Children seeing the photos. In the three years I have been working with GAP at over 30 universities, no one ever complained, that I recall, about children possibly seeing the images of Holocaust victims or people being lynched. Maybe one person said something about the Rwandan child image. And yet, complaints about the aborted baby images are fairly regular. This suggests to me that there is a factor in play other than concern that young children may see graphic violent photographs.

The four warning signs we put out were approximately 3.5 feet wide and 4.5 feet high and were mounted so that the top came to well over 6 feet above the ground--hardly what a reasonable person would call “pathetically small.” The signs were orange. Alexandra uses the words “fetus” and “babies” interchangeably, so it appears that she recognizes that pre-born children and born children are, or should be, in the same protected class. There is a tacit admission that abortion is a violent act that kills a baby.

It is an ordinary practice to use images of victims of atrocities to teach about the atrocities. A Letter to the Editor writer here mentioned her association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. There you will find countless images of victims. Granted, the most horrific are displayed in such a way that one has to be a certain height to view them (they are mounted behind a waist-high wall.) A difference between the Holocaust and abortion is that abortion is ongoing. At the end of World War II, when the allied forces liberated the death camps in Europe, they often compelled local citizens to walk through the camps to see what the Nazis, had done, and what they, the citizens, had allowed to happen. That was no picnic. People would tend to disbelieve the horror unless they had seen it with their own eyes—and smelled it with their noses.

The 1985 PBS Frontline documentary, Memory of the Camps, is made of post-war commentary and footage of liberation. The film shows shocking images of death and starvation. You can watch it at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/ . It ends with these words:

“The dead have been buried; it remains for us to care for these, the living. It remains for us to hope that Germans may help to mend what they have broken, and cleanse what they have befouled. Thousands of German people were made to see for themselves, to bury the dead, to file past the victims. This was the end of the journey they had so confidently begun in 1933. Twelve years? No, in terms of barbarity and brutality they had traveled backwards for 12 thousand years. Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall, but by God’s grace, we who live, will learn.”

The pictures of aborted children and other victims of atrocities in the Genocide Awareness Project teach the same lesson as do the images in Memory of the Camps.

So, who is to blame for the necessity of confronting citizens about evil with which they have been complicit? Not those who are attempting to stop the evil. Rather, those who cause the evil and persist. Thousands upon thousands of non-combatant people, including innocent children, died in Europe in our war against the Nazis. Those children are victims of the Nazis who had to be stopped.

As for abortion, if young children see the images of aborted babies, those who abort for a living, and those who defend and protect abortion are responsible for it, because they necessitate the measures required to change society. They use children as shields against exposing the truth of what they do. Fortunately, we are only talking about showing pictures.

In any case, if a young child does see an image of an aborted child, it’s not certain that this in itself will be traumatic. Children see dead animals along the road, (similar to dead baby pictures on trucks) and parents are able to explain in an age-appropriate way that this happens and it is sad. The difficulty for some parents is that they react with anger and hostility out of guilt, perhaps, and defensiveness. This parental reaction is what can traumatize a child. But imagine the trauma/shock caused when a child discovers that she grew up in a society that killed many of those who would have been her classmates.

The abortion issue is a hot topic for many people. It should not be. Life is precious, sacred and given by God himself. I do not apologize for some of you who think the pictures were horrible. Face the facts and the truth. Abortion kills a life!! The display was not meant to be in any way to hurt those who may have had an abortion in the past. Only God can forgive you for your mistake and He will.

What bothers me most about those fetus pictures is not the fetus itself, but the way your group has used them as, well, battle totems. Abortion is an emotionally charged issue for both sides of the coin (and even those who try to stay out of the fray, such as myself), but showing pictures of - as your group sees it - dead babies doesn't make your group seem as though you care about the life of a fetus. It makes you seem like you're exploiting them to prove a point. Ick.

Meredith,

While standing near your "display" (I was the one holding the sign about handing out adoption information instead of terrorizing people), I saw a woman walking by covering her child's eyes on her way to the daycare center. The signs your "group" (terrorist organization, in my opinion) put up were pathetically small and didn't provide nearly enough warning. You could see the pictures from the student union before you could see any sort of warning sign. I support your right to have an opinion about abortion, but exposing children to your message is sick. Did your group put up warning signs while driving the "fetus mobile" down Rivers Street? I know someone whose five year old child saw the pictures and began asking questions about what she'd just seen. As far as the propaganda is concerned, your display was full of it. A friend of mine was told (by a member of your little terrorist organization) that abortion shouldn't be permitted in cases of rape because the mother would be "too stressed to carry the baby to term" and would miscarry. That's what one of your group members told my friend whose father is the product of rape. We're still shaking our heads at that one. You could have done so much good for the world with the money your group had. It's a shame you wasted it.

Alexandra Flora
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A few thoughts in response to other letters to the editor:

Dafur Awareness. It’s unfortunate that during the anti-abortion Genocide Awareness Project someone was handing out a green flyer on the Darfur genocide that had on the flip side (easily rebutted) arguments for abortion choice. This brought dispersion upon their efforts to bring relief to victims of the African atrocity, because the authors of that flyer defended the abortion of pre-born children with the same dehumanizing rhetoric used to justify killing innocent post-born children and others around the world and throughout history. Those of us who brought the Genocide Awareness Project to Appalachian State are on the side of the Darfur awareness people. Why would they pick a fight with us? We brought a huge amount attention to their table, and were happy to do so. (The Darfur genocide is NOT undisputed. The perpetrators dispute it, just as perpetrators, collaborators, enablers, and defenders of abortion choice dispute the genocidal aspects of abortion.) And, by the way, “preventing births within the group” is part of the UN Convention definition.

Day Care Center. Prior to bringing GAP, a university official mentioned to me the Day Care Center on the opposite side of the Sanford Mall, and I agreed to put GAP signs on that side of our display that bore smaller images. On both days of GAP we posted the signs with the large images on the other three sides. I stood at the edge of the fenced playground of the Center and looked toward the display, which was a couple hundred yards away or so, and I couldn’t really make out the images. I knew what they were in advance, but a child who had no context with the images would not be able to make anything of them. I noticed children playing outside within the enclosed yard and they all seemed happy and occupied with their business. I think the anger and shock that adults feel in response to the GAP images is a tacit admission that they depict dead babies. (Not lacerated appendixes.) If the images of abortion are so horrible, then how can we allow abortion to be legal? A picture of a dead baby is only a picture. But a dead baby is a dead baby and that’s a 1,000 times worse than a picture.

The Chancellor’s e-mail. We who are with GAP did not ask him to write his e-mail, nor did he consult us. Had he asked, I would have suggested that he tell more about GAP, including the important information that the display compares abortion to other atrocities. And yet, I speculate that his intension was to remain content neutral and, as he said, warn parents about the graphic nature of the images.

The letter about rape. If seeing images of aborted children is so terrible, then how can it be a good for a woman who was raped to participate in the destruction of her child? Many women who have aborted a child conceived by rape feel that they have been raped again, but in this case they bear a real guilt. Helping a woman give birth and then, if she wishes, release the child for adoption (or raise him) is the loving option where she can turn an evil act against her into something wonderful. No one certainly would allow a woman who had been raped and gives birth to the child then destroy him when he begins to resemble his father at four or five years of age. The real issue is not rape, but rather whether or not a human being before birth has a natural right to live. If seeing the images causes such trauma, wouldn’t it be better for a young woman never to be involved in abortion and be spared that trauma?

-Meredith Hunt