Posted on 12/11/2012 4:16:04 PM PST by Morgana
ONTARIO, 11 December, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An illustrated graphic released by one of Canada’s leading national newspapers is being welcomed by pro-life activists after it showed life-sized illustrations of unborn children next to statistics about how many babies that age are being aborted.
At 9-12 weeks, for instance, where 41.2 percent of babies are aborted, the image shows a small baby with already discernible toes, fingers and eyes.
“I was absolutely thrilled to see a secular news source cover this,” Jonathon Van Maren, communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, told LifeSiteNews.
The graphic provides a breakdown of abortion statistics by province, mother’s age, baby’s age, and includes data about whether the mother had previous abortions or other children, the number of abortion complications, and the abortion method.
The graphic reveals that 93,755 induced abortions were reported across Canada in 2009, and that the vast majority of them were carried out on college-aged women 20-24 who aborted their babies when they were between 9 and 12 weeks gestation.
However, the National Post acknowledged that the official data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) are incomplete, and underestimate the number of abortions. Currently private abortion clinics (as opposed to hospitals) are not required to report data, while the CIHI data have excluded the number of abortions in whole provinces.
Recently the Ontario government quietly passed legislation to block access to the province’s abortion data, even with a Freedom of Information request, further obscuring the statistics.
Van Maren told LSN that he believes the “big battle” that the Canadian pro-life movement faces is to “destroy the cognitive dissonance” that exists in the minds of Canadians who know what science and embryology reveal about the unborn baby while at the same time supporting abortion.
Cognitive dissonance happens, he said, when someone holds “two completely opposite sets of facts or world views.”
“I thought that the National Post did a brilliant job of taking ostensibly very bland information and using it to destroy that cognitive dissonance by showing us these pictures of what a baby really looks like prior to being aborted,” he said.
“I expect that a lot of casually pro-choice Canadians are going to look at the images of these babies — so clearly discernibly a person — and are going to be feeling very uncomfortable that they are being aborted at that rate in Canada.”
Mary Ellen Douglas, national organizer for Campaign Life Coalition, told LifeSiteNews that the graphic “points out the horror of abortion, namely that there are real babies that look like persons who are being killed by abortion at a certain age.”
Douglas said there is “nothing new” in the data, and that the college-aged group of women has had the “highest abortion rate” since abortion was legalized by Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government in the late 1960s.
She also said she believes the graphic deals a blow to the idea that legislation to block abortion after 20 weeks would be effective. The graphic “shows that the idea of offering protection to unborn babies after 20 weeks is totally ludicrous, since the majority of abortions are done before the 12th week,” she said.
“This graphic shows that you won’t save any babies with the gestational approach.”
John Jalsevac contributed to this report.
Ping!
Sadly this is News to many.
God help us for living blissfully in the midst of this atrocity.
Sunshine is best disinfectant.
One of the first comments in the National Post article notes that journalists always call Kate Middleton’s royal unborn a baby. Not a royal clump.
“One of the first comments in the National Post article notes that journalists always call Kate Middleton’s royal unborn a baby. Not a royal clump.”
Unless you believe David Icke then it is a royal reptile.
I wonder if liberals will demand the Human Rights Commission fine them or something?
Down through the years, I have had every argument FOR abortion thrown at me that you could possibly imagine. Not one of them was worth the air they used to say their words. Once you have a conceived a life, a miracle that can only be an innocent human child, and you wipe his/her life away as if it was an insect, you are guilty of premeditated murder. The double standard they use makes me sick.
The most important human right is the right to life, and anything/everything else is icing.
I totally agree with you, of course
To the others:
oh no are we not supposed to discuss social issues or even mention them according to the trolls and RINO’s on our supposed side, ARF
Obama’s ugly mug should right next to that last drawing and say: I fully agree with the murder of the unborn. THAT would be a fitting set of photos/drawings.
his picture is next to all of these aborted children:
http://www.abortionno.org/obama-campus-exhibit/
What does David Icke call it when Prince Charles takes a wizz?
The Royal Lizard, draining the Lizard....
Sorry, this joke had “a reptile” dys-fun-ction.....
I thought cognitively dissonant was the normal state of a liberal mind.
It is a big reason why, even though I was raised to think I was liberal, I didn't stay that way: people who support and encourage the snuffing out of innocent human life at any age can't credibly claim to have a monopoly on compassion and caring.
She also said she believes the graphic deals a blow to the idea that legislation to block abortion after 20 weeks would be effective. The graphic “shows that the idea of offering protection to unborn babies after 20 weeks is totally ludicrous, since the majority of abortions are done before the 12th week,” she said.
It would save 1.9% of the babies, according to that graphic.
Amen.
I’m so glad to see this happening.
When I was very young, they used to show this all the time at our County Fair. However, they had plastic models, not just drawings. My mom made a special point of explaining it all because her mother had neglected to tell her anything about sex .. and she wanted to be sure her children were better educated to the reality of what having children was all about.
These images destroy the lie - “it’s just a blob”.
Sometimes you can change a person’s perception by taking a small tomato seed and explaining that a little seed contains all the genetic material it needs to become a tomato plant, and produce tomatoes.
I taught that to my sons, and we actually planted one seed and watched it grow and produce tomatoes.
Years later, when my youngest son’s girlfriend got pregnant, there was never any talk of abortion. My granddaughter is a beautiful young lady, recently married, attending college (a straight A student).
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