At Northern Kentucky University, showing abortion photos created more informed dialogue than anything else we could have done.

When you suit up for pro-life work, what would you rather do, feel good or make an impact?

Unfortunately, many of us have adopted a form of “strategic relativism,” in which any strategy or tactic used to fight abortion is just as good as any other.  People say things like, “You fight abortion your way and I’ll fight it my way.”

The inevitable result is that many of us (perhaps most) are engaged in activities that aren’t particularly effective at winning hearts, changing minds, or saving lives, nearly as much as they are good at making pro-lifers feel good about doing them.

While it’s true that our movement has multiple components, just as the body has many parts (I Corinthians 12:12-31), this principle does not mean all strategies/tactics are equally valuable or effective.  In business, construction, child rearing, war, and every other field of human endeavor, there are some methods that simply work better than others.  We would be mad to choose whatever feels good, when experience and logic demand we employ tactics that actually work better.

Don’t be a strategic relativist!  The babies deserve your best.

But that’s not all.  The people who give time and treasure to your work also deserve your best.  They give sacrificially.  Shouldn’t they count on you to invest wisely?

And finally, think of yourself.  If you are investing yourself in this work, don’t you want to maximize your own personal return on investment?  Let’s put it this way: if you had a 401K, would you settle for a 2% annual return when another investment was paying a guaranteed 25%?

Abortion pictures are an indispensable tactic because they force large numbers of people (literally, everyone in sight) to learn and reflect on the two most important facts: (1) the preborn child is a living human being, and (2) abortion is an act of violence that destroys a living baby.  Abortion pictures prevent honest people from denying these facts.

Pro-lifers love to talk about creating dialogue.  The record is clear: when you show thousands of passersby exactly what abortion is and does, you create more dialogue (and more informed dialogue) than anything else you can do.

Note:  FAB is indebted to CBR Maryland for inspiring and contributing to this article.  The good folks at CBR Maryland are definitely making an impact!

Tags: abortion pictures, NKU, Northern Kentucky University, pro-life tactics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 26th, 2013 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Pro Life Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.