I've opposed abortion since I was a young teen, first speaking out about it in high school when I vividly described a saline abortion to an English class as part of a persuasive speech (got an A and the teacher asked for a copy). I haven't been as active in the pro-life movement as I'd like to be, but the cause matters to me a great deal. Consider this necessary background to understanding my point:
I am fed up with seeing photos of aborted babies shoved under my nose without any warning whatsoever. And, as much as that bothers me personally, it's not me I worry for. I'm an adult and can handle it, however distasteful I find the practice.
What enrages me is that these murdered children are being turned into the "porn" of the pro-life movement, their gruesome deaths considered nothing more than "bloody shirts" waved from picket signs and pasted to Facebook walls to cause "shock and awe" in viewers.
And not just in viewers who support abortion. Just now I saw an image on Facebook of an aborted child plastered beside text warning that anyone who votes for President Obama (evidently without qualification or exception) is directly responsible for that child's death and will have to answer for that child's death on Judgment Day.
I hope you all know by now that I am no fan of the President's position on abortion. I fully support a Catholic's right to conscientiously vote in opposition to his record. But I am sick and tired of seeing pro-lifers exploit the murders of innocents as a means of inducing guilt in the undecided to vote against Obama.
The pro-life movement is better than that and must rise above such unworthy tactics. Photographs are necessary, but the subjects must be treated with respect and dignity. The blood of the innocents is ours to defend, but we cannot do so by continuing, "virtually," to spill that blood through sensationalist tactics.
(Image: Statue of angel weeping bloody tears, Pixabay.)
