Posted on 08/10/2007 10:34:35 AM PDT by wagglebee
CALGARY, August 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In contrast with the media blackout that pro-life Canadians are used to expecting at their demonstrations, media coverage of the Reproductive Choice Campaign trucks rolling on Calgary streets this week has been lively. The trucks feature three-metre high photos of aborted children and an email address for more information.
Local papers and radio stations were joined by CBC and Global News who took video footage, while CTV News Calgary has run a two-minute television news spot three times in the last two days and included the sponsoring group's website address. This coverage constitutes a frenzy compared to the nearly total media blackout that is traditional at pro-life events such as the annual March for Life event in Ottawa.
The Calgary Sun headlined today's article, "Graphic abortion images shock Calgarians" and carried the CTV story verbatim in print form. A smaller local paper, Fast Forward Weekly, ran the headline "Little truck of horrors" and quoted Stephanie Gray, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, the truck's sponsoring group, responding to the accusations of shocking onlookers. "If there is nothing wrong with abortion, the images shouldn't bother them," she said.
A talk radio station, CHQR 770, has been broadcasting their report on the trucks every half hour from noon yesterday to five pm today. 630 CHED radio in Edmonton will carry a live 30-minute interview with Gray and she will be on 940 Montreal at 10:35 am EST for ten minutes.
CTV's video spot, which is available online, clearly shows close-ups of the photos and reporter Najuma Yagzan says, "You can clearly distinguish a body, hands and feet."
Jose Ruba, a cofounder and staffer of CCBR who today drove the support car accompanying the trucks, told LifeSiteNews.com that this was likely the first time the GAP pictures had been seen on English-language Canadian television.
"We had the GAP photos in Ottawa in 2004 when Planned Parenthood was giving Henry Morgentaler a lifetime achievement award and the national French-language TV used the images. But even when the CBC covered the controversy over the GAP display at UBC [in 2000], they only filmed the GAP images from 30 or 40 feet away."
"The whole story at UBC then was about the signs, but they didn't even show them. So today's coverage from so many sources was a big win for us in that they showed the signs," Ruba said.
Onlookers interviewed by CTV agreed that the images are "shocking" but also that they depict something true. "I've had nothing to do with it personally, so you don't think seriously about it, but looking at that, you can see the murder aspect of it all," one man said.
CTV offered a counter argument from a spokesman of Sexual Health Access Alberta (SHAA), but declined to mention that the group is an abortion advocating organization that until September 2006 was called Planned Parenthood Alberta. SHAA's Executive Director, Laura Wershler, criticised the tactic saying, "In those circumstances there's no opportunity for meaningful discussion or debate."
But Stephanie Gray told LifeSiteNews.com that she and her group were still waiting to hear back from Wershler on their offer of a public debate. Gray said, "I contacted Laura requesting a debate partner and I'm waiting to hear back from her and this is months ago."
CCBR said they contacted Wershler on November 16, 2006 on behalf of the pro-life club at the University of Calgary. "I emailed her a sample debate format and agreed that the debate should be a civil one with a neutral moderator."
"I'm still waiting to hear back from her," Gray said.
Wershler did not return calls from LifeSiteNews.com by deadline.
Onlookers interviewed by CTV, however, showed no signs of psychological trauma from seeing the photos. In one street interview, a young woman appeared unsettled but admitted that the images were depicting the reality of abortion, "To me, that's really harsh, but that's reality I guess. It's what happens when you have an abortion. But, wow, that is graphic, yeah."
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Billboard-Size Abortion Photos to be Shown throughout Canada as Trucks Take the Message to the Streets
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07080802.html
Pro-Life GAP Display At UBC Causes an Uproar
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2000/oct/00102501.html
Bloggers Trump Mainstream Media With YouTube Videos of Canadian March for Life
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/may/07051705.html
Watch CTV coverage:
http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate/B/200...
the issue, if you want to address the seeming sleepiness of the movement, is more of a "spiritual leprosy" termed by Bob Sorge. it is when people, believers, become 'numb' to the pain of others and unable to act on what they see, in order to stop the problem. they are not asleep, as can they see it. they are awake but numb to the pain of the post-abortive. numb to the pain of killing an innocent baby. numb to the issue. these pictures will not remove that numbness and unify the movement, if that is the real motivation behind them. (I do not believe that IS the motivation.) from those who have this leprosy you will get these excuses for inactivity:
*My voice doesn't make a difference.
*This has been going on for 34 years, nothing will change it.
*I pray at home.
*We won't ever get a Pro-Life Supreme Court, so what is the point?
*Washington DC is so full of Dem's, we can't change a thing.
I am sure the list could go on and on. these pictures won't change those people. only a spiritual change will move them. prayers for revival going up! prayers for educating the Pro-Life movement through the TRUTH PROJECT so they understand what a REAL World-Life View is and means for their lives!
Awwwww! That’s great! With an “I’m not a Choice” caption.
If people knew it was wrong, then how come a million babies are murdered every year in this country?
What this all comes down to is that even people who pay lip-service to the pro-life cause haven’t really internalized the abject horror that is this holocaust, they may know it’s wrong, but they have neither grasped the magnitude nor the gruesome nature of it. That’s the only way I can explain the attitude of people who are more outraged by the fact certain pictures are displayed than they are by the horrors depicted in those pictures.
You want to really stop the display of these traumatizing pictures, how about stopping the gruesome acts that produced those horrific images? Then nobody would have to display them or be traumatized by them ever again.
Thanks so much for the advice.
That was about the size of my son.
I'm not sure why you would have drawn this conclusion from what I had written. I did not see a film in school that was "age appropriate for me".
We, at the time, lived next door to a family of Austrian Jewish people.
I saw the films of the bodies being bulldozed at one of the Nazi death camps on TV -- it was in connection with the arrest of Adolph Eichmann.
It affected me very greatly. Like your nephew, I had nightmares -- nightmare involving the family that lived next door to me. Nightmare involving the children in that family -- my playmates.
I asked my parents about those terrible pictures, and I remember one of the questions I asked -- "Why would anyone do that to people just because they were Jewish"?
I thought that what happened to the people in that terrible (and, for me, non-"age appropriate") film I had seen could happen to the nice Jewish family -- that lived next door.
As I said, though, I came through the horror that gripped me as a small child. Those films showed me the reality of evil, and convinced me that people should not be killed just because they are Jewish.
Perhaps your nephwe will grow out of his own horror, and ask why people would do such evil things "just because the baby hasn't been born yet".
How about post #8.
“To: wagglebee
I am against abortion.
I am horrified by it altogether.
I teach my children the horrors of it.”
It’s a miracle. :)
Your neighbors showed an eight year old child films of bodies being bulldozed?
I’m sorry you lost your childhood to them.
What an angel!!!!
Why not? They use scare tactics to keep kids off drugs. They use horrible pictures of sex disease to get kids to use condoms. Why should this be any different?
MEGoody: And you don't have the right to tell someone what they can paint on their own truck.
Actually, we do. Unless you want to allow xxx rated web sites to plaster trucks with graphic images of sex.
They are supposed to be offensive. But the pictures are reality and it does no good to bury your head in the sand and pretend that the reality of abortion is something esoteric and sterile.
These pictures would not be necessary if the MSM and the government told the truth about abortion. They portray it as something beautiful, a woman's right to control her future and her body. It is murder and what these trucks show is the evidence of the crime.
What isn't fair is the fact that the baby in that picture will never get an opportunity at life and the murderer will go free. Your Nephew will get over it. The baby in that picture never will.
Gotta say I tend to agree with you. Not every message is appropriate for every age. I have a problem with people shoving pictures of bloody dead bodies in the face of my 4 year old daughter.
>>If the images force a few callous pro-abortion types to have a change of heart, I’ll take the bad name. The German people didn’t become anti-Nazi until they were forced to tour the death camps and dig graves.<<
And if it causes a post abort mother to commit suicide, that’s okay too?
If it’s just “removing a clump of cells” than it should be offensive.
It explains a lot.
>>Why not? They use scare tactics to keep kids off drugs. They use horrible pictures of sex disease to get kids to use condoms. Why should this be any different?<<
Preschoolers? Hmmmmm. Like sex education for Kindergarteners?
They know they are killing a life! They try to ignore it, excuse it, etc. IF they didn't know it was wrong then why would we have so many post-abortives that struggle with it, with shame and guilt, and many who try to run from it for the rest of their lives through promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, self-mutilation, etc (unless they find forgiveness in Christ).
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