Posted on 07/16/2003 4:26:24 PM PDT by unspun
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| Jill Stanek held the "Baby Malachi" sign in front of Speaker Madigan and Leader Daniels' offices in the spring of 2002 |
For two weeks beginning July 9, the Pro-Life Action League is hosting a two-week Truth Tour in Chicago. For more information on the Chicago tour, call 773-777-2900.
OPINION -- A “Truth Tour” is an organized event that typically stretches over two weeks. Pro-lifers post themselves at various locations, usually busy intersections, for one to two hours at a time, showing the truth of abortion by holding large graphic pitures of aborted babies.
PLAL has conducted Truth Tours for several years, but this is the first concentrated on the major metropolitan area that accounts for over 50% of all abortions committed in Illinois annually.
Almost 10% of all abortions committed in the U.S. annually are of women living in the New York City area. It makes sense to focus pro-life efforts on these two cities as well as other major urban areas.
When I became involved in the pro-life movement, I didn’t like the use of graphic pictures of aborted babies as a pro-life strategy. But my opinion changed after personal reflection and reading of history . . .
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black kid from Chicago. In the summer of 1955, Emmett convinced his mom to let him visit relatives in Mississippi.
Although Mrs. Till put Emmett on the train with a warning that things were different for blacks in the South, he had no idea just how different things were until he was beaten and murdered.
His crime? Whistling at and talking to a white girl.
On August 24, while hanging out with his cousins, Emmett was caught in a dare. He had told the other youngsters a white teenager in a picture he carried was his girlfriend back in Chicago. They dared him to go into a small grocery store in Money, Mississippi, owned by the Bryant family and say hello to the white woman working there. Emmett went in, bought some gum with a couple of pennies, and then said, "Bye, Baby" to Carolyn Bryant, the storeowner's wife.(source: www.bluejeansplace.com/EmmettTillMurderSite.html)
This juvenile prank led to a nightmare come to life. Three days later, two of Bryant’s relatives pulled Emmett from his uncle’s home, stripped him naked, beat him beyond recognition, shot him in the head, and dumped his body into the Tallahatchie River.
I don’t know if I would have had the wherewithal to do what Emmett’s mother did upon receiving her boy in his casket back in Chicago, but her understanding of the situation and ensuing actions helped ignite a movement and change history: Mrs. Till insisted on an open casket and encouraged Jet magazine to publish pictures of her slain, disfigured son.
She said, “After the body arrived I knew I had to look and see and make sure it was Emmett. That was when I decided that I wanted the whole world to see what I had seen. There was no way I could describe what was in that box. No way. And I just wanted the world to see." (source: www.panopt.com/photogra/withers/fulewtill05.html)
Some 50,000 people viewed Emmett’s mutilated body over the course of three days. And Jet magazine ran the pictures (www.panopt.com/photogra/withers/fulewtill05.html), which, as history unfolded, were later credited with initiating the modern-day Civil Rights movement.
John H. Johnson, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines, recalls… “There were people on the staff who were squeamish about the photographs. I had reservations, too, but I decided finally that if it happened it was our responsibility to print it and let the world experience man's inhumanity to man.”Colbert I. King, today a columnist for The Washington Post, still remembers the photo he saw in Jet as a youngster. He wrote the following earlier this year: “We got the chance to see what he looked like with his skull crushed in, a bullet in his head, an eye gouged out, and his decomposed body finally freed from the barbed wire they had wrapped around his frame and the 100-pound cotton gin exhaust fan they had wired to his neck to keep him down on the bottom of the Tallahatchie…."
”The issue [of Jet], which went out on sale on September 15, 1955,’ recalled Johnson, “sold out immediately and did as much as any other event to traumatize Black America and prepare the way for the Freedom Movement of the sixties." (source: ibid.)
I didn’t know Emmett’s story the first time I decided to hold a graphic picture of an aborted baby at a pro-life picket some three years ago.
I had become involved in the Illinois pro-life movement by my experience at Christ Hospital, and although I welcomed anyone’s help, I was a tad squeamish when Joe Scheidler and Pro-Life Action League came to picket with their graphic signs.
But during one particular picket, while I was quietly holding my nongraphic sign next to Joe holding his “Baby Malachi” graphic sign, I began to dwell on that little aborted baby’s picture.
I decided he looked a little older than the aborted baby I had held. I noted his dark hair and beautiful little round head, even though half his face was torn off, and his bodyless head was being held by forceps. I imagined how his hair should have smelled like baby lotion.
Suddenly, Baby Malachi became a real baby to me. And I began to feel ashamed that I was embarrassed about his one and only baby picture, grotesque as it was. I thought, what difference will Baby Malachi’s life and death make if I don’t honor him by showing the world what was done to him?
You can guess that I went over to the pile of signs then and there and picked up my own “Baby Malachi” sign. Ever since, I have purposefully held a graphic aborted baby sign at any picket I’ve attended.
It is indisputable that it was the pictures of Emmett Till’s murdered, mutilated body, and not just his story on its own merit, that sparked another movement not so long ago to stop others like Emmett from being treated as nonpersons.
Did you look at Emmett's picture? If so, with whom did you become angry, the picture-taker or the people who did that to Emmett?
Who would have been happiest had Emmett Till’s pictures not been made public?
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Jill Stanek became a leader in the Illinois conservative movement when she fought to stop "live birth abortion" after witnessing one as an RN at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn. Jill was asked to President Bush's signing of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in August 2002. In January 2003, Jill was named by World Magazine as one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders of the past 30 years. She continues to press for Illinois to become a state where unborn and newly-born babies are safe. Jill is also pro-life coordinator for Concerned Women for America of Illinois and a public speaker around the country. Jill@illinoisleader.com |
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Yup. Describes most of the pro-life movement to a "T"...they somehow think that mere rhetoric--both emotional and cut-and-dried--can reach the heart of calloused folks to change their understanding.
But my opinion changed after personal reflection and reading of history . . .
The West never got bent out of shape about the holocaust until they saw photos, video footage, or actual firsthand visualization.
Am printing out hard copy of this Leader article for spouse. She was pretty much mugged by this bunch on the Madison Avenue bridge last week. She's as pro-life as I am but was really turned off by the graphics. If the goal was to offend those who already support the cause, it was successful.
Oops -- did they block traffic? If so, that wouldn't be very persuasive at all. One must pick one's spots and not "get into the face" of our neighbors --also be aware of the impact upon young children.
Yeah they did -- not the street traffic but the pedestrian traffic. That bridge is kind of a pedestrian bottleneck for the tens of thousands who commute daily through NW Station. They were blocking the sidewalk, delaying commuters, and were in-your-face (with the graphics) rather than passive demonstrators. Spouse said it was somewhat akin to running the gauntlet.
I would defy them to produce a single soul whose mind was changed to their favor that day.
Wouldn't bet on their side.
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