Category: Pro-Choicers on Abortion Pictures

From an article by pro-abortion activist Jason Deparle:

“In 1985 the North Carolina Independent, a biweekly alternative paper with a history of support for left liberal and feminist causes, put a fetus on the front page, labeled with the blandest caption: “Controversial, magnified images like this one… are credited with winning converts to the antiabortion camp.”

“The phone calls and letters poured in,” said Katherine Fulton, the paper’s editor. “It was perceived as antifeminist.” The graphic seemed like “the other side image. We didn’t coach it enough.”

From the same article:

In 1985 [The Progressive] ran an advertisement from a group called Feminists for Life [it] pictured an embryo at eight weeks. The Funding Exchange, a New York philanthropy that had supported the magazine, wrote to say that it was “greatly offended” was canceling its subscription, and would henceforth “find it difficult for our staff to lobby for funding for your publication.” Michael Ratner, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil liberties group, weighed in as well:

“Happily I am not a subscriber so I needn’t cancel my subscription,” he wrote, “I would surely do so after seeing this antiabortion ad.”

Jason Deparle “Beyond the Legal Right: Why Liberals and Feminists Don’t like to Talk about the Morality of Abortion” Washington Monthly, April 1989

Deparle goes on to say:

“It’s not surprising that the defenders of abortion don’t like pictures of fetuses; General Westmoreland didn’t like the cameras in Vietnam either. Fetuses aren’t babies, and the photos don’t end the discussion. But they make it a more sober one, as it should be.”

 

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Another example of how effective these pictures are, when Kenneth Edelin killed a 23 week old baby who was born alive after an abortion he performed, the jury that convicted him said that the reason they found him guilty was the pictures the prosecution showed of the dead child:

From an article covering the trial:

“Several of the jurors who convicted Edlin of manslaughter said it was the photographic evidence that convinced them.

“It looked like a baby,” said juror Liberty Ann Conlin “I’m not speaking for the rest of the jurors, but it definitely had an effect on me.”

Another juror, Paul A. Hollan, “The picture helped people draw their own conclusions. Everybody in the room made up their minds but the fetus was a person.”

(St Lois Globe-Democrat feb 18 1975)

….

Pro-choice author Maureen Faux said of the case:

“The case was lost in part because, over the defense’s strenuous objections, the prosecution was able to display a larger-than-life-size photograph of the fetus, which had been preserved as evidence.”

Marian Faux Crusaders: Voices from the Abortion Front (New York: Carol Publishing Group) 1990 P 4

The verdict was later overturned.

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During the trials about the partial birth abortion ban, president of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers Ron Fitzsimmons said this of the pictures (drawings of how the baby is killed in this type of abortion) shown by supporters of the ban:

“They’d be talking, talking, talking, and every few minutes, they’d say, “Mr. Speaker, let me just once again describe this horrific procedure for you.” I swear, I thought the debate occurred every night between five and six p.m., when people were coming home. They did exactly what I would have done – they brought out those pictures. And I was just thinking: who’s going to go out there and defend this?”

Cynthia Gorney “Gambling with Abortion: Why Both Sides Think They Have Everything to Lose” Harper’s Magazine, Nov 2004

 

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