Posted on 10/10/2007 4:47:32 PM PDT by wagglebee
FARGO, North Dakota, Oct. 10 /Christian Newswire/ -- Operation Rescue's Truth Truck paid a visit last week to North Dakota's only abortion clinic, the Red River Women's Clinic in Fargo. The visit reportedly made abortion the talk of the town.
Truth Truck driver Mark Gietzen, Director of the Kansas Coalition For Life, joined pro-lifers outside the clinic during their 40 Days For Life prayer vigil. Gietzen was in North Dakota visiting family and spent as much time as he could at the abortion clinic supporting the local prayer effort.
"It was an eventful weekend, in a very positive way," said Gietzen. "I gave away almost ALL of the literature that I had to strangers who came to talk about the Truth Truck. The general public was shocked by the truck, most having never seen anything like it before. Some people complimented us for having it there, and quite a number of others came over to challenge our right to display the photos on the Truth Truck."
Gietzen said that the local pro-lifers in Fargo are a dedicated group and were very excited about having the Truth Truck in their community. They are keeping their prayer vigil round-the-clock until November 4. The day after the Truth Truck left, the pastor of the Fargo Cathedral led a procession to the abortion clinic for prayers, in honor of Respect Life Sunday, complete with server-boys in full dress, cross, candles, and a large percentage of the congregation.
Operation Rescue looks forward to returning to Fargo to lend support to the effort to close this abortion mill and make North Dakota abortion free.
Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation. Operation Rescue recently made headlines when it bought and closed an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas and has become the voice of the pro-life activist movement in America. Its activities are on the cutting edge of the abortion issue, taking direct action to restore legal personhood to the pre-born and stop abortion in obedience to biblical mandates.
Some people will not change their hearts and minds until they see the gruesome reality of abortion.
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They need to see this more often.Not too much that the senses become numb. great job.
and...
I have seen this truck or something similar in SD last year. Unfortunately, it may not exactly have the effect they wish it to.
While the Bound4Life prayer tent was in Sioux Falls, I spent time there. One of the things God laid on my heart was the weight of the burden carried by the post-abortives. The church has increased their guilt and shame, when the church was meant to be there in love, mercy and grace. The church needs to wake up, repent and change how it receives the post-abortives (men and women, alike).
The Truth Truck and anyone bearing the gore of those type of pictures is causing a renewed harm, pain, guilt and shame to anyone who is post-abortive. It re-opens the wounds. I have to wonder if those pictures, in reality, really do stop anyone from aborting. This is my opinion, as well as my observations and what I have heard from those who are post-abortive. If the pictures are driving the post-abortives further away from the church, away from their healing, increasing their pain...I question if it is right.
I also feel the pain, when I see those pictures myself. I lost my son at 6 months along, a stillbirth. The pictures cause me great pain because of the size of the babe pictured, etc. It re-opens my own wounds of pain and I have not aborted.
A flip-side of that coin that should be seriously considered.
Pro-life groups actually help women who regret their abortion. For instance, here’s one that was linked on priestsforlife.org:
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/resources/
For over 16 years, women and men have been coming to Project Rachel, the post-abortion ministry of the Catholic Church, for help in healing their emotional and spiritual wounds. The priests and counselors in the Project Rachel network understand the pain and loss that follow abortion. They have led thousands of grieving women and men from despair to hope and peace.
There is nothing in the pictures that is untrue.
My whole life I have seen images of savagery in the mass media—Both Kennedys and M.L.King, Jr. being shot down,the napalm girl and the executed prisoner from Vietnam,the self immolation of Buddhist monks in various protests,our prisoners returning gaunt and wan from North Vietnam and the USS Pueblo incident,right on up to Abu Ghraib.
These pictures, if they were for a lefty cause, would be in our face and awards given right and left, such as AIDS advocacy over the last 25 years(yes, we are still fighting a preventable disease 25 years afyer we figured out how to stop it).
Kids today watch horror slasher movies, emulate the rap gangsta lifestyle, and love violent video games.
So what’s the matter with a few pictures of cut up babies?
Oh yeah, that might prick the conscience.
The truth is over the last 35 years, 50 MILLION babies have been aborted in the United States alone.
We have eliminated over one third of TWO entire generations of American children. And yet violence, sexual abuse and physical abuse of children and women is at an all time high.
It is the truth. And some people can’t handle the truth.
I have fought this evil for twenty years,and I hope I don’t have to for another twenty.
Then we covered elective abortions. The instructor was factual and the photos were not overly graphic, but the reality of what actually happens during the procedure stood in stark reality. When describing the partial birth abortion, the faces of the students showed utter shock. The instructor asked for a show of hands for those that had never heard the description before. Probably 75% of the students had never heard the details of this barbaric procedure. They were visibly shaken.
The instructor is strongly pro-life and yet presented the truth without exageration or unstated bias. It was powerful.
That's really the only question to consider. As horrific as they are for us to look at, do they work? Is there an objective way to determine how effective they may be?
The goal here is obvious. If it advances us towards the goal, use them. If not, do not use them.
If holding up celery sticks did the job.... what I'm getting at here is the decision on whether this is a valid tactic needs to be, solely, to they discourage women from having an abortion who otherwise would more so than another image, say, of a live child via a sonogram.
Very hard to focus group, as you might imagine.
One of the most powerful weapons for evil is darkness, evil seeks a darkened place. The message that abortion is not wrong has so permeated our world that the stark truth of the salughter is perhaps the ONLY thing that can penetrate the darkness now. Sadly, too many will be repulse, but because they want to join to the darkness to hide their deeds under the blood of their alive womb-bound child sacrificed, they will attack the bringers of the reality rather than see the evil for what it is. It has been said that televising a partial birth abortion killing for all the world to see would stop that evil dead in its tracks. I kind of agree with that, yet I am repulse by the sick thought of slaughtering a live child on TV to get through to this sick world.
you are not alone in that fight. God expects us to persevere....with grace and mercy.
a victim of domestic violence and abuse would not advocate gory pictures to stop their plight, either. I know whereof I speak.
'So what’s the matter with a few pictures of cut up babies?'
again, the justification is wrong....just because the world does something doesn't make it right for us to follow suit, does it? again, I ask, where is the sensitivity, mercy, grace and compassion for those who are post-abortive? you make it sound like it is ok, it is right to re-traumatize them! if one were to do this to a child it would be considered abuse.
Don't take this wrong.I am not putting down Project Rescue. When you look at the psychology part of it....by the time they are driving into the parking lot of planned parenthood, they are no longer considering if this is a life or not. They are solely focused on their own survival.
The sonogram will help them refocus. Somehow the positive message of life there, in that setting, can get through the thick curtain of self-preservation with some of them! The positive message gets through.
The reference to the church was a general reference, not to any specific denomination....the Catholic church is far ahead of any other denomination in what it has and is doing in the pro-life movement. The other denominations, however, have been highly critical of anyone who ever aborted, excluding them from communion, from church activity, shunning them, etc. The church, meant to be the arms of God's love, has rather become self-appointed judge and jury, inflicting further guilt and shame on the post-abortives. This has driven many away from the church and God.
I thank you for bringing up the Project Rachel information as well. I have had the pleasure of being at one of the Project Rachel workshops, meeting Vicki Thorn and getting to know her a bit. Both she and Dr Alveda King (Silent No More) are blessings to the pro-life movement, as well as to the lives they touch personally!
#15, thanks!
Wow!!! Good for them. Time for a donation.
Thank you for your explanation. I agree that forgiveness is very, very important.
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