The Problem Of Born Children Seeing Photos Of Aborted Unborn Children
Why is CBR accused of insensitivity when children inadvertently see the aborted baby imagery we display in public – but society merely shrugs when those same children see bloody news photos depicting war, terror, crime and natural disasters? One possibility may be that combat photos don’t generally make parents feel the personal guilt which abortion photos often elicit. Parents who have been complicit in their own abortions, or complacent about other people’s abortions, generally don’t want their children to ask them awkward questions about the issue.
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 grocery stores where check-out lines are flanked with magazine racks whose publications have cover photos which are inches away from young faces. These periodicals often exhibit bloody photos of dead and dying victims of violence. Parents are often oblivious to these horrors (or in massive denial about them) and almost always underestimate the trauma these offers inflict on children. So, so we have put up scores of examples at the bottom of this post. See for yourself. 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 seldom even noticed.
In actuality, we do more to shield very small children from disturbing imagery than the press has ever done. Whenever possible, for instance, we post parental warning signs along avenues of approach to the locations at which we are picketing with abortion photo signs. Our abortion photo signs protect unborn children and our warning signs protect born children. But we reject attempts to impose on us an obligation to self-censor when the news media is encumbered by no such burden.
We care greatly about the feelings of born children — but we care even more about the lives of unborn children. As a consequence, we think children who are old enough to have an abortion, are old enough to see an abortion. And tragically, very young children sometimes become pregnant. On March 6, 2009, Reuters published a story headlined “Nine-year-old’s abortion stirs Brazil debate.” Wikipedia.com’s list of youngest recorded birth mothers includes girls who were five-years-old, six, eight, nine, ten, eleven-years-old, etc., when they became pregnant. It is mercifully unusual but it does happen.
The need for even the youngest students to see the horror of abortion with their own eyes is heightened by outrageous federal court rulings which have empowered school officials to take a pregnant student out of class and into court, no matter how young she might be, to find a pro-abortion judge who will certify that it is in the child’s interest to abort behind her parent’s backs – even in states which supposedly require parental permission or parental notice as a predicate to abortions for minor children. Thankfully, students who have seen an abortion are seldom willing to have an abortion. Our photos are like a vaccine. They make students are far less vulnerable to the predations of the predatory bureaucrats who trick tens-of-thousands of little girls into ruinous abortions each year.
It is child abuse for parents and teachers and administrators to hide the truth about abortion and then misrepresent the procedure to bully students into “terminations” many would reject had they been shown the truth. We are determined to show them that truth because everyone else in their lives is trying to it cover-up. It’s a matter of literal life and death.
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 we have ever met in serious pro-life activism has admitted that it was disturbing pictures which made it impossible for them to remain complacent.
If your very young child sees our photos and is distressed, explain that some parents do very bad things to their children but that he has been blessed with parents who love him and will always protect him. Tell him that what he saw in the abortion photo happened to a baby before that child was born. It never happens to children such as he or she, who are already born, so he or she have nothing to fear from this bad thing. Tell him or her that violence is almost never the best solution to life’s problems and that love is always better than selfishness. If he or she asks why parents would do such a terrible thing, the answer is selfishness. They don’t want to give up anything important to make room for a baby in their lives. Your child understands selfishness because you frequently warn him or her against it. That ought to suffice until he or she is older.
If he or she remains upset, I hope you will derive some comfort from the certain knowledge that the lives of other children were saved by the same photos which disturbed your child. Had we not displayed them that day, those 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, you may be pro-feelings, but you are certainly not pro-life.
Brutalized Afghan Woman on Cover of Time Magazine
Time’s Managing Editor, Richard Stengel, explains that though “this image will be seen by children… it is part of our job to confront and explain [the bad things that happend to people].” The picture is “a window into the reality of what is happening.”
Photos of Dead Soldiers Show Reality of War
Dead Georgian Soldier on Front Page of LA Times
Myanmar Murder on Cover of LA Times
This photo isn’t of a dead man, it is a photo of a man being murdered. It is color and five columns wide no less! Notice that the thugs with clubs are beating the protesters but the soldiers are singling out and gunning down anyone with a camera. Once again, it is the pictures that matter.