Posted on 01/10/2013 9:41:48 AM PST by Morgana
A pro-life group has released the graphic images today of a woman who was killed in a botched legal abortion. The group says they are some of the first images ever seen publicly of a woman who was brutalized by an abortion that claimed her life.
When 18-year-old Marla Cardamone was killed having an abortion at a Pennsylvania hospital, her mother, Deborah, vowed that she would never let her daughter be forgotten. Then, late last year, she approached the pro-life group Life Dynamics and asked the group’s president Mark Crutcher to help her show the public the risks women face when they submit to abortions.
Today, Life Dynamics is releasing a new brochure revealing what happened to Marla and her unborn son, including ghastly photos from Marla’s autopsy. The organization has also created a new website SafeandLegal.com that features the images and more information on how botched legal abortions kill and injure women.
“The pro-life movement has never had images to illustrate the unimaginable brutality and ugliness of women being killed in America’s “Safe and Legal” abortion clinics. But those days are over,” Crutcher told LifeNews. “We are going to show America what it looks like when women climb onto a table in one of these places and end up on an autopsy table a few hours later.”
“These images are a powerful new weapon unlike anything the pro-life movement has ever had before. Because of Deborah’s courage, we finally have the ability to expose one of the pro-choice lobby’s dirtiest little secrets,” Crutcher continued. “And that is exactly what Life Dynamics is committed to doing. Starting today, we are sending a clear and unmistakable message to Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry that they will no longer be allowed to kill the Marla Cardamones of this world and then just walk away from them like they never existed.”
Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, which is co-sponsoring this project along with Operation Rescue and Life Dynamics, also talked about the new images.
He said, in 1996 that then-President Bill Clinton famously said he would like to see abortion “safe, legal and rare.” Seventeen years later, abortion remains legal. It kills more than a million unborn babies a year, so it is certainly not rare. And as a new project called “Safe & Legal” demonstrates, abortion is not safe for women, he continued.
“We are bringing graphic visuals to the truth that abortion harms women,” he told LifeNews.
“I am grateful to Marla’s mom, Deborah, and her husband for their full support of this project and their permission to use these photos,” said Fr. Pavone. “As they know, this project isn’t just about Marla; it’s about the countless women Marla represents, who are killed by abortion without the world ever knowing.”
This past July, Priests for Life and its Director of African-American Outreach, Alveda King, helped bring attention to a young mother, Tonya Reaves, who was killed after a botched second-trimester abortion in Chicago.
“The utter failure of the abortionist to get help for Tonya after she developed complications constitutes nothing less than murder,” Fr. Pavone explained.
“We ask everyone to get involved and to spread the truth about Marla and others killed and wounded by abortion,” said Fr. Frank. “As Deborah Cardamone has said often, we have to speak, because if we are silent, we are part of the problem.”
The grandmother is doing a very good thing and it will help bring to light what abortion really is.
The grandmother is doing a very good thing and it will help bring to light what abortion really is.
I’ve watched local pro-life groups save literally thousands of children by practicing the kindness you despise. That includes seeing them close a clinic in Rockford, IL that was killing several kids a week and ain’t coming back. One thing that’s interesting is that when the sidewalk people spoke compassionately to (in your words “coddled”) the “patients,” the clinic’s owner would try to drown them out with loud music or a truck’s backup alarm. Strange...he knew that if we “coddled” these girls, they would less likely, not more likely, to go through with an abortion. But hey, I guess he knew less about it than you after he was in the abortion business for 35 years or so.
Also, I’ve seen the number of clinics in this country shrink dramatically from sidewalk counselors, crisis pregnancy centers and other activists doing pretty much the exact opposite of what you’re selling.
In short, I’ve held babies that were saved from abortion because people started with compassion and delivered truth.
Meanwhile, I’ve never seen your approach work. Tell me, do you spend a lot of time at abortion clinics yelling “MURDERER!” at passing women? If not, why not? If so, how’s that working out for you?
Have you ever held a baby who was born because you went up to a girl in a tough spot who had already been victimized and represented Jesus to her by attacking her? “Hey, you wicked heartless murdering so-and-so, listen to me while I tell you what’s really up.” Yeah, I can so see that working.
Then there’s the basic core of your premise, which is that if a young woman is told someone died a messy death doing something she is considering and shown a picture of the woman in question lying on a slab, she will only be deterred by that if someone has also called her a heartless murderer. Brilliant.
Your comments remind me of the things a certain person who was at the clinic in Rockford every time it opened had to say. She was the head nurse. She called the patients trash and whores and said the biggest mistake area pro-lifers were making was thinking these women were worth the time or compassion. And she said that as a compliment; she felt the sidewalk counselors should be doing something else with our time.
So yeah, I won’t be taking any advice from you. What you’re purveying is garbage and you had better quit. Time is short.
I guess you’d say that smuggling Jews out of Germany was the solution, and massing an army to halt the slaughter was a bad idea.
No wonder the need for the pro-life movement persists.
I notice you didn’t answer my question about what you’re doing about it. I think we both know why, but you’re not willing to admit it to yourself, much less me.
Go find someone gullible to sell your garbage to.
FYI - the Safeandlegal.com web site is down, purportedly for “scheduled maintenance”.
No, I don’t think we both do. But I’ll explain it so you will:
Personal testimonials about “all I’ve done and how uber-successful my methods are” are worth less than the bits used to transmit them, and prove even less than your ad hominem fallacies do.
Though they certainly do tug nicely at the heart-strings - which is about all the pro-life movement has become after years of this tear-jerking molly-coddling.
Fewer abortions, fewer clinics and saved children. That is what we have produced.
You have produced bits on a website, and managed to remind me strongly of a person who kills babies for a living. Surely you speak the words of life!
Reread your tagline and apply it to yourself. Oh, and go find someone gullible to sell your garbage to.
I’ve seen autopsies and autopsy pictures before for various causes of death. I don’t think an abortion should have resulted in all the bruising on her leg and arm. Any guesses from medical people?
Okay, carry on then. Wouldn’t want you calling abortion what it is, nor calling these women what they are. Other women might decide on their own that they don’t want to be murderers, and then they wouldn’t need you any more.
Better to lambast the hirees anyway, right? Kinda makes you feel like the knight in shining armor, riding in on your white charger to save them from the evil Planned Parenthood villain who’s abducted them and now threatens to rip their babies from their wombs. (I guess everybody needs to feel useful.)
You’re in no danger of “working yourself out of a job”, so don’t lose any sleep over that. Just keep peddling that “absolve-the-perp” line to the bleeding-hearts. It’s good for business.
He’ll send a form letter, no doubt....
What we have here is person A who hired person B to kill person C.
In the process person A accidentally got killed.
Yet we are supposed to consider person A as being equally a victim as person B?
I understand the political rationale behind making the “mother” a victim rather than a perpetrator, but that doesn’t change the obvious facts.
It appears to me to be an extreme version of “the woman is always a victim, no matter what she does” meme.
Whenever a woman kills her kids, we are flooded with stories explaining how she was pushed into doing so by post-partum depression, stress, an abusive or inconsiderate husband, etc.
But when a man kills his kids, we NEVER see any sympathetic stories about what may have “driven” him to do so. Leaving the distinct impression that he was just an evil man.
It’s the difference between the way men and women who have committed identical actions are portrayed that I object to.
Should be: Yet we are supposed to consider person A as being equally a victim as person C?
Sorry, alphabetical confusion.
You’re absolutely right; nobody can argue with what you’ve said.
But you may as well be shouting into the wind as to make that point around her. When the deaf ears of the FR pro-lifers realize it’s clear that you’re right and they’re wrong, why then you’ll be challenged to produce your baby-saving record to be compared against theirs. And if you can’t tell a good heart-rending, tear-jerking tale of heroism in the face of Planned Parenthood, well then it’s “shut yer piehole and move along, fella.”
It’s a sad state of affairs, and betrays less-than-noble motives among some within the pro-life ranks.
We have over 700 of these death camps in this country, they have killed more people than Hitler and Stalin. All in the name of the right to choose. Welcome to the leftists’ world of freedom.
You may not believe it, but I am filled with sadness for you right now. You are a whitewashed tomb filled with dead men’s bones and you are crowing it from the rooftops.
What a waste.
I’ve watched local pro-life groups save literally thousands of children by practicing the kindness you despise. That includes seeing them close a clinic in Rockford, IL that was killing several kids a week and ain’t coming back. One thing that’s interesting is that when the sidewalk people spoke compassionately to (in your words “coddled”) the “patients,” the clinic’s owner would try to drown them out with loud music or a truck’s backup alarm. Strange...he knew that if we “coddled” these girls, they would less likely, not more likely, to go through with an abortion. But hey, I guess he knew less about it than you after he was in the abortion business for 35 years or so.
Also, I’ve seen the number of clinics in this country shrink dramatically from sidewalk counselors, crisis pregnancy centers and other activists doing pretty much the exact opposite of what you’re selling.
In short, I’ve held babies that were saved from abortion because people started with compassion and delivered truth.
Meanwhile, I’ve never seen your approach work. Tell me, do you spend a lot of time at abortion clinics yelling “MURDERER!” at passing women? If not, why not? If so, how’s that working out for you?
I guess you’d say that smuggling Jews out of Germany was the solution, and massing an army to halt the slaughter was a bad idea.
You think "calling them what they are" is analogous to massing an army to halt the slaughter?
First, go back and read what I and others have written to him. Did any of us say that the mother did no wrong or has no guilt?
Second, note how the whole idea he expresses is a strawman. The idea is that we excuse every wrong thing the poor little miss ever did and believe (and tell her) that she was pretty much abducted off the street by monsters and forced to have an abortion.
Third, how is it that saying to a woman "You could end up like this if you have an abortion" absolves her of the wrong in the act? For example, if we showed high school kids the autopsy photos of drunk drivers, are we saying, "this guy was a victim" or are we saying, "Don't end up like this fool?"
Notice, BTW, that the whole rationale for calling this girl in the brochure a murderer is that if we call her a victim or don't call her anything and just lay out the facts, girls will still want to have abortions and be like her. But if we call her a murderer, they will say, "I was willing to be victimized or dead, but I wouldn't want to be a dead murderer, so I'll never have an abortion." Does that make sense?
Fourth, forget a political rationale, because that isn't the point, and no matter what we say the Ledties and their media allies will say we're condemning women and abusing them. The point is a ministry rationale. On the one hand, Jesus did not relate to sinners the way the garbage purveyor upthread is saying we must relate to them. Take a look at how He handled the Samaritan woman at the well, for instance. He didn't excuse her behavior, but He didn't go Gunnery Sergeant Hartman on her about her being slutty. He portrayed the truth of the situation and the road out. That's what speaking the truth in love is. The gospels do not record any conversations He may have had with the woman who poured perfume on His feet, but is there any real thought in your mind that he approached her sin in the same way LearsFool is saying we must approach the sin of some girl who is thinking about having an abortion?
I serve a Lord that wouldn't even condemn the guys torturing him to death, but to do that I'm supposed to go hammer and tongs on some scared 15 year old instead of saying, "You will ruin your life if you do this, there are other options?"
Fourth, even if we take that approach, we're supposed to direct more ire toward the woman who is killing one person than the person who is killing dozens on a weekly basis?
Fifth, do you really think these women don't realize that they are killing another human being? There are some who don't because they've been told the "lump of cells" crap, but even they know it's wrong, that you don't get pregnant with a fish or a tomato. The Samaritan woman at the well knew she was a fornicator who had a screwed up life, too.
Basically, the premises being put forward don't make any sense on their face, and they sure as shooting aren't biblical.
Thank you for your cordial reply.
Sorry, but I don’t fully buy into your explanations, which do indeed seem to me to be an attempt to make the “mother” an additional victim rather than the co-conspirator with the abortionist, indeed initiator, of the abortion.
I quite agree that she is often victimized by our society and its misplaced sense of values, and that the perpetrator of a single killing is not AS guilty as he who kills dozens, hundreds or thousands. But we seldom apply that rationale in the case of those who kill born people, implying that those who kill only one should largely get a pass since others massacre entire schoolrooms full of kiddies.
I am also not averse to the idea of compassion for those who are vulnerable, and a young pregnant woman is one of the most vulnerable in our society. The only person I can think of who is even more vulnerable is, ironically, the person in her womb.
But I do indeed see a widespread attempt by pro-life people to absolve the “mother” of responsibility for her actions and the harm it has caused. And I think this is largely, though doubtless not exclusively, driven by the accurate political perception that any movement that properly characterizes the actions of the “mother” will go nowhere politically. That absolving the “mother” will help the movement and therefore save more lives in the long run. I cannot argue with that contention. It is probably correct.
Not being myself particularly involved in the politics, and having the benefit of being anonymous on this forum, I can express my beliefs as to what I think is the truth.
Which is that if abortion is the killing of a human person, which I believe it is, then all those participating are guilty of that killing.
The term “murderer,” as you probably know, has specific legal and cultural connotations that may not fully apply in such cases, so I don’t toss it around. But abortion is still the killing of an utterly innocent human being. And whether the word is used or not, it’s an awful thing.
I’ve been very blunt here, and I hope you can appreciate that my opinions are not expressed in a spirit of hatred or contempt. Even abortionists are not necessarily intentionally evil, as I suspect most of them fully believe what they are doing is right.
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