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...
>>Are you proposeing they repaint the truck nightly?..
You know to get that horrible scene off it?..
What if the “the truck” must be driven past a schoolyard?.<<
I’m proposing that they use their gasoline for better targets. They are driving TO the beach to park. Not by it to another location.
I never said repaint. I said target adults. Don’t target family venues. How about posters with a positive message for those. The Drudge Picture has your blood and realism. However, it’s a positive picture.
I understand exactly where you are coming from with this. It would be great to see the picture of the baby’s hand holding the Dr’s finger (Samuel?), or picture of an infant and the words, “I am not an exception or a choice.”
>>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.
Sometimes war means doing unpleasant things.
*************
Amen, Mountain Flower.
If that would be the case, then it would ok to show violence of murder of any sort to show how wrong it is? People know it is wrong. The knowledge is innate. IMHO the way to get through is to break the lies and deceit with the Truth. It doesn't have to be graphic to do that.
Sorry that your nephew was traumatized. You don't exactly say what the nature of the trauma was, or how it has affected your nephew.
I, too, was traumatized when I was about 8 years old. It was then that I saw the films of the liberation of the Nazi death camps at the end of WWII.
Those films had a profound effect on me -- I suppose you could say they "traumatized" me. They certainly convinced me that what they showed was terribly evil.
And they have left am impression on me. To this day -- almost 50 years after I saw them for the first time -- those "traumatizing" films have served to convince me that that sort of evil must never happen again.
Sometimes "trauma" does have good effects.
I like this one too.
Sometimes “doing unpleasant things” is way too appealing to some people.
>>Sometimes war means doing unpleasant things.>>
But most times it means doing smart things. Targeting preschoolers is not smart.
I agree that the images are traumatic, but that’s the reality of the holocaust that is abortion. The solution is not to do away with the images due to sensitivity, the solution is to do away with abortion.
Besides abortion is far more traumatic to the recipient than it is to anyone else who is looking at those pictures. “Choice”, indeed.
I’m not going to flame you but abortion will not be outlawed until the public is educated as to what is really involved - and the best way to educate them is to show them these images. It is what changed my mind.
You nephew will get over his “traumatization”. Life is a traumatization - at least for most of the world. I bet he will vote pro life when he gets older.
A bad name? The time for sitting on our hands, being polite, and having leftist freaks shove their world view down our throats has to come to an end. And it will not happen if we are worried about our “name”.
>>Sorry that your nephew was traumatized. You don’t exactly say what the nature of the trauma was, or how it has affected your nephew.
I, too, was traumatized when I was about 8 years old. It was then that I saw the films of the liberation of the Nazi death camps at the end of WWII.<<
My SIL took her boys to the beach around noon on a regular school day. She did this often with other mothers of Preschoolers.
Her five-year-old son was playing in the water when one of these trucks pulled up in the parking lot behind them. He started screaming, crying and pointing. Understand that his brother was just a baby himself, (and premature when born). This poor boy had nightmares for a week and no one could convince him that the truck was not there to kill his brother. He told his mom that the Ice Cream truck had pictures of Ice Cream, so that truck was there to kill babies. Nice huh?
You saw a film in school that was age appropriate for you. He deserved the same courtesy.
I never said to outlaw.
I said to target age appropriately.
Preschoolers are not it. Stay off the beach and out of the ammusement parks.
I’m reading of way too many mommies on this thread getting their panties in a wad over this.
My advice to those mommies? Keep your children at home. Do not let them out doors. Do not own a TV or a computer with the internet. Do not listen to the radio and especially remember to never send your children to a public school, for they will see and hear many more gruesome things if you do.
>>I bet he will vote pro life when he gets older.<<
I bet he would have even if he didn’t see the truck.
Targeting preschoolers doesn’t change any minds.
Tasteless? Crass?
This isn’t a ****ing (there does that make the moderator happy?) cake decorating contest.
Some people are so nice they are stupid. Some people have never done anything in their lives and think their nice little whitebread suburban world is reality.
Many of the “Mommies” on this thread homeschool.
The others are smart enough to watch what our kids are exposed to.
I won’t let my kids watch “The Passion of the Christ” with a GREAT message until it is age appropriate.
I feel the same about those trucks.
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