I am old enough to remember the initial debate, or rather, non debate leading up to the Roe vs. Wade decision. The pro abortion lobby seized the language, reframed the arguments, and shut down an honest and open discussion about the reality of abortion. Integral in this cultural shift was the willing participation of the mainstream media who provided a news blackout about the reality of abortion.
However, in order to sway popular opinion, a pesky unnerving problem surfaced during the debate. What to do about the photos of aborted babies? The feminists knew that they needed the concerted and cooperative effort by the media. The reality of abortion, i.e. the photos of aborted children must never see the light of day. The horror of those photos would quickly shift public opinion to the pro life side. And so, the photo censorship began. The photo blackout media campaign fueled by the rhetoric of the abortion feminists excoriated anyone who dared to show a photo of these “blobs of cells” in the garbage cans of abortion clinics. I vividly remember the screaming vitriol against any pro life protestor who carried a sign of an aborted baby. The violent attacks against pro life marchers who had their signs ripped from their arms and stomped on the ground.
The blackout mantra from the left was justified because these abortion photos were “vile, profane, inhuman, and disgusting.” Ah, yes, that is the point, isn’t it? The left with the cooperation of the media vilified and demonized anyone who would dare to display the reality of abortion. Not only were the pro life arguments ignored but the powerful evidence of abortion was scrubbed by the media from public’s consciousness.
So for forty years, with only few exceptions, this sophisticated and news driven society has been bereft of the photos of millions of its citizens who met their death on a cold metal table. While we lived in denial of the reality of abortion, we certainly knew or suspected what was really happening in abortion clinics. The previous generation of deniers was shocked into reality by the photos of concentration camp victims. Seeing is believing. Recently, on CBS sunday morning, Elie Wiesel commented on the concentration camp photos at the Holocaust Museum. “So many children, I now see the pictures of the children. Why the children? My God, why the children?”
Decades later after Roe vs. Wade, the curtain is finally lifted from the culture’s self imposed abortion photo ban with the Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia. The gory details, photos and testimony paint a picture of the reality of an abortion mill. The photos are gut-wrenching, shocking, and yes, ‘vile.’ They powerfully expose the lies and rationalizations of the abortion movement.
Pro lifers have been sued, arrested, and hindered each step of the way by the power brokers: the Supreme Court, legislatures, and the powerful complicit media. The pro life advocates knew what none of us wanted to believe.
Fortunately, the new media will not be cowed by the feminist’s name calling and rants. The long awaited photos of abortions are finally on display at the Kermit Gosnell murder trial in all its horrendous and brutal reality. Photos of fully formed aborted babies, fully formed babies with snipped spines, make a mockery of the right to privacy and choice arguments.
The pro life movement has been swimming upstream for 40 years to break through the culture’s abortion denial. We finally saw the truth this week at the Gosnell trial when a worker testified that she saw an aborted baby desperately swimming for its life in its final resting place: a toilet.
A picture tells 50 million words.