Humanity of Abortion Victims Shown in 'His Only Picture' Baby Photos Campaign
A Chicago-based pro-life group has launched a new campaign that aims to show the human faces behind over 2,000 abortions performed on average in the United States every day.
Because most people turn their heads and look away when they're confronted with images of aborted babies, the Pro-Life Action League says its campaign, called "They Were Our Brothers and Sisters," is intended to "evoke sympathy for abortion's hidden victims and their lost lives."
"We combed through hundreds of abortion photos to find those that would most highlight the humanity of abortion's unborn victims," said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, in a statement to The Christian Post. "Rather than emphasizing the blood and gore of the abortion procedure, the emphasis has been shifted to the lost lives of these children.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"Our new signs and literature invite viewers to consider abortion not just as a political controversy or moral question, but as a real, human tragedy, with victims who deserve our sympathy," Scheidler added, speaking about the campaign which will be on display at 24 locations in the Chicago area this week and nationwide later this year.
The signs feature a close-up of the face of a child aborted at 15 weeks, with large text reading, "His only baby picture." Another sign shows the hands of a baby who was aborted at 11 weeks, with a caption reading "Ten perfect fingers."
The pro-life group's new campaign comes just weeks after the San Francisco Superior Court dismissed 14 of 15 felony charges against pro-life activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the undercover investigation project, The Center for Medical Progress, which exposed Planned Parenthood's selling of fetal body parts to biotech firms and universities.
In the first video CMP released in 2015, Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services who performs abortions up to 24-weeks gestation in Los Angeles, revealed that some clinics perform partial birth abortions to secure baby body parts.
Nucatola explained that each "specimen" part generally draws between $30 to $100 on the market. And suggested that abortion procedures can be tailored to secure specific body parts.
In a subsequent video released by CMP's investigation, Renee Chelian, owner of the Michigan abortion chain Northland Family Planning, told a National Abortion Federation conference audience in 2014 that she had stored five-months' worth of aborted babies in freezers and didn't know what to do with them.
"I was consumed with fetal tissue. I wanted to drive to upstate Michigan to have a bonfire," Chelian said to laughter.
Ultimately, Chelian said she hired someone to pour 20 bottles of aborted babies' remains down the clinic's garbage disposal before she finally decided to transport the other remains across state lines to be incinerated at a crematorium.
During another panel at the same National Abortion Federation workshop, Lisa Harris, medical director at Planned Parenthood of Michigan, described abortion as a "violent" procedure, and suggest that pro-choice activists should cede the point to pro-lifers that an unborn baby is a "person."
"Let's just give them all the violence, it's a person, it's killing, let's just give them all that," Harris said, adding that abortionists see unborn babies "the same way" as pro-life activists but they still find their work purposeful.
As the Pro-Life Action League launches its new campaign in Chicago, a coalition of Christian pro-lifers in New York are facing a harassment lawsuit that was filed by the state's Attorney Gen. Eric Schneiderman, CP reported on June 22.
The attorney general's office filed the federal harassment lawsuit against 14 pro-life activists who it claims repeatedly "harassed, threatened, and menaced patients, families, escorts, and clinic staff" at the Choices Women's Medical Center in Jamaica, Queens "every Saturday morning for at least five years."
The lawsuit states that the defendants are a "loose alliance of individuals" associated with the Church at the Rock in Brooklyn, Grace Baptist Church in Woodhaven, Bright Dawn Ministries in Brooklyn, and a group called Helpers of God's Precious Infants. Other protesters with no church or organizational affiliation are also listed in the lawsuit.
Andrew Bath, general counsel for the Thomas More Society, a law firm that will be representing the defendants associated with the Church at the Rock in Brooklyn, said in a statement that the members of the church "peacefully" counsel women who are thinking of going through with an abortion.
"They conduct themselves reasonably and compassionately and offer information about abortion alternatives to those willing to listen," Bath said. "This is the exercise of their core First Amendment rights and is an activity that takes place on the public sidewalk, the traditional venue for expression concerning important ideas and societal issues."
