Just doing my regular reading today when I came across this article which tells of an effort by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform attmepting to use the media to extend the shock value of their message and hope to change some minds on abortion.
Cleveland.com
As a shock tactic, a national group that opposes abortion plans to fly a billboard-size picture of an aborted fetus over Cleveland beginning Monday.
The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, which frequently employs such attention-grabbing advertising, hopes to jar people into reconsidering their support of abortion, director Gregg Cunningham said.
He said the banner would be the most graphic picture ever displayed from the air.
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I'm not quote sure yet what it means by displayed through the air. Will it be towed by an aircraft over low-lying areas, I'm not sure, but do we really need "the most graphic picture ever" to be flying around over a city in an attempt to promote the message?
Now, I don't live in Ohio but I really don't want my 11 year old son to look at this thing and ask me "Daddy, what's an aborted fetus?" Not that I feel he shouldn't know, but I don't think I want to be subject to the possibility of walking down a street somewhere with my young son (or daugher if I had one), seeing this image, subjecting my children to it, but worse, having one of them ask me "Daddy, what's an aborted fetus? What's abortion?"
I'm all about talking about sex with my children, when the time is right, and even if I've already been talking about it with my children, I don't want to be enjoying an otherwise uneventful day, perhaps eating cheeseburgers on a street, and then seeing that picture.
I mean...I understand what they're saying and, I've seen these images but as disturbing as they are, even the promoters are having a hard time with it.
"It will be categorically the most shocking we have ever done," he said. "The imagery is so horrifying that I can't almost stand to look at it."
Cunningham wouldn't describe the advertisement, which also displays a toll-free number to the organization. But he said the advertisement would compare an aborted fetus to a second graphic image related to the war in the Middle East.
"This thing just sucks the wind out of even me," he said.
Then it occured to me that maybe we're onto something here. If abortions being flown over American cities, something portrayed by the very organizers who are sending the message as the most horrible thing they've seen but that the shock value alone might change a few minds, perhaps it's time somebody started airing photos of the tradgedy in the Middle East, and specifically, Iraq.
And I'm not just talking about flag-draped coffins or thousands of pairs of boots.
Think it might change some minds? Consider this story:
Four U.S. Marines were killed on Saturday in Iraq's Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Sunday.
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Muhammad Rassulluallah mosque in western Baghdad was sprayed with gunfire shortly after midnight, police said, adding that windows were shattered and walls damaged, according to AP. A guard was wounded.
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Four worshippers were killed in a separate mortar attack on a Sunni mosque in southern Baghdad
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AP also reported the killing of a Sunni cleric from a tribe opposed to al Qaeda
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12 workers were wounded when a grenade exploded in an area of central Baghdad where day laborers line up for work, according to police. A road bomb targeting an Iraqi police patrol wounded three civilians and three police officers in a north Baghdad neighborhood
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If an outlet that has a message against abortion feels it's ok to display the images of dead fetuses as a tool to convince people not to support abortion, then perhaps it's time to start showing pictures of dead US soldiers and Iraqis, bodies that have been twisted and burned by car bombs and wreckage, images of fathers carrying their dead children with a missing tattered leg or charred face.
It's certainly not something I would be proud of but the truth does hurt and the truth of the matter right now is things are absolutely FUBAR in Iraq and with the Israeli/Lebanon situation sucking the wind out of it, it's not getting the media attention it should be. Yet imagine if everytime you picked up a newspaper, there was a picture of a dead Iraqi spread out on the front page. Or everytime you went to the beach, the airplanes carried images of dead soldiers, their bodies burned and destroyed by an insurgent IED.
Think that might change some minds?
After all, that's what ultimately seems to be the point and direction of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform
"We know from a great deal of market research that people who see what abortion does to a baby are less likely to support abortion rights," he said.
Comparing his campaign to the civil rights and anti-war movements, he said, "Social reform is driven by horrifying pictures of injustice."