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...
No one here believes that. Do they? Why not?
Okay, I will concede the point that you are not permitted to put pictures on trucks that you are not permitted to put in any other public place. I guess if they pass a law that forbids the showing of pictures of other things removed from the body in a public place, they will be able to outlaw these pictures as well. But for now, it is perfectly legal.
No they don’t. But unfortunately, many of the women entering the abortuaries do.
>>Your Nephew will get over it. <<
Yup, he sure will. But rather than targeting the venues that are filled with Mothers, preschoolers and toddlers exclusively, wouldn’t it be better to target where it could do some good?
>>Ok, now you’ve gone off the deep end<<
No, it’s the rule of unintended consequences.
Traumatizing five year olds who think the truck means someone coming to kill babies or traumatizing Post-abortive women can lead to bad things.
It’s a know fact that post abortive women have higher incidents of depression.
It is those young mothers who are often encouraged by the abortion industry to limit the size of their families by aborting their second and third and forth children. There is no better target than young mothers and young women. They have children and they need to know that what is growing inside them is not just a glob of tissue, but their own flesh and blood children.
But at least they are not innocent children. Children who should be protected, not just by their parents, but by all adults.
>>It is those young mothers who are often encouraged by the abortion industry to limit the size of their families by aborting their second and third and forth children. There is no better target than young mothers and young women. They have children and they need to know that what is growing inside them is not just a glob of tissue, but their own flesh and blood children.<<
Makes sense to me.
Let’s send the truck on stage at “Blues Clues Live” /s/
I agree that children should be protected, but if we err, I would prefer to err on the side of the truth.
Ask yourself why the most frequently performed operation in America has never been shown on any “health” show on TV. Then reconsider the shock that your children may have at the sight of one of the photos by hugging them and telling them that some girls do not want the babies that are growing inside of them. And so they get them taken out.
Every child knows that babies come from inside mommies.
Tell your child how precious he or she is and how you looked forward to the day of their birth.
So if a woman commits suicide she’s not responsible for her own actions, but the fault of the people who display pictures?
Really?
First you say kids can’t handle it, now you say adult women can’t handle it either, why don’t you just admit that the pictures make you uncomfortable and you want it to stop period, and stop hiding behind your kids?
************
I see no reason why we can not do both.
So what should my SIL have told my nephew about the truck with the bloody dead baby on the side? The one that he, in his little five year old mind, rationalized was going to kill his brother?
Would you let a five year old watch “The Passion of the Christ”?
Where is the information that these trucks are targetting small children? I know that does not happen when the Face the Truth tour comes through Maryland.
The degree to which you wish to shield your children is your business. But to suggest that these trucks are “targeting” children is rather disingenuious on your part. They are no more targeting children than the beer trucks delivering beer in our neighborhoods, or the taxis that advertise stip clubs with skanky women in the ads. Maybe we should ban them to age appropriate areas also?
And what may be too mature for your son may not be too mature for my neighbor’s intellectual little darling son who was shooting a bb gun at 6, firing a .22 at 8, and dressing a deer at 12, who devours truth, quotes God’s Word accurately, debates liberalsim, and plainly calls leftist ideas what they are at 13 years old. So age apropriate is a relative matter.
Probably best to keep your son indoors for a few more years so he doesn’t have to witness the homos walking hand in hand and french kissign at Disney World, the prostitutes hustling business on the main drag, the homeless guys panhandleing, the bunnies, doggies, kitties, and squirrels that frequently get hit by cars and are left to die horrible bloody deaths on the side of our nation’s roads.
But wouldn’t it be better to use those harsh reality moments in life as teaching moments for your son rather than pretending they don’t exist? The perfect opportunity to teach your son what the difference is between the truth and the lies that he will be confronting VERY soon...like in a matter of a year or two when he is in school!
In a few years planned barrenhood will already be teaching him non “age-appropriate” things when he is in school and so will his teachers, and his class mates, and his neighbors, and the television. Don’t you want a head start against their propaganda?
And exactly where are these mythical “age-appropriate” free speech zones you wish to create? And why would an alleged conservative be afraid of someone speaking freely? Because someone might be offended? Well, the truth does indeed hurt, but the lies hurt much more. So, in the name of tollerance and so as to not offend some, people should have their right to free speech infringed? I think not.
But, I digress...you certainly may shield your son as you wish. You are, after all, his mommy.
However, your hypocricy remains, in your talk of censorship. “Censorship for thee, but not for me” is the mantra that you proclaim in your contradicitions.
You complain about policial correctness when it comes to Disney cartoons being censored, but have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM censoring the photos showing the truth about abortion...namely, that it is the act of murdering innocent children...and you actually do it in the mane of not wanting to offend children. Too late...the ones in the photos were already offended. VERY offended ma’am.
If you care so much about children, then do not censor the truth. Let everyone see the holocaust in our midst. because the baby killers are winning the war of words, but they CANNOT win the war of photos. Even the pro-baby-death woman in the articel testifies to this truth when she said; “In those circumstances there’s no opportunity for meaningful discussion or debate”. She knows that the photos damage her arguments.
To: MountainFlower
>>While I know it got attention, there is one part of it that concerns me. Seeing gory graphic pictures of aborted babies may open the eyes of some people but what it does that is harmful is increases the pain, shame and guilt of those who are post-abortive. It forces them that much further away from the saving grace and healing they need. It also hurts those of us who have lost babies to still births, miscarriage or other ways... I am not sure that the gore of it needs to be part of the message. The message can still be conveyed without the gore of it all, and without the increased hurt to others.<<
Bears repeating.
83 posted on 08/10/2007 3:32:12 PM EDT by netmilsmom (To attack one section of Christianity in this day and age, is to waste time .)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Obviously this current generation has gone soft. Society is so warped and preoccupied about being offended it shuts out truth and embraces carefully crafted lies.
Also, way back, before the turn of the century, death was every where. Heck a wake could last several days where the corpse would just lay in the same room where the food and drinks were served.
It’s a miracle society has survived all that "trauma"./S
>Would you let a five year old watch “The Passion of the Christ”?
No, but if he happens to see it by accident I’m not going to wring my hands thinking his life is ruined either.
Furthermore, given the choice of seeing it at 5 and never seeing it at all, I think the former is preferable.
The FReepers here have told their stories.
I have no problem with them in areas for adults.
Family cmenters, use them elsewhere, give a better message to the families.
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