GAP at University of Florida

Today and tomorrow, CBR is on campus at the University of Florida. This is one of our most important GAPs in years, because we will be training 25 international activists in pro-life apologetics and campus outreach.

Training international pro-life activists has become an important part of CBR’s work, and we have established affiliates in Sweden, Canada, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Finland, Great Britain, South Africa, and Russia.

On the UF campus, we’ll set up both days on the Plaza of the Americas, near the Reitz Union. Open microphone sessions will be conducted both days from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. Later this week, we will be at the University of Central Florida.

If abortion truly is the holocaust of our day, could you dig deep to help save babies and moms? Please contribute online or send a check to CBR, PO Box 20115, Knoxville, TN 37940.

Sally Jenkins, a pro-choice columnist, had this to way on the Tebow ad:

I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the “National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.” For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening — or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

You can read the entire column here.

I saw the first Tebow ad last night and watched the second on the Focus on the Family website this morning. Could somebody please tell me the point of these ads? Was it only to get a few curious people to visit the Focus website? Was there something I missed? I just don’t get it. Can I get your input? I saw nothing that pro-choicers should complain about, nothing the that pro-lifers could get excited about, and nothing that anyone else would be curious about. Seemed like a wast of $2.6 million. What do you think? I’ll amend this post with your best comments.

Most pro-life ad? Gotta be Google’s French Love Story.

P.S. This question has created quite a stir over at VolChat. Check it out!

GAP at 2010 March for Life

Every year, CBR takes  the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) to the March for Life, and places it immediately adjacent to the March route.  This year, more than 200,000 marchers filed past the display.  It is one of our most important deployments of the year, because so many of the marchers are young people who really have no idea what an abortion is … until we show them!  Many high-school students have commented that our display, which they only see for a minute or so, is the most memorable and impacting experience of their entire trip.  They will remember the pictures of abortion long after every one of the speeches have been forgotten.

Our effort to stop abortion funding in ObamaCare seems to be working! We have been driving our hard-to-miss trucks in the districts of Congressmen whose votes are critical to final passage of ObamaCare. These trucks are fitted with signs (example shown) that invite constituents to call their Congressman and urge him/her to vote against any health care bill that includes funding for abortion. So far, we have gotten commitments from four “Blue Dogs” to vote against any bill that includes abortion funding. They include Rep. Gene Taylor (MS), Rep. Dan Boren (OK), Rep. Steve Driehaus (OH), and Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (PA). All of them have agreed that they will oppose any legislation that departs from the abortion-funding restrictions contained in the Stupak Amendment to the House version of ObamaCare. Here’s one story. Here is our latest press release. If stopping abortion funding is important, please help us drive this point home!

CBR frequently hears from young people who’ve had abortions and have just learned the sad truth of what they have done, in many cases under severe coercion.  Our Lois Cunningham responded to one young lady who visited our website:

Dear Xxxxxxxx,

Sorry I do not know your name in order to write you more personally, but I want to thank you for taking time to give us your feedback at www.AbortionNO.org.  Your response to our question asking if our website influencing your thinking concerning abortion was especially heart-wrenching: “I can’t stand going through life with the decision me, my boyfriend, and our families made together.”

Most women and especially teenagers have limited understanding about the reality of abortion. Many have told us they would not have chosen abortion if they’d seen our abortion photos before making that decision. Sadly, the truth is not widely known and some women prefer to remain in the dark so their decision to abort won’t be challenged. Now you have been brought into the light by the harsh reality of our photos – this is a good thing even if you cannot imagine it right now. Your life still matters and you can go on with God’s help. Please do not give up. Keep on reading this message.

When a woman truly realizes what abortion did to her baby, it is devastating. Most every women and teenager has a sense that abortion is wrong, but they don’t know how wrong it is. Perhaps you thought that since it’s legal in the US and since so many others have aborted, it was OK. It sounds like you may have been pressured to abort by your boyfriend, your parents and his parents. There are generally several people who bear responsibility for each abortion besides the pregnant woman and the abortionist.

So many women who have aborted said they never knew how formed the baby was so early in pregnancy. It is heart-breaking to realize you’ve been tricked by the abortion clinic staff and maybe other people.

As a registered nurse, I know of few pains in life that match the grief of a post-abortal woman who regrets her decision. The intense pain that you feel is actually a good thing because you are on a road that can lead you to the help that only God can offer. The key is that you turn to God and not to destructive behaviors.

We pray that you will make your peace with God about the abortion. Only He can take your pain and replace it with hope. Your parents and boyfriend may also be hurting, but they may not talk to you about it. I hope you will consider sharing this email message with them too.

I don’t know where you are coming from spiritually. Based on the Bible, I do not believe that a woman can truly come to a place of peace after an abortion apart from receiving God’s forgiveness. God loves you and He created you and your baby. You interfered with His plan for your child when you chose abortion, but the Bible says God is willing to forgive us when we repent (turn away from) our sin. We’re all sinners in need of God’s grace. Our sin should disgust us as it angers God. We all deserve to die for our sins, but Jesus paid the price for our sins when He died on the cross. Jesus was raised to life three days later. That showed His power over sin and death. His victory will keep you from a lifetime of pain and depression. He can open up a whole new life for you here on earth and then someday give you eternal life in heaven. Heaven is where your child is right now. In God’s timing, you can have a reunion with your child.

Here are two Bible passages which have touched countless people, including many post-abortive women:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”  (John 3:16-17)

“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will lift you up.”  (James 4:7-10)

God wants you to personally know His Son Jesus. Jesus is called many beautiful names in Scripture, and one is “the Light of the World.” You need His light right now to bring you comfort and hope. If you will humble yourself before the Lord, He will lift you up, just as it says in the Bible verse above.

There are a Bible study / support groups to help you work through the grief and many other emotions that follow an abortion. They are all over the U.S. and one is hopefully near you in Virginia Beach. Most of these groups are done in a Bible study format. You need not be a Christian to participate, but you should be open to the truth of the Scriptures. I myself have had the privilege to lead a number of these Bible studies and I’ve seen God work miracles in the lives of many women who participated.

I urge you to consider joining one of these Bible studies so that you can learn more about God’s mercy and have hope for the future. If you visit www.optionline.org you can locate a center near you which may have a post-abortion Bible study. If no current group is available, I can send you a workbook to do on your own. A group is much preferable for many reasons, not least so other women can help you personally. You can also look at this website to find a referral www.abortionrecovery.org.  Look under Recovery and then Care Directory.

You may also benefit from visiting these Websites: www.afterabortion.org and www.ramahinternational.org. I have met the founders of both sites and they have tender hearts towards women who are hurting after abortion.

I will send you some helpful material in the mail, if you are willing to provide a mailing address. One is a book co-authored by Sydna Masse, the founder of the second website and a woman who herself had an abortion.

Also, if you’d like to talk to or email one of our staff women who previously had an abortion but repented and now is at peace with God, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with one of these kind women.

Please write and let me know if you have any questions. Let me know if you get into a group. I have prayed for you.

Lois Cunningham, CBR

If you want to help us reach more young people with life-saving truth, please help.

We recently took our campus outreach project to the University of Tennessee.  We got an e-mail from a student who did not like our display  I wanted to share with you her question, along with my answer.  Even though this student did not request anonymity, I’ve changed her name because I have no interest in embarrassing anybody, especially one whose objections appear to be thoughtful and sincerely expressed.

E-mail from Female UT Student

To Whom it May Concern:

I appreciate your willingness to promote Pro-Life opinions and realistic images to capture the attention of college students.  However, today, I saw images that were very disturbing to myself and – I’m certain – others around me.  I saw pictures of dead, bloody fetuses.  Now, I am very much pro-life.  However, I think it was very, very unnecessary to have those images shown publicly, largely, and openly.  I realize that the point of the images proves how wrong abortion is on many different levels, but I still think it was wrong to display them and I did not appreciate viewing them as I walked to class.  There are a few reasons why I don’t agree with having these pictures openly displayed in public, and I will list them here.

First of all, I think it is a violation of both the mother and child’s rights to have a child’s pictures displayed so openly.  I don’t think, in any circumstances, should pictures of that nature be displayed that present something so personal to someone else.  I think it is mainly a major violation of the rights of the unborn child to present such graphic, awful pictures to a college campus.

I also do not agree with the displaying of these images due to the emotional nature of some of the students on the campus.  Regardless of your political or moral views, I don’t think you should display something so graphic that could bring back traumatic memories for few, or many, of the students on our campus.  I’m sure many students on the campus have had abortions; regardless of your views, abortion does happen and should not be taken so lightly as to display bloody fetuses largely for everyone to see.  Many women and adolescents are emotionally traumatized or have been psychologically distressed due to abortion.  Maybe they are in constant regret of their decision to abort their unborn fetus. Maybe they previously supported abortion and no longer do, so they wish they hadn’t killed an innocent child.  Maybe it haunts them every day to know that their child was killed by them.  Maybe there are young men on our campus whose girlfriends or wives have had abortions that they did not approve of.  Maybe there are young men on our campus whose girlfriends are emotionally traumatized by the previous abortion(s) that they have had.  These men and women may have a change of heart, mind, or soul, and I do not think it is appropriate to throw them into a guilt trip after they have undergone such an awful experience.  I do not think it is appropriate to force them to dwell on the past.

So, next time, I ask if you would kindly reconsider the displaying of these images on our campus – or anywhere else for that matter – for everyone to see.  These images should not be taken lightly and should not be blown up for an entire college campus to dwell on, laugh at, shudder at, or dismiss.  Abortion is an issue that definitely needs attention in our society, but putting bloody fetus pictures up on our campus is not the way to do so.

Sincerely,
Jane Doe
Student at the University of Tennessee

My Response

Dear Jane,

Thank you for your letter and for allowing me the opportunity to address your concerns. The best way I know how to do this is just to address your points, one by one.

Let me start out by agreeing with you on one key point.  Nobody should be forced to dwell on the past.  We must remind every post-abortive woman (and every man, too, because his guilt is often greater than hers) that God is just as eager to forgive the sin of abortion as he is any other sin. Nobody should be forced to dwell on the past. That is why we support programs in Knoxville like Restoring Hearts (www.restoringhearts.org).  God’s Word tells us that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (I John 1:9)”  I can tell from your letter (and your persistence) that you know people personally who are struggling with past abortions.  Love those people.  Intervene on their behalf.  Encourage them to take the first step toward healing by visiting the caring people at the Hope Resource Center and taking advantage of their Restoring Hearts program (www.restoringhearts.org).  Your persistence will be rewarded.

You said that you are pro-life.  That’s great, but you didn’t say why.  Is it because abortion is the destruction of a human being?  Or is it something else?  Because if you agree with us that abortion destroys a human being, then that means abortion destroys 1.2 million people in our country every year.  Many people have abortions because they have been lied to all of their lives.  The government lies to them.  The abortion industry, including Planned Parenthood, lies to them.  They tell her (and everyone around her) that it’s only a blob of tissue.  They say abortion is just removing some cells.  The so-called “pro-life” church lets them get by with lying because it is too fearful to show the truth, even to its own membership.  It’s a coverup of gigantic proportions.  The only way to pierce through the layers and layers of ignorance and denial is to simply show people the truth, but very few of us are willing to do it.

You said that the images were very disturbing. That is true. They are disturbing to you and others because you have a functioning conscience. Pictures of injustice are irrelevant to people who don’t have a conscience.

You say that abortion pictures are unnecessary. But to make that claim, you have to ignore 150 years of successful social reform movements. Reformers have routinely used two kinds of images in their struggles against injustice: (1) images that helped people relate to the humanity of the victims and (2) images that helped people understand the horror of the crimes. Without seeing images, people just didn’t get it.

The abolitionists in England used images to help people see the horror of slavery. One such image was a diagram of the slave ship Brookes. Thomas Clarkson, a leader in the movement, said that the Brookes diagram “seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it.” Historian Adam Hochschild, writing about this era, said “iconic images have power because they allow us to see what previously we could barely imagine.” And who can forget the powerful scene in the movie Amazing Grace in which William Wilberforce used the Madagascar slave ship to illustrate the horror of slavery to members of Parliament (www.amazinggracemovie.com/video_downloads.php).

Around the turn of the century (1900s), photographer Lewis Hine took pictures of children working in coal mines and textile mills and put them on display. His photos helped end abusive child labor practices.

Dr. Martin Luther King used horrifying imagery to educate the public and confront Americans with the truth about racism. Dr. King’s niece (Dr. Alveda King) wrote, “My uncle knew that the ugly reality of segregation had to be seen visually by the American public. He therefore organized events at which the eyes of the media could broadcast the way our people were treated when water hoses and dogs were unleashed on their peaceful marches. People responded to those images, not simply to abstract concepts of ‘segregation’ and ‘equality.’”

So, if you want to say that the images of injustice are unnecessary to ending injustice, your argument isn’t with us; your argument is with Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Lewis Hine, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Later in his life, Lewis Hine wrote in his memoirs that people would sometimes look at his pictures of child labor abuses and become more angry at him for showing the pictures than at the industrial bosses for creating the abusive conditions that these children were forced to endure.  Your anger at us for showing pictures led you to write e-mails and letters to us, but have you ever been angry enough at the abortion industry to do anything to stop their deadly work?

With regard to violating the rights of mother and child, I can assure you this is not the case. These images of abortion that you saw were lawfully obtained from abortion clinics. If you go to the Holocaust museum, or if you open up any book about the Holocaust, you will see stacks and stacks of dead Jews and other victims of the Nazi death machine. I am not aware of any serious assertion that these photographs should not be shown because the victims didn’t give consent, or that the Holocaust Museum should be closed, or that history books should be removed from the shelves because the pictures they show violate the rights of the dead victims. To the contrary, I would argue that victims of injustice always want their plight to be known.

I find it curious that you would be so concerned about the rights of a dead baby not to have his picture printed on a sign, but not visibly concerned about this child’s right not to be killed in the first place. I think killing a baby is worse than showing a photo of a dead baby.

You say that abortion is traumatic, psychologically distressing, an awful experience, induces constant regret, etc. (your words). You are right to be concerned about the post-abortive woman who needs healing from past abortion(s). But what about the pre-abortive woman? Should we not have compassion for her as well? She is the one who will have an abortion next week, next month, or next year, unless somebody intervenes on behalf of her baby and herself. Shouldn’t we show her the truth so that she can avoid all of this pain in the first place? Who else is showing her the truth about who the baby is and what abortion does? The abortion industry? The education system? The so-called “pro-life” church? At CBR, we are doing everything we can to help her avoid the trauma, distress, and guilt (your words) that follow abortion.  Dr. Alveda King wrote, “As a woman who has had two abortions, I am grateful that the truth is being shown, so that others can avoid this pain in the first place.”

Of course, we must all care for the needs of the woman who has already had an abortion. Many such women have told me that seeing photos of abortion were an important part of the healing process.  Encourage your post-abortive friends to take the first step toward healing by visiting the caring people at the Hope Resource Center and taking advantage of their Restoring Hearts program (www.restoringhearts.org).  (NOTE: I’m pretty sure that women who participate in Restoring Hearts will NOT be shown graphic abortion images.)

You say we take abortion lightly when we display the truth of abortion for all to see. To the contrary, we take abortion lightly when we sweep it under the rug and allow the cycle of violence against babies and moms to continue unabated.

Thank you again for your e-mails and letters.  I hope I have adequately addressed your concerns.  Perhaps you don’t agree with us on every point, but hopefully I have given you food for thought.  Please feel free to reply with your comments and questions.

C. Fletcher Armstrong, PhD
Director, Southeast Region
Center for Bio-Ethical Reform

What the world really needs is another blog … mine!  This blog is all about what interests ME!  Which is probably what interests YOU, … otherwise you wouldn’t be here.  Here are some of the topics that we will talk about:

• I’m the Southeast Director of the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), so we’ll talk about pro-life stuff.  Go look at www.ProLifeOnCampus.com.
• Government is important to all of us, so we’ll talk about political stuff, particularly as it relates to the pro-life movement.
• I’m a die-hard SEC football fan, but we can’t talk about that here.  Compared to abortion and politics, SEC football is way too controversial.  Perhaps we can talk about the Western Division, because I don’t have many supporters over there yet, so I don’t care if I offend them.  But as soon as people in Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama start writing checks to ProLifeOnCampus.com, we’ll have to cut it out.

Yes, abortion is a very serious issue.  What it does to children, women, men, and families is no joke.  But in a world full of tragedy, we will try to find a bit of humor.  We will joke about life, love, politics, and (most of all) ourselves.  Sarcasm and flippancy are two of my spiritual gifts, and you will find them on display here.

This blog is my own.  The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of CBR, its management, its principals, its employees, or the boss’s wife.

This blog is also about what interests YOU — why else would you visit? — so I want to do something a bit different for YOU.  Each week, I want to answer one question about the pro-life issue, government, sports, or whatever.  I’ll talk to my web guys about setting that up.  You submit the questions; and each week I’ll pick out one question to answer in a blog post.  I’m hoping you will ask questions about the pro-life movement (apologetics, strategy, current events, etc.), but I’ll take questions on politics, sports, or whatever.  But keep in mind that questions of interest to more people will have a higher chance of getting selected.

There will be a place to comment on each blog post.  Here are the rules for commenting:

• It is my blog so I will put up or take down whatever I want.
• I don’t mind dissenting opinion but keep it clean, respectful and on topic.
• Constructive criticism is welcome, but if all you have is insults or you like to go overboard, save it and put it up on your own blog because it won’t go up here.
• If you go overboard, I won’t add to your comment but I may edit out what is excessively. offensive and put up the rest.  If you can not control yourself I will ban you.
• Constructive criticism is welcome on bills I am talking about.
• If you want your comment to be off the record, just send a message to me from www.ProLifeOnCampus.com.