Letters to the Editor

An abortion clinic director's letter last Tuesday blasted pro-lifers for passing out pictures of "stillbirths" outside her abortion mill.

First of all, where would these pro-lifers get stillborn babies to photograph? Stillborn babies would either be sent to a funeral home for embalming and burial, or they would be cremated in the hospital. There are, after all, legal and medical requirements to be met regarding stillbirths.

Additionally, if those dead babies are really stillborn children, not aborted children, how does the clinic director explain the wounds?

The best question, however, is this: If abortion is such a good thing that it should be a "fundamental constitutional right," why wouldn't those abortion photos be beautiful to her? Shouldn't they fill her with a sense of pride and satisfaction that the right thing is being done?

If abortions are a good thing, those photographs would be in abortion clinic ads. Planned Parenthood would distribute them door-to-door. The National Organization for Women would have posters of them in their offices.

If abortion isn't wrong, then there is no reason to oppose the photographs. If abortion isn't wrong, the photos should be used as evidence of what an enlightened and progressive society we are.

Of course, the reason pro-choice people are so disgusted by the photographs is that they show a reality they'd rather ignore: that abortion is killing babies, that it is brutal and violent, and that it is evil.

Which leaves me to wonder why pro-choicers condemn the pictures while applauding the reality.

Our mayor is calling for a ban on pictures of aborted babies being displayed in public. He claims that the pictures are a public nuisance.

Next time the mayor sees one of those dead-baby pictures, he ought to think. Those pictures show what abortionists do to babies right here in our city. If someone did the same thing to a dog, we'd be horrified.

The truth is, he and many other people don't want to be reminded that those pictures show a reality that happens every day. It is the height of hypocrisy to object to the pictures of dead babies, but not object to the dead babies.

This newspaper has been full of letters lately condemning the recent pro-life advertising insert. Most letters complain that the photographs of unborn babies are "misleading and emotional."

I'll let a pro-choicer respond:

In her recently released book, Naomi Wolf stated that "those photographs are in fact photographs of actual D&Cs; those footprints are in fact the footprints of a 10-week-old fetus; the pro-life slogan, 'Abortion stops a beating heart,' is incontrovertibly true. While images of violent fetal death work magnificently for pro-lifers as political polemic, the pictures are not polemical in themselves: they are biological facts. We know this." She also said, "How can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that the truth is in poor taste is the height of hypocrisy...And if we then claim that it is offensive for pro-choice women to be confronted by them, then we are making the judgment that women are too inherently weak to face a truth about which they have to make a grave decision."

In other words, if you can't take the reality--that abortion is chopping up a live baby--you have no business defending it.