:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Thursday, February 07, 2008 ::

A long excerpt from an email to a dear friend on the subject of graphic images of aborted children...

"hello, dahling.

you know i love you AND your nyquil rant. i can't help but disagree with you though, very respectfully and lovingly and sensitively, about the graphic images in general. i agree with you 100% that pfl shouldn't be forcing them on people who don't want to receive their newsletters, but i'm in contact with one truth truck driver, and he relates that among the many, MANY hate messages they receive, there are always a handful of women who are on their way to an abortion business when they get stuck behind a truth truck in traffic--and they choose not to go through with the abortion. those are women who were not reached by me or any other lifer bloggers sitting here on our unhappy little arses blogging our hearts out whenever we feel the need to. i don't hang out at abortion businesses either, but patte does; that's her gig, and she is the reason that a few women change their minds and don't go in -or- they come right back out of the building still intact. i don't think my blog has ever done anything to prevent one single abortion, but i know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that ***** has... apparently, that was ***** facet of the issue to cover. lots of little facets, different ground to be covered by many different people. every little thing helps.

perhaps the images are harmful to me and you, but i don't think a child has ever been killed because of them, while i do know children have been saved because of them. and anything that saves people from experiencing what we and our aborted children have experienced--well i'm for it, even if it hurts my feelings. i'm for the greater good, and the life and joy of others is a greater good than [me] being protected from my grief.

i do want to say this:
i had seen the pictures of aborted children BEFORE i ever aborted a child. while they were icky and somewhat tragic, i never found them to be emotionally devastating until after i aborted my child. what that tells me is that my heightened emotional response (anguish, sorrow, etc.) really stems from ME aborting my child. the pictures hurt me because i killed my child. the consequences are an unfortunate result of choosing abortion. quite frankly, that is just the way it is. it's part of the joy of the whole abortion experience; it should be in the brochure. the bottom line is that it would be unconscionable for me to oppose something that literally saves lives on the grounds that it reminds me of something i did that hurts my feelings.

now, before you get any ideas, my room isn't plastered with graphic abortion pin-ups! i'm not self-flagellating. i don't expose myself to pfl or even cbr (truth truck organization run by another mother-hater) [because] i don't want to be exposed; i know the images have nothing to teach me that i don't already know. however, i don't discount them, because i know they have work to do in their own little section of this whole entire issue. as an interesting aside, the truth truck driver i told you about does get messages from mothers who have aborted. the images have gotten some of them thinking about things. my friend had a long dialogue with a woman (with 5 SICLEs) who was furious. long story short, they became friends and she invited him to come and speak at her church, which he did, and >100 precious, at-risk people were educated about abortion. my friend prefers to use images of healthy gestating children but, when educating, does feel the need to contrast it with one single photo of abortion. this only makes sense.

i'm not against a well-rounded education or photo journalism. i'm not upset when peta, a group that i find particularly hypocritical, uses video and image examples of animal cruelty to get their point across. it makes me uncomfortable but it also makes me think twice about my nice, clean bucket of fresh, fried kfc. and i wasn't angry and appalled when the image of a deceased ernie pyle was recently recovered. it depicted a turbulent part of our history and served as a reminder of the sacrifices people have made to tell the truth. i'm all about the truth, and images certainly help people convey what is going on in reality. discussion, worthwhile as it is, has its limitations, and photography sometimes expresses what words just can't say.

you and i hurt because what is in those pictures happened to our children. THIS is what we are talking about when we say "My abortion hurt me." [Note: I prefer "My SICLE hurt me."] Those tiny broken arms and legs are OUR children, and the pictures, used properly, help to tell their story--which is our story, because naturally, we are interwoven. the pictures convey just what the heck all the fuss is about. Emmett Till's mother wanted the world to see her broken son, because she wanted everyone to seriously meet racism face to face, to see just how bad and harmful hatred and violence really are. i want the world to see my child every now and again; i don't want anyone to forget what happened, what happens around 4,000 times a day in America alone--just how bad abortion is. i don't want it to go away until it goes away. the poultry industry gets rid of the cruelty and the guts before they package and sell their product; they make it easy for me to buy. we should never help the abortion industry sell their product; we should expose what goes on in their industry.

Like Martin Luther King Jr., i want abortion opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, and our tears and stories aren't enough, because in the end, that's nothing more than personal perspective. how you and i feel about aborting our children doesn't matter any more than how the mothers at imnotsorry.net feel about aborting their children. the thing that does matter is those little arms and legs that are separate and apart from our bodies, ourselves. pictures of whole children illustrate that beautifully, while pictures of aborted children illustrate what happens when we conveniently forget."

:: ashli 10:35 PM # ::
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