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...
Some of the most respected/did what was right against the status quo, men (and women) of history were “radical activist”.
What is your point?
Someone seems to think that “radical activists” like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin are as deplorable as Code Pink.
Don’t forget Jesus, John the Baptist, Moses, Joan of Arc, Copernicus, Galileo, William Wilberforce, etc...
The leftists who applaud abortion probably think that many of these “radicals” deserved the punishment they got.
The bolded section suggests you believe the code pinkos have a valid point of view.
Telling.
Read through the last several posts. Either Spyder believes that the Code Pinkos and the pro-life movement BOTH have a valid point of view, or that neither does. In any event, Spyder puts the pro-life movement on exactly the same plane as the Code Pinkos and THAT is what I find most disgusting.
Even the Holocaust Museum is not recommended for children.
Except a four year old who can't read just sees a pictures of a smiling woman and DOESN'T get their pro-abortion message. Children are far more capable of interpreting pictures than words and the graphic photos of a butchered baby are going to have far more of an impact on a child that a picture of a smiling woman which message they don't understand.
So your saying it’s OK to abuse some 4 year old and tough “luck” if the parents don’t like it?
No wonder people don’t support libertarians. They’re so much for their own rights but don’t give a rip about others rights. They just trample on them in the name of individual freedom.
If they’re sending these trucks to places where they know children are going to be, they are targeting the children; and as I think about it, I find it reprehensible to treat another person’s child so callously.
And you know this about all these people how? That's quite an assumption and you know what happens when you assume something.
Quit projecting.
They both are entitled to their point of view. It’s their manner of expressing it that I disagree with. Let me phrase this differently - I don’t see any difference between you putting F*U*C*# ABORTIONISTS on the side of a van than I do what has been put there by the “pro-life” org. If it’s legal to paint obscenities on vans, then heck - whatever. My kids are grown now. But we dealt with a jerk of a Republican nominee from Indiana whose ads were broadcast in Louisville when my kids were little. I didn’t let them watch R movies or obscenity at that age; neither did I want them watching abortions.
If you don’t want the libs showing your kindergarten-age kids how to don a condom, leave off with the radical stuff out where kids can see it.
And ALL children should be protected, born as well as unborn. I am stunned by the response of those who claim to be so vehemently pro-life to protect the life of the unborn, yet are so callous as to what happens to them AFTER they are born.
Will netmilsmom's nephew get over this? Maybe. Whether he does or not, there is simply no justifying the callous attitude towards the very real trauma he experienced. Blowing off that kind of experience that a little four year old experienced and claiming to protect children by being pro-life, just smacks of hypocrisy. So a four year old doesn't deserve to be protected any more?
That’s not dishonest. It’s a perfectly good analogy.
So would YOU be as supportive of a group showing dead and butchered soldiers to end the war? That’s what war is really like.
Pro-lifers are showing pictures of dead and butchered babies to stop the carnage of abortion and you’re OK with that.
&&&&
I can find no corroboration of this on any of the Face the Truth or Defend Life or GAP websites. We have one freeper whose sister-in-law saw one truck at one place where mothers take pre-schoolers in Lansing, Michigan.
Please, everybody, do not extrapolate that this is the mission of the people who operate the trucks.
So where are these places you can be sure no children will ever be?
There is no such place.
And stop drawing equivalence between some anecdotal evidence of mental trauma and the real fact of million dead babies every year.
I’ve played this do-gooder “it’s for the children” game with liberals long enough, I’m not going to fall for it here either.
I was telling my 15 year old about this thread and she asks me, “How is this any different than PETA handing out pictures of skinned rabbits and telling kids that their mother is a bunny killer?”
I thought it was a great question. If these tactics were used by liberal groups, they would be soundly condemned.
If you’re so concerned for the children, why do you not care that some 4 year old was traumatized by this?
Taking these trucks to a place where you know you’re going to run into lots of small children is irresponsible. Yes, they need to be protected from some horrors till they’re old enough to understand. That’s what parents are for.
Would you think introducing them to the homosexual lifestyle at 4 is something they should know cause it’s part of real life and they might as well just get used to seeing it? There are some thing that little kids just don’t need to know.
My 15 year old just told me that she didn’t even really realized what abortion was until she was 13. She had heard of it, but it just never really connected, and she’s as pro-life as they come. And well adjusted and emotionally stable.
Well, maybe I was a little hasty saying that. I read some more of the posts and I agree with you that the graphic trucks should be used only where they’re really needed like near abortion clinics and stuff. And I would say that 5 is too young. I kinda knee-jerked without seeing where you were coming from. My bad.
It’s different because this level of extreme is not justifiable to save animal lives, but is justifiable to save human lives.
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