In Which An Army Of Scott Roeders Is The Only Possible Outcome

Someone in my area has set up a billboard in the bed of their pickup truck with large photos that supposedly depict the remains of aborted fetuses.  A manual for "covert operatives" on how to attack abortion providers and patients includes photos like these at the bottom of most of the pages.  "The Nuremberg Files," a website which includes a listing of "Aborted and Nearly Aborted Abortionists," has multiple links exhorting the reader to view graphic photos that apparently depict these remains.

Amanda Marcotte has written about the training manual for the group Justice For All, which is, unfortunately, valuable information for each of us to know.  She discusses their tactics, which include "a two story tall 3D display of fetus pictures next to pictures of Holocaust victims."

Anti-choice activists have made gore their stock-in-trade.  But they don't reserve their library of grisly images only for the public, hoping to shock-convert people to their cause.  They use these photos in their internal materials, things not really intended to be viewed by the larger public.

Just as The Passion of the Christ was rightly called "crucifixion porn," anti-choice activists are consuming massive amounts of abortion porn.  It's not that people are actually receiving sexual gratification from displaying and viewing these images.  Rather, they're using these images to provoke strong and ultimately false emotions from those who view them.  Crucifixion porn, as it were, is a huge problem in American Evangelicalism and has been for some time.  Youth events in particular feature excessively - and falsely - detailed accounts of Jesus's death - or the persecutions suffered by missionaries, etc. - as a way to manipulate adolescents' already-volatile emotions, to get them to come to the front of the auditorium and "make a decision for Jesus."

I don't need to see pictures of torture* in order to know that I oppose it.  I don't need to see child pornography for its existence to sicken and enrage me, and anti-child pornography activists who displayed such images would be rightly shunned by society and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 

Simply put, there is something very wrong with a movement that uses images like these to shock society at large.  Not even the sickos at 4chan go as far as the anti-choice movement.  It's no wonder that anti-choicers are producing so many vicious and violent criminals; they're warped and infected by their own most common tactics.

*I do, however, think the Abu Ghraib photos should be made a matter of public record in order to force accountability on those who ordered and performed such abuse.

Comments

[kathy a.]

some of these people used to come out with their giant gory photos at a local street fair [in berkeley, of all places] -- this was probably 12+ years ago, since i remember my kids being small and rushing them past that area, thankful for the crowds and distractions across the street. it was incredibly distressing that they were marketing this at a fun community event aimed at kids and families, and with such huge graphics. wtf?

we have a societal norm against widely publishing gory and/or private events: surgery, miscarriage, menstuation, bowel elimination, childbirth, certain crime scenes and accidents, the aftermaths of even natural deaths, autopsies, etc. pictures of these would cause public distress -- we respond viscerally to explicit graphics. i'm guessing that miscarriage photos might look very similar to the supposed photos of aborted fetuses, especially with the wonder of giant blow-ups.

doesn't seem out of line to call these graphics in literature for the faithful "porn." but the photos do not stand alone; the thousand words accompanying them are deliberate.

[Corvus9]

Pro-life groups really shouldn't give themselves names that make me think immediately of the opening notes of "One."

[kathy a.]

well, this is just weird. my daughter is off at college in another state, and the anti-abortion people with big gory photos were shouting "genocide" at her school today. she was so upset that she joined up with the counter-protesters, and had some woman in her face about baby-killing. she stood her ground, but left shaking.

we haven't even discussed dr. tiller; next week is finals and there's been a lot going on. i'm proud of her, though.

[Stephen]

kathy a.,

If you want, feel free to tell your daughter that many people are impressed by, and proud of her. I hope my own kids are able, as they get older, to hold fast to their convictions the way she is.

[kathy a.]

thanks, stephen!

she was upset with the huge gory photos and the inflammatory talk right in the middle of campus, and also because the protesters brought a lot of little kids with them. "mom, they had these little kids in a pen."

the woman who got in her face saw her as a good target and started nice, but it soon degenerated. when my daughter asked why the children were there to see the awful photos and hear the shouts, the woman said, "they need to know from an early age." the woman started in about fetal heartbeats at 5 weeks, and daughter countered with, "but they don't have a nervous system then." "are you a biology major? i studied biology." and yadda, on to baby-killing and genocide. daughter felt kind of embarassed because she used bad words. twice. she had the presence of mind to return the woman's "blessing" at the end -- albeit with some irony not intended with the original.