Posted on 08/12/2004 2:54:54 PM PDT by cpforlife.org
In the summer of 1955, a young man named Emmett Till took a trip to Mississippi to visit relatives. His mother warned him of hostility toward blacks in the South, but he failed to heed her warning. In August of that year, Emmett was beaten and shot to death by two white men, and then his body was thrown in a river. His crime was speaking to a white woman in the grocery store.
After the body was recovered, Emmett's mother held an open-casket funeral so everyone could see the heinous crime done to her son. His face and body had been beaten beyond recognition, and he had a bullet hole through his head. This crime and the case that followed are considered by many historians to be a major turning point in the struggle for civil rights.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, there are setups at Rudder Fountain and Academic Plaza by an organization called Justice for All. These setups show graphic, often difficult to look at pictures of aborted fetuses. A common question asked by passers-by is, "Why do they have to show this?"
At the University of Colorado-Boulder, a black student asked this question. One of the volunteers told him the story of Emmett Till. The next day he returned, asking for help to defend the pro-life movement. When asked about his sudden change of heart, he responded that Justice for All is simply "opening the casket" on abortion.
So, what should be seen once the casket is open? First, one should be able to decide from the pictures if the fetus is indeed an innocent human person. If it is, then the question of how, if ever, it is justifiable to end an innocent human's life must be answered. One must either conclude that there are times when it is OK to end an innocent human life or that abortion is murder and must be stopped.
Second, if abortion is nothing more than a simple medical procedure, then the aftermath should not be a problem to look at. If the panels contained pictures of pulled wisdom teeth or of women and men with stitches, although it might seem odd and disgusting, one would not object to this as fiercely as he might the Justice for All demonstration.
What is the difference? Having stitches and having teeth pulled are just mere medical procedures, but, as the Justice for All panels show, abortion involves the dismemberment of a human being. Making a trip to the local abortion clinic as being comparable to a trip to the local dentist masks the true reality of abortion; Justice for All's goal is to unmask this illusion and expose this heinous crime.
When the movie "Schindler's List" was released, its producers donated copies of it to high schools around the country. Faculty members acknowledged its importance in helping students understand the realities of the Holocaust. Abortion is today's Holocaust. To truly understand the horror of it all, it must be seen.
Bob Dylan, in "The Death of Emmett Till," wrote: "If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust, your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust. Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow, for you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!" These words regarding Till's death ring even clearer when spoken about abortion. The human race has truly reached a new low when it is considered just and a right to kill your own children.
It is true that the Justice for All display might cause unimaginable difficulties and emotional stress both for women in crisis pregnancies and those who have had abortions in the past. There are people on hand who are ready to counsel women in need. However, this does not affect the need for the display. In the case of women in crisis pregnancies, they have the right and a need to see what abortion really is. And finally, for post-abortive women (and men), acceptance is the first step to healing.
Now is the time to see the truth. Now is the time to act. No longer will the caskets of aborted children be closed.
Opening the Casket on Abortion
In an article in the July 15 issue of the Wanderer, Dexter Duggan quotes pro-life speaker Steve Wagner who tells his audiences that the move to television changed the way people take in information. Their attention span is very short. They think in sound bites and learn with pictures. Wagner insists that if a person expresses resentment over seeing an accurate pictures of an aborted baby, they are forgetting that people need pictures to move the debate over abortion from the abstract to the real, and that it has to become visual.
He reminds his audience of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black youth who was beaten and drowned, and that his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral because, "I want the whole world to see what they did to my boy." Wagner tells of a student who immediately changed his thinking on abortion and commented, "I think what you're doing by showing these horrible abortion pictures is opening the casket on abortion." Makes sense to me.
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Ping for life.
Exactly right.
Honestly, I think this may be the one time I'm in favor of using the images.
Display in a casket affords a dignity and respect that flashing pics without warning or holding up fetuses in jars to "make a point" does not.
If the Final Solution had been done in the way I am fixing to describe the results would have been the same at the war crime trials. Let's say that Jewish Men, Women and Children were only interned but the Nazi's still wanted to eliminate the Jewish race. However, for some reason, (trust me, I am making this up) they declined to murder anybody who had been born already. Lets say they sterilized all the men and the women to include children with the idea the Jews in Europe would just die off in 90 years or so and then released everyone from the internment camps. However, the Jewish women who were pregeant at that time in addition to sterilization were forced to abort the the current fetus. Had that happened, we would have still have hung the individuals that participated in the abortions after the war.
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Display at LSU by students for life from years ago.
I want to make sure I understand you correctly.
You've been to the Justice For All site, see what they do and approve? Is that correct?
I've been sayint this for years in abortion debates. There are all kinds of shows on TV showing in graphic detail medical operations, liver transplants, etc. They are gory and nauseating to people who can't stand the sight of blood, but there has never been an outcry against these shows existing for those who want to watch.
But there were never any of these medical shows showing abortion. Why not? It's a common "medical procedure".
I've asked loads of pro-Choice people why you never see an abortion on TV and they never give a straight answer. Or they say "Who wants to see that?" Well ..... who wants to see a liver transplant or open heart surgery? Obviously SOME people watch these shows, and they show every surgery there is, even liposuction which is disgusting ... and people watch ... so why don't they show abortion?
They never answer.
Indeed
Someone once said that if abortion mills had viewing windows out onto public streets the practice would soon end.
In considering abortion,
the question is not
when Human Life begins,
but how and when it will be ended.
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So, what should be seen once the casket is open? First, one should be able to decide from the pictures if the fetus is indeed an innocent human person. If it is, then the question of how, if ever, it is justifiable to end an innocent human's life must be answered. One must either conclude that there are times when it is OK to end an innocent human life or that abortion is murder and must be stopped.
That has always bothered me the most: Anyone being putting to death must be convicted first of a capital crime. I once backed a pro-choicer into the corner on this one. She was forced back to the increasingly untennable "personhood" argument. As 1) scientific observational capacity advances, and 2) groups distributing and displaying these horrific images increase and disseminate, more people will be obliged to resolve this in their own minds.
Second, if abortion is nothing more than a simple medical procedure, then the aftermath should not be a problem to look at. If the panels contained pictures of pulled wisdom teeth or of women and men with stitches, although it might seem odd and disgusting, one would not object to this as fiercely as he might the Justice for All demonstration.
A solid polemic to be used to bring out the inconsistency of the pro-choice position. Reasonable people, not blinded by self interest, will see it.
Now, why isn't this an election issue? If Bush is a "murderer" for pursuing murderers, where's that leave Kerry, having supported policies that have murdered more than 44 MILLION?
Seeing these pictures - bloody, lifeless, mutilated little human beings who did nothing to deserve such a fate but exist - drives the evil of murder home to us. We can feel, in a feeble and shadowy way, a little of what God feels of indignation and wrath toward sin.
Prayer for God's mercy, that He would not forsake His 7,000 in Israel, though multitudes have bowed the knee to Baal and sacrificed on the alter of Molech...
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