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...
I completely agree with you. Drive around downtown at 10pm or later rather than a beach on mid-day. But targeting feelings of revulsion that just show a bloody baby and not those who pushed for the abortion doesn’t lead the audience properly. Show bloodstained hands of abortion counselors, boyfriends, parents and judges. Then show the helpless dead baby. That would lead the audience properly.
Amen!
http://www.unmaskingchoice.ca/evidence.html
“We had two confirmed babies saved as a result of our display. Both students approached Chris Stevens, our sponsor... One student told him that she had visited Planned Parenthood recently and was scheduled to have an abortion. She told him, ‘After seeing these photos, that is an appointment I can cancel. I am having a child.’ The second pregnant student told Chris that family and friends have been pressuring her to ‘consider abortion as an option. I now know that it is not. I love myself and my child.’” —Lois Cunningham, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), regarding the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) display at Citrus College, Glendora, CA
#
“At a crisis pregnancy center in Knoxville, eight students came in for appointments as a direct result of GAP at the University of Tennessee. The director there said that all eight were originally planning to abort their babies. However, five had changed their minds strictly from having seen the GAP photos and had decided to carry their babies to term. The other three made the decision not to abort after counseling at the center. All eight babies were saved directly or indirectly from GAP.” —CBR’s report of the GAP display at the University of Tennessee
More at link.
Bull. I never said anything about a woman committing suicide. Children should not be traumatised. That’s a fact.
OK, my mistake. I agree that a parking lot with only mothers and pre-schoolers for an audience is a counter-productive effort. Did it happen more than once? Was it a freelance activist or a representative of a formal group?
I hope your nephew is secure in the love of his parents for him and his sibling. It is horrible to know that some people want to get rid of their babies, but not his mother and father, etc etc.....
Who does this make uncomfortable? Most likely this ad will make Pro-Life people uncomfortable. That is not your audience though. Pro-Choice people who see this ad will more likely be angry about Pro-Life people being indecent. Why? Because it doesn’t lead the audience anywhere. You see a condemnation of the euphemism “choice” but nothing else.
The Pro-Life crowd needs to focus on a path they want young scared pregnant mothers to go on, and figure out carrot and stick advertising always focusing on the decision we want them to make. Show bloody hands of boyfriends, show happy sleeping babies, show ghostly babies that could have been being caressed by their crying would-be mothers, and show smiling children in adopted homes, but don’t show a dead baby with a slogan that only a die-hard Pro-Lifer could agree with.
Children should also not be murdered.
Wonderful news!
The children who survive should not be punished for abortions they had nothing to do with.
His parents are VERY pro-life.
Then they will have no problem knowing what to say to overcome his momentary fear caused by the thought of losing his sibling.
A little discretion in using these images which I also feel convey a vital message would gain more points and also defuse the inevitable cry of 'traumatizing little children' which will be used by the pro-abortion folks (and I am NOT calling you one) to try to have the images removed entirely.
A little common sense and the message gets out, in places where it may do far more good than harm.
Besides, if kids are seeing this from an early age, they will be desensitized eventually and it will lose the one thing which makes it an effective device: its ability to shock and offend the basic sensibilities of those who have been programmed with the 'lump of tissue' line of BS.
There is a place and time for everything, and parking this across from daycares, amusement parks, and the like would not be it.
Reality --- POST-abortives are driven to do many things because of the guilt and shame they carry with them.... they carry it because PP, the church and others do NOT have compassion on them to help them find the forgiveness. PP can't help them find forgiveness as it would be against their LIE of reality. PP's playbook is you MUST allow abortion or they may commit suicide. The LIE. TRUTH - show them the options, the real options, and give them hope and there is no thought of suicide.
I hope I am misundertanding what you were getting at.
nicely stated. though the target of the gore is not post-abortives, they are the ones impacted most by it. thank you for your perspective.
No.
I saw the film on TV. In my parent's house.
(But I think you must have known that)
They did okay. He is eight now.
But as another poster said, the driver of the truck didn’t have to sit up with the horrors and nightmares.
Here are some suggestions for your sister-in-law to tell your nephew about the bloody dead baby:
"Sweetheart, no one is going to kill you or your little brother. Daddy and Mommy will protect you, because we love you so very, very much. That's what mommies and daddies do -- they love and protect their children."
They said something like that.
The first night
The second night
The third night
and so on....
And, from what you've said upthread, it sounds as though your nephew has survived the trauma, and is living as an OK 8-year-old.
Eeew. I hope these guys aren’t around when I’m eating my burritos.
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