Andy Stephenson and Kathryn Sloane of Worthing, West Sussex, display CBR abortion photo.

Andy Stephenson and Kathryn Sloane of CBR UK were arrested for displaying an abortion photo outside a publicly-funded abortion clinic in Brighton, England. The story (link here) appeared in the London Telegraph, along with this photo (right).  This is the first time a major British newspaper (with a global readership, we might add) has published a photo of a first-trimester abortion. It is sure to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

The richest element of the story is not only the fact that the complainants who called the police were the abortion clinic staff, but also that these abortionists were “concerned” that aborting mothers “… entering the clinic felt traumatised and upset” by photos which showed them what the clinic was about to do to their babies!  They make this incriminating admission without a hint of ironic awareness.

Even more paradoxically, Ann Furedi, the abortion clinic director “… said she fully supported the right of pro-life activists to demonstrate against abortion clinics” but only so long as they don’t show mothers the evil atrocities Ms. Furedi is committing inside the clinic.  She condones a pro-life presence which allows aborting mothers to feel good about what they are about to do but condemns “… actions that are designed to distress people who are accessing legal, medical services.”  Abortion can only thrive in secrecy because secrecy allows everyone to pretend that the baby isn’t really a baby and abortion isn’t really a vicious act of violence.

FAB is indebted to Dr. Frank Joseph for this excellent essay.  Please comment below!

Debating Abortion on the political stage: Carly Fioriana blew it

Carly Fiorina had a golden opportunity to blow Barbara Boxer out of the water in their California senatorial debate, but she blew it.

An abortion question was asked by a member of the panel, and of course, Boxer went according to script. Said Boxer (paraphrasing and making it short), “I am for a woman’s right to choose.” Never saying the word abortion. “Women shouldn’t have to go to jail if Roe v Wade is overturned, and that’s what Fiorina wants.”

To begin with, this is a lie. Women would not go to jail. They didn’t before Roe and they won’t if Roe is overturned. Democrats just have to lie, just like they did in the 1960s when they said that 5,000 – 10,000 women died every year from back-alley, coat-hanger abortions. Even NARAL founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson now admints that it was a willful lie. The year before Roe, only 39 such deaths were reported to the CDC. Anyhow, only the person who kills the child (the abortion doctor) would be breaking the law and put in jail if Roe is overturned.

Fiorina did not call Boxer on this lie. She did say she is pro-life, but she never mentioned that Boxer not only supports the killing of unborn children, she supports this killing for the entire nine months of pregnancy. She even supports partial-birth abortions, which 75% of the American people oppose. According to polls, more people identify themselves as pro-life than pro-choice (to kill unborn children).

They each had 2 minutes for their final summations. In her statement, Boxer again brought up a woman’s “right to choose” and again falsely stated women would go to jail if Fiorina had her way and Roe was overturned. She kept pounding on that issue.

It seems that when Democrats are in a debate, they go for the throat. Maybe Republicans just don’t want to hurt the feelings of Democrats. I think they just don’t get it.

Fiorina should have mentioned that Boxer lied about women going to jail if Roe is overturned. She should have also said that women who do not have their child killed would decrease their risk of getting breast cancer and decrease their risk of drug and alcohol abuse as well as suicides.

She could have even mentioned that abortions increase the risk of premature babies in subsequent pregnancies, resulting in low birth weights. Such children are more prone to develop physical and mental problems, including cerebral palsy.

She could also have said that she favor’s a woman’s reproductive rights, but when reproduction is over, that is where she draws the line. She could have mentioned that Boxer even supported killing babies while they are being born, at which time they would suffer excruciating pain. As Boxer repeated over and over again what little ammunition she had, Fiorina should have mentioned this over and over again. Sometimes, you have to fight fire with fire.

Kristan Hawkins, Director, Students for Life of America

You know about our Pro Life on Campus (GAP) display.  We have displayed this project more than 150 times on major college campuses all over the USA.  But we do more than that.

Today, pro-life college students have flocked to Knoxville to learn how to be more effective on their own campuses.  Peggy English of Silent No More has just wrapped up her talk.  I’ll be speaking later this morning about the history of social reform.

Social reformers of history used images to show the humanity of the victim and the horrifying nature of the crime.  They confronted the culture.  They were willing to accept persecution.  I will be showing students how they can put these principles to work on campus.

We are indebted to Shirley Moore of Knoxville for this excellent essay.

They were accused of disturbing the peace in the churches, a peace [William Lloyd] Garrison did not believe they were entitled to enjoy.

Are you an extremist?

Extremists, self-righteous, judgmental, violent (or the cause of violence). These terms, familiar to pro-lifers, were also applied to the 19th Century abolitionists, and most particularly to William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator. He renewed an anti-slavery movement that had languished during the first part of the 19th Century and agitated against slavery from 1829 until it was abolished at the time of the Civil War.

Because he challenged the core morality of the US and because he never lost sight of the moral issues (the sanctity of life, the equality of the races, and the obligation of Christians to oppose slavery), he was hated, mocked in newspapers, and persecuted throughout his life. However, he had a loving family and loyal circle of friends.

After a century and half, at least one book has given him his just due: All On Fire by Henry Mayer. Mayer is a veteran of the 60s-era Civil Rights Movement. Few books have been written about Garrison because the image of him as a “holier-than-thou nut” has persisted to this day. He put justice above peace and has never been forgiven by the culture he challenged.

As many pro-lifers experience today, the churches of the 19th Century despised abolitionists. They were perhaps “too” Christian for the men and women in the pews. They were accused of disturbing the peace in the churches, a peace Garrison did not believe they were entitled to enjoy. Like many pro-lifers, they were “outsiders” in their own congregations and parishes.

Sometimes, being effective and being liked are incompatible.  In social reform movements, this is almost always the case.  Which will  you choose?

Training prepares students to articulate and respectfully defend the pro-life position.

CBR Southeast announces a new page on Facebook that will focus on our pro-life apologetics training.

Our Pro Life Training Academy (PLTA) is an ourtreach primarily to Christian/pro-life college and high-school students, but even experienced activists will benefit from the training.

Pro-life youth are a critical group because they are the future leaders of the movement. More immediately, they wield enormous influence on their peers, particularly when they are trained and equipped.

Please go “Like” our new page at www.facebook.com/ProLifeTraining.

A full-day seminar prepares the student to articulate and respectfully defend the pro-life position, even before hostile audiences. Role-playing exercises allow the student to practice for real-life encounters.  For students ready to take the next step, CBR’s Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) provides a unique opportunity for on-the-job training (www.facebook.com/ProLifeOnCampus).

In addition to the training pro-life advocates, the PLTA unites pro-lifers behind common goals of education, training, and outreach. Community pro-life advocates host, promote, and participate in the training. Target audiences include college pro-life groups, Church youth groups, Christian high schools, pro-life agencies, and pro-life volunteers.

CBR and the local community stakeholders work jointly to fund community-wide training.

Here is Dr. Alveda King speaking at the Jefferson Memorial at the Restoring Honor Rally on August 28, 2010.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtNscI-DiQI

You can watch the entire rally here.  Glenn Beck said early media reports indicated that “over a thousand” people were in attendance!

Pastor Cecil Clark of True Vine Baptist Church outside an abortion clinic in Knoxville.

“Would you look at that?” he said, as we stood on the U of Louisville campus. Pastor Dave Daubenmire and I watched as professional pro-aborts desperately denied the truth staring them in the face.  The students weren’t buying it.

“Every time Christians show up with the truth, we win.”  But then Pastor Dave hit me where it hurts, “The only problem is, we Christians usually don’t show up.” 

Jesus said the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18), but can we really apply that verse when the Church does nothing?

The biggest example of this is abortion. We have abortion in American because the “pro-life” church isn’t showing up. I’m not talking about the churches that are officially pro-abortion.  I’m talking about just the churches you and I attend.

If you are reading this, you probably attend a church that claims to be “pro-life.”  But is it really?  An easy test to perform:

1. Go to the nearest abortion clinic when the killing is going on.  Count the number of your pastors/elders/church leaders that show up.
2. Go to the next meeting of any pro-life endeavor in your community and count the number of your pastors/elders/church leaders that show up.
3. Take a look at the budget of your church and add up the money spent on stopping abortion. Then add up the money spent on church-run sports programs. Then add up the money spent on making the music better on Sunday morning. If you add it up all over Knoxville, where I live, it will be a few thousand dollars to stop abortion, hundreds of thousands to run sports programming, and millions of dollars on the Sunday morning music. I’m not knocking music or sports, but I am wondering why full-time professionals are hired to run sports and music programs in almost every major church, but almost zero staff time is ever devoted to help stop killing babies.  That despite the fact that approximately 1 in 5 women who aborts her baby identifies herself as a “born-again” or “evangelical” Christian.
4. Take a look at the required core education curriculum of your church. It has to be on paper (or online) or it doesn’t count. Look for the mandated requirements for teaching middle and high-school students about abortion. Are there any such requirements? No? Then is it any wonder why so many of our children have abortions?
5. As you evaluate the pro-life education requirements at your church, find out if photos/videos of aborted babies are mandated as part of the published curriculum. We hear from the students who grew up in “pro-life” churches all the time.  Just recently, two student government leaders at Liberty University told me they were not commited pro-lifers until I showed them pictures of abortion.  The “pro-life” church had hidden the truth from them, and they had never known nor cared because they had never seen.

So, is your church “pro-life”?  What are you going to do about it?

What would Jesus do?

P.S.  A pastor recently told me that his church “works through” the local CPC that some of their members helped to start 20 years ago. Not sure what that means, but I do know it ain’t much. They were not interested in doing anything more.  I can tell you that babies are dying in that church, but the pastor believes that their only responsibility to those babies is to send a few dollars to a pregnancy center across town.  If I ever have a heart attack, I hope I’m not sitting in that church!

Baby saved at the University of Tennessee.

We are pleased to announce that a generous donor is willing to match your gift to CBR-SE / Pro Life on Campus.  Not once.  Not twice.  But three times!

3-FOR-1 MATCHING PROGRAM!

That means for every $1 you provide, we receive $4 to save babies and moms.

Here’s how it works.  When you sign up for an automatic monthly gift, our anonymous donor will match your first month’s gift—his $3 for every $1 you commit.  Example: you give $60/month, our donor gives $180 today!  Your $60 puts $240 to work saving babies and moms, right now!  No gift will go unmatched; your $10 puts $40 to work!  Please give now, before our donor goes broke and it’s too late!   Here’s the page link.  Then hit “Monthly DONATION” and provide the requested information over our secure connection. 

Please pass this along to all your pro-life friends.  If you care about saving babies and moms, this deal is too good to miss.

Appalachian State students plan their pro-life year

Please forward this link to every pro-life student you know.

CBR / Pro Life on Campus and the Students for Life of America (SFLA) announce the 5th Annual Pro-Life Student Leadership Conference, to be held on September 10-11, 2010 in Knoxville, Tennessee.  The theme for this years conference is Sharpening Your Focus to Cultivate a Pro-Life Campus.  For more information, click here.

This Conference is about how to make your student pro-life group more effective on your campus.  We show you how to:

1. select projects that work,
2. recruit members to grow,
3. raise money to pay for projects,
4. assert your First Amendment rights when they are threatened, and
5. maximize media exposure.

Put them all together, and you have a comprehensive pro-life action plan for your campus.

In short, we give you the entire tool-box you need to make a huge and ongoing impact on your campus. If you do the things we teach, you will be the most talked-about student group on campus within a year, and number 2 won’t even be close.  And we back that up with a money-back guarantee.  Who else does that?  And who else offers a conference for only $10, and that includes housing and meals?!

 You can get more information and register here.  Deadline for reserving free housing is August 28, so call now.

Check out this video on media fraud at the annual March for Life in Washington, DC.  Look for the CBR truth truck!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8knMYK-IX4U

I am stunned.  This is the best and most encouraging pro-life story I’ve seen in a long time.  I’m speechless.  Check it out.

Not only are the Midland Catholics for Life doing a GREAT job, one TV station is willing to cover it.

Its right out of the CBR playbook.  Educate people about the horrifying reality of abortion, and do it in such a way that compels the media to cover it.  Create conflict—not uncontrolled conflict, but modulated conflict—that draws attention to the plight of the preborn child.  Media might not like us, but they can’t resist conflict.  Thank you Midland Catholics for Life!

The abortion photos on the billboard came from CBR.  We provide graphic images to pro-life groups all over the world who (1) comply with our non-violence policy condemning all abortion-related violence and refusing to associate with groups or individuals who fail to condemn such violence, and (2) agree not to alter the images.

We give all glory to God, and we are so thankful he is using us in this way.  Please share in our blessing by $upporting our work!

One of our wonderful supporters asked me how to respond to people who excused themselves from doing even the smallest thing to stop the killing (e.g, attend a pro-life event or contribute financially) by saying that “everybody has a different calling” or “it’s just one of many causes.”  I suggested she might respond this way:

10-week (1st-trimester) hand on quarter

Regarding my request that you help with a pro-life activity that I am planning, you responded by saying that “not everyone has the same calling and that this is just one good cause out of many that you might help.” In addressing these statements, I need to ask you if you believe that every abortion kills a human baby? If not, then please say so because I don’t want to waste your time or mine. But if you agree every abortion kills a baby, then our nation is killing 1.2 million children every year. Do you really believe that stopping a Holocaust of this magnitude is just “one of many causes”? Can any Christian really do nothing at all?

There is some truth in your statement that God calls different people to different ministries. However, what would we say about a German Christian who did nothing to obey God’s commandment to protect and deliver the helpless being led away to slaughter (Proverbs 24: 11-12)? We might give that person a break, because for him, doing something might have meant execution.  But what would we think of Germans who claimed to be Christian and did nothing to help stop the killing of Jews, if we knew it wouldn’t have been personally dangerous? I think we might have asked the same question that Martin Luther King, Jr. asked when he reflected on White Southerners who did nothing to stop racism.  Dr. King asked ” What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices …?”

What do we say about the Priest and the Levite who passed the robbery victim on the side of the road (Luke 10-30-37)? I have heard many sermons on this parable, but never have I heard any pastor excuse the Priest and Levite by saying that perhaps they “had a different calling.”

What would we say of the person who saw a child drowning in a neighbor’s swimming pool and responded by saying, “I have never felt called by God to save drowning children, and it is, after all, only one of many good deeds I might do today.”

I am not trying to rearrange your life. But I am asking that you do something important for me. [What comes next depends on what you want the person to do.]

• [Help with a project:] If you agree that abortion kills a human baby, I am asking for a few hours of your time. Your small investment in this project will save babies that would otherwise be killed.  Because a real baby’s life is at stake, I am compelled to ask you to reconsider and assist me with this project. Specifically, I want you to … (summarize the request). May I call you tomorrow?
• [Financial assistance:] If you agree that abortion kills a human baby, I am asking you to consider a small monthly financial commitment to help stop the killing. If you have cable TV, I wonder if you would consider a monthly gift equal to your cable TV bill. But any amount will save babies’ lives if it is offered regularly (monthly). May I call you tomorrow?

What do you think?  Would this change anybody?  Did it change you?  If so, please click here!

Time Magazine has actually endorsed CBR/ProLifeOnCampus tactics! They published a photo of Aisha to (1) show people an injustice they could barely imagine and (2) communicate truth on an emotional level as well as a factual level. Sound familiar? That’s because we display photos of abortion victims for the very same reasons.

Time published the photo to support Obama’s Afghanistan policy (see earlier post).  But more relevant to our pro-life work was the statement by Richard Stengel, Managing Editor of Time.  I’ve extracted his most pertinent remarks:

Our cover image this week is powerful, shocking and disturbing.

I’m acutely aware that this image will be seen by children, who will undoubtedly find it distressing. We have consulted with a number of child psychologists about its potential impact. Some think children are so used to seeing violence in the media that the image will have little effect, but others believe that children will find it very scary and distressing — that they will see it, as Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston, said, as “a symbol of bad things that can happen to people.”

I showed it to my two young sons, 9 and 12, who both immediately felt sorry for Aisha and asked why anyone would have done such harm to her. [Who can forget the words of little 3-yr-old Donn Garton, who asked his mother Jean, “Who broke the baby?“—FAB]

But bad things do happen to people, and it is part of our job to confront and explain them.

The image is a window into the reality of what is happening… I would rather confront … than ignore. … I would rather people know that reality as they make up their minds …

We do it to illuminate what is actually happening … Our job is to provide context and perspective … What you see in these pictures and our story is … a combination of emotional truth and insight into … the consequences of the important decisions …

Wow.  We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Christians see abortion for the first time.

We hear it all the time:

I’m a Christian.  I grew up in the church.  Our pastor may have said that he was pro-life, but I thought it should be a woman’s choice.  But now that I’m seeing your pictures, I know now that abortion is killing a baby.

How, you ask, can this happen?  It’s because the church is doing nothing to expose abortion, even among it’s own people.  Ask yourself this question:

When is the last time the pastor of my church showed us what abortion looked like?  When is the last time he showed abortion photos to our youth?

If the answers are “no” and “never”, then you know why 1 in 5 women who abort their babies identify themselves as “born again” or “evangelical” Christians.  The abortion rate among practicing Catholics is just as great.

This is intolerable, so we at CBR are doing something about it.  Over the weekend, we took our Matthew 28:20 pictures to the Harvest Crusade at Angel Stadium.  Tens of thousands of people saw the pictures as they entered and exited the stadium.  See pictures here.

Christians need to see abortion and work to stop it. Who will show them the truth?

There are three adverse conditions that must be corrected:

1. Christians need to know, and most of them don’t.
2. Christians need to work to stop the killing, and most don’t.
3. The Church needs to lead, and it doesn’t.

Unilaterally, we are able to correct only Item 1.  By God’s grace, we can show Christians the truth.  If we are willing to do that, we pray that the Holy Spirit will do the rest.

From Dan Becker, President of Georgia Right to Life:

Thanks much for your notice of our endorsement criteria.  It actually is one of the toughest in the nation.

Many people assume that having such strict standards would actually marginalize our influence.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We began this practice over ten years ago.  Today, the majority of publicly elected legislators in the state of Georgia hold to “life of the mother ONLY” exception.  In the last decade we went from the bottom of the list of states ranked by Americans United for Life (AUL) for its pro-life legislation to our current rating of 8th in the nation.

In the current race for Governor, 6 of 7 candidates supported our position AND support a Personhood Amendment to our Georgia Constitution.

We in the pro-life movement have been misled by our leaders in thinking that a biblicaly based, principled approach to politics is not achievable.  We have demonstrated otherwise.  We are proving that politicians “only see the light when they feel the heat.”

Thanks for all you are doing to end abortion in our day.

For the Sanctity of all life in the 21st century,
Dan Becker, President
Georgia Right to Life

(Note:  Dan Becker, President of Georgia Right to Life, left a longer version of the above as a comment on a previous FAB posting.  We thought his comments were important enough to warrant a reposting for wider visibility. — FAB)