More Friendly Fire

It is easy to understand why America's death merchants go berserk whenever someone shows the graphic images of abortion in public. After all, they are smart enough to know that abortion – like any other form of killing – is a lot easier for the public to stomach if no one sees it but the killer. So they put up this façade of compassion and whine that seeing these pictures could inflict emotional trauma on women who've had abortions.

Unfortunately, a certain number of pro-lifers have even bought into this nonsense and are now imploring the rest of us not to use these pictures. Never mind that graphic images turned public opinion against the Vietnam War. Never mind that, for the last fifty years, graphic images have been distributed worldwide to show the horrors of Nazi Germany. Never mind that they are routinely used to document the realities of slavery, lynching, animal abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse, drunk driving and the list goes on and on.

The point is that graphic images have been crucial in many socio-political venues for the same reason they are now being used to further the pro-life cause. Simply put, they expose truths that words cannot. But for some mysterious reason, when it comes to defending the most helpless victims of the most barbaric crime against humanity in world history, suddenly graphic images are offensive and insulting.

There is another curious issue at play here. Whenever the pro-life movement pushes for legislation that would give women more information or more time to consider their decision, the abortion lobby starts screaming that we are patronizing women. Their claim is that these are modern, confident, fully informed women who already know exactly what they are doing and are simply exercising control over their own lives. The curious part is why, after the abortion is over, these same powerful women become fragile little doe-like waifs who have to be protected from seeing the realities of their own actions. Apparently, we're supposed to just blindly accept that, "I am woman hear me roar" spontaneously morphs into, "I am woman hear me whimper" at the moment these women climb down off the abortionist's table.

Look, let's cut to the chase here. It may be true that seeing these images will emotionally traumatize some women. In fact, you'd have to be as soulless and morally bankrupt as the abortion lobby itself not to recognize that possibility. The relevant issue, however, is that these pictures don't traumatize women who have not had abortions. So clearly, it is not the pictures of abortion that cause emotional damage but the abortion itself. If that were not the case, the psychological effect of these images would be the same on women who've had abortions as those who have not. And no one is suggesting that is the case.

My contention is that when some mouthpiece for the abortion industry says that seeing pictures of what they have done could traumatize women who've had abortions, it is because they understand that their survival depends on keeping their customers and the public in the dark. But if I am wrong, then there is a perfect way to resolve this whole issue. If these people are legitimately concerned about post-aborted women being traumatized by these images, why don't they show them to their customers before they give them their abortions? That way, no woman would ever again submit to an abortion without knowing exactly what she is doing and those who might be traumatized by it could make another "choice" before it's too late.

Of course, that is the very reason this solution will never be adopted. Abortion profiteers know that many, if not the majority, of their customers would run out the door like their hair was on fire if they saw beforehand what an abortion looks like. That is why the abortion lobby is so threatened by the graphic pictures. The fact is, they're not worried about how these images might traumatize their past customers; they're worried about how they might frighten-off their future customers. So their strategy is to blame the staggering emotional trauma of abortion on the people who tried to prevent those abortions in the first place. The mind-numbing part of all this is that they have actually been able to recruit allies from within the pro-life movement.