You have heard of Lila Rose of Live Action.  You may have seen her under-cover videos that show how Planned Parenthood employees cover up the illegal sexual abuse of children.

In this video, Ms. Rose describes how CBR employs the exact same strategy that was used by other successful reformers in history, including the movements to stop the slave trade in England, to abolish slavery here, to end abusive child labor here, and to galvanize the civil rights movement in the 1950s.

Ms. Rose reports from Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley during our GAP presentation last October.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldxict4AZD4

Besides college campuses, what other venues are appropriate for abortion pictures?  Please comment!

Medallion emphasized to Londoners the humanity of the Black slave in 1787.

My talk last night at the Atlanta Right to Life was very well received, I think.  The subject was “Learning From the Past: How We Can Win.”  This is a similar talk to the one I gave to a group of pro-life Georgia Legislators a couple of years ago and the talk I gave to a group of pro-life Congressmen in DC.

This was a fairly easy audience.  We’ve been working with these folks to display abortion images for many years (GAP, RCC, etc.), so they are very familiar with the need to educate the public.  I didn’t need to convince them so much as to help solidify in their minds the connection between our work to educate the public using horrifying images and the work of other social reformers in history who achieved success using the same strategy.  Examples:

• The anti-slave-trade movement in England (William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson) used images to show the humanity of the Black slave and the inhumanity of the slave trade.
• Abolistionists in this country used similar images, and later used photographs, to expose the injustice of slavery.
• Lewis Hine, who was concerned about abusive child labor practices, took pictures of children working in coal mines and textile mills and turned them into a traveling display.
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that “America will not stop racism until America sees racism.”  He arranged for video and photos of Black men and women being attacked with dogs and water cannons to be shown on TV and in magazines.

Horrifying photos of racial violence showed the ugly truth of racism and changed America's heart.

You can download my slides by clicking here.  It is a fairly large file (38 MB); it might take 10 minutes or so to download.  Just save it to a file; a pop-up window will ask you where to file it and will tell you how long it will take to download the file.

Please take a look at the slides and leave your comment on this post!

 

I was honored to be invited to address the Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Right to Life next week.  Here’s the announcement that went out to their members and other pro-lifers in the area:

You are invited to come and hear a presentation by Fletcher Armstrong PhD, Southeast Director of The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, entitled, “Lessons From the Past, Learning How to Win,” sponsored by the Atlanta Chapter Georgia Right to Life.  CBR is well know for Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), which is the world’s first large-scale abortion photo outreach to college students. Fletcher will explain how this and other CBR projects are effective because they are modeled upon the most successful social reform movements in history, including the movements to end the slave trade in England, slavery in America, abusive child labor in the early 20th Century, and racial injustice in the 1960s.

When: Thursday, July 22, 2010 7:00 PM

Where: Cathedral of Christ the King, Hyland Center

Some comments about GAP:

• “I saw minds and hearts changed right before my eyes. I believe in GAP and its ability to effect change.” (Tanya Comer, President, [University of] Georgia Pro-Life)
• “There is no doubt in my mind that GAP is the most effective pro-life project that any pro-life club can bring to their school.” (President, Students for Life, U of New Hampshire).
• “It is saving babies like nothing the pro-life movement has ever undertaken and is worthy of our heartiest support.” (Fr. Frank Pavone, Director, Priests for Life)
• “I’ve been doing this my whole adult life. And yet I have never heard a more compelling way of presenting the pro-life message.” (Hon. Trent Franks, U.S. House of Representatives)

If you know people in Atlanta, please let them know about this event.  Thanks!  I’m scheduled to speak in Athens on the evening of Wednesday, July 21.  I will link to my slides for both of these talks sometime next week.

If I can speak to your pro-life group or event, use the feedback form on our website to let us know.

I got an e-mail from a friend of mine.  I’ll call him Josh, because … well … that’s his real name.  Anyway, Josh was preparing for a presentation and he wanted to confirm that abortions exceeded live births in Washington, DC.  Josh is a great guy, but he needed me to tell him why abortion statistics, even if correctly remembered and dutifully repeated, do nothing to change anybody’s mind.  Here’s my reply:

Thanks for being in touch.  This answer to your question is that I don’t know. I just don’t latch onto that kind of data because I’m not really sure it matters. If you were able to get somebody to learn that fact (the ratio of abortions to births inside the DC city limits is greater than 1.0), I doubt it would change anybody’s behavior very much. You’d get a few nods from people in the room, but that’s about it. When we get all worked up about explaining the sheer numbers of abortions (1.2 million a year, 3300 a day, 1 of every 3 or 4, etc), we start to sound like anti-tax/anti-deficit activists who talk about stacking dollar bills to the moon and back. That stuff gets nods from people who are already care, but it doesn’t change their level of participation and it makes everyone else’s eyes glaze over.

Think about it this way. If “only” 5 million Jews had been killed in the death camps, would it have been any less horrifying? For the million who didn’t die, I suppose it would be. But for most of us, the fact that death camps existed pegs our horror meter already, and the statistic (whether 6 million or 5 million or 7 million) makes no difference in our response to it.

The problem with most people’s response to abortion is not that they are insufficiently horrified about millions of abortion. The problem is that most people are insufficiently horrified about every single abortion. In the minds of most people, abortion is a nominal evil, or the lesser of evils, or a necessary evil, or an evil that is so entrenched in society that nothing can be done about it anyway. Many Christians think it’s just another “cause” or “mission activity” among many, all of which cry out for their attention.  Until this changes, we have no hope of winning.

To give you an idea of how the lack of horror about abortion affects our response to it, consider the budgeting of money, staff time, and volunteer time at almost every “pro-life” church.  They spend vastly more resources on professional music presentations every Sunday (led by paid staff), church-run sports programs (organized by paid staff), etc., than they spend on stopping the killing of our own children.  They might send a couple of thousand dollars (out of a multi-million dollar budget) to a Pregnancy Resourc Center (PRC)—money well-spent, to be sure—but not much else.  People who attend those churches are having abortions in astonishing numbers.  And why are the members so complicit and/or complacent?  Because nobody has ever shown them the truth of abortion.  So they rationalize their way over to the clinic and hope the memory of it goes away.  Or they just do nothing.  They give a little money to a PRC and think nothing more about it.  What would happen if these “pro-life” churches started acting like they believe abortion really is killing a baby?  What if they were horrified?  What if they assembled as many people to pray in front of the abortion clinics every week as they assemble for choir practice?  (What if they held their choir practice at the clinic? … Now there’s an idea.)  They will never do this until they are sufficiently horrified about every single abortion that takes place.  Pictures are more important than statistics.

I can tell you that if the average “pro-life” church were as dedicated to stopping abortion as they are to promoting their church choir, this would have been over long ago.  That is why it is so important to force Christians and others to look at a picture of a single abortion. When people get a grasp of how horrifying each single abortion truly is, only then will the statistics start to mean anything.

Would Jesus Show a Bloody Picture?