Barack Obama was in Omaha the other day and, as I drove past the convention center, I saw a truck that was pulling a mobile billboard bearing large images of aborted fetuses. If there was a message on the billboard I missed it, being fully shocked by the photos. I drove home saddened, not only by the images and the reminder of the reality of abortion, but more so by the damage I felt those protesters were doing to the pro-life cause.I do not mean that there is no place for protesting at an event or a clinic if it is done in an honest and compassionate manner. However, I am fully convinced that the most effective tactic to combat abortion is not guilt, not fear, not intimidation, but education. Most people I have talked to have put little or no thought into the humanity of the fetus. Their thought process has not passed "women's rights" before they've made up their mind. It is simply too uncomfortable to consider further. Thus, if we haven't proven to them that every abortion ends the life of a living human being, then all the screaming and offending we do only serves to push them further from a pro-life position.
Again, I do not mean there is no place for a photo of an aborted baby, for even that is information about what happens in an abortion. But if that is all we are using and couple it only with screaming tirades, I am certain we will not get the results we are hoping for. The following is at the core of every pro-abortion mindset: the right of a woman not to be pregnant is greater than the right of a baby not to be killed. Of course, the pro-abortion person would substitute the word baby with fetus. And if we are not doing our job of demonstrating that it is, in fact, a baby, we will convince no one. Showing that it is really a baby begins with information.
There is no love lost on my part towards PETA and their causes. I see them as generally angry, crazy, and overly zealous for a less than essential cause. But even as I write these adjectives, I realize that most pro-lifers have the same reputation. Most people have bought into the lie that unborn babies are sub-human (or lower), on par with the animals that PETA is fighting for. So unless we have convinced our audience of the humanity of the unborn, we will be as ineffective as the PETA people throwing red pain on fur coats or brandishing photos of skinned animals.
In Juno, the title character intends to get an abortion when she is approached by a classmate protesting by herself outside the clinic. With timidity and compassion the girl says to Juno, "It has fingernails, you know". Unable to shake the image as she enters the clinic, she watches the people around her use their fingernails to tap, scratch, and pick. Ultimately she leaves and decides to give birth to her baby. In wonderful narrative form (and possibly unintentionally on the part of the writer), the movie shows the value of the unborn human life and the power of information.
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