at the age of 101. “Well into her ’90s, Mrs. Cronkite was said to have dated like a schoolgirl and danced her way to happiness. Once, Walter called to ask how she was, and she replied, ‘Oh, I had the best time dancing last night. But I had to keep slapping my date.’ Dumb struck, Walter asked, ‘Was he getting fresh?’  ‘Oh, no,’ Helen Cronkite said, ‘he’s old. He kept passing out; I had to keep reviving him.’”

But it wasn’t just his sociability which made him so difficult to dislike.  Even in Vietnam I also had to concede that he was a man of admirable courage.  I recall his stand-ups being delivered from dangerously near serious firefights.  I didn’t know then that this was not his first war.  He had also covered the Normandy Invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, some of the bloodiest engagements of World War II.  I have read quotes from combat GIs expressing respect for Mr. Cronkite’s willingness to follow them into the thick of the fighting. 

Also serving on our panel was Elliot Richardson, the only American to ever hold four presidential cabinet posts:  Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and Secretary of Commerce.  Secretary Richardson was among the first Army troops to land under fire on Utah Beach, at Normandy, on D-Day.  He wasn’t reporting on the landing, he was fighting in it, and heroically at that.  But on this panel, Walter Cronkite’s celebrity eclipsed even luminaries of Secretary Richardson’s prominence.

Yet Mr. Cronkite was a man of striking contradictions.  Liberals call that “complexity.”  Conservatives call it confusion.  Though he was a functional pacifist in his opposition to military involvement in Southeast Asia and Iraq, no one could fairly question his valor.  Notwithstanding his support for ratification of the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty (a flawed, world government measure which would have eroded American sovereignty), it would not have been reasonable to doubt his patriotism.  He described himself as “a person of faith” and added that “I work very hard at being a Christian” but he made this profession of belief in a letter attacking the religious right on behalf of an organization (The Interfaith Alliance) whose members included atheists and agnostics.  An angry attempt to silence Christian conservatives is a curious (but not uncommon) First Amendment philosophy for a journalist to whom freedom of speech should have been sacred.  He was a lifelong Episcopalian who once considered entering the ministry but he didn’t think the religious left should also be pushed out of the public square.  A website which tracks political contributions lists him as a generous donor to the NARAL Pro-Choice American PAC.

Vietnam veterans were sometimes denounced as “baby-killers” by the anti-war activists whose cause Mr. Cronkite championed but ironically, his support for abortion rights may have killed more babies than all the errant napalm strikes ever dropped in the war he so detested. 

Walter Cronkite was a man who was universally revered by much of the Western World but in terms of public policy, he was the enemy of nearly all that I hold dear.  He was dangerous precisely because his likability blinded so many Americans to the flaws in his misguided political philosophy.  He recalls to mind our current president, who imperils the nation in very much the same way.  Liberals complain that Ronald Reagan’s personal charm endeared him to swing voters whose political interests he consistently betrayed.  They have a point about his charm if not his policies.  But liberal or conservative, we should all be frightened by the percentage of the population which follows leaders whose emotional appeal trumps every other consideration.

I pray that Mr. Cronkite ultimately did find faith in Jesus and that tonight he rests in peace.     

Today, at least three protestors disrupted the Sotomayor confirmation hearings by shouting out references to the invisible elephant in the hearing room:  Abortion.  I say bravo!  It is important that we remind the American people that Judge Sotomayor is a baby-killer.  Bellowing that fact is consistent with the tactics of the abolitionists who would follow bounty hunters (chasing fugitive slaves) into restaurants and loudly announce the presence of these slave catchers, urging the owners and patrons of the restaurant to have nothing to do with them.  I supported this disruptive tactic during Mr. Obama’s delivery of the commencement address at Notre Dame and I support it at the Sotomayor hearings.  It is civil disobedience of the most commendable sort.  Someone has to say it and if we wait for Lindsey Graham, Ms. Sotomayor may be allowed to get away with finessing the abortion elephant.  We can’t stop her but we can make certain that she and her fellow travelers feel the sting of public censure.