My friend Tom Herring of the Anti-Choice Project (ACP) gave an outstanding interview yesterday to KIRO radio in Seattle about his group’s visit to Wilson High School in Tacoma, Washington. ACP volunteers brought a display of abortion victim photos to the school after learning that school officials had ordered the remove of some posters put up by the campus pro-life group.
In his interview with host Jason Rantz, Tom articulately defended the public display of abortion victim photos:
There are certain evils, words simply fail us when we try to communicate the gravity of the evil. So for example, I think the Holocaust itself would be an example of something that, if we were to limit ourselves to words to describe it, we would be doing an injustice to what actually happened.
In the same way, we use these pictures to show the true reality, the nature of what abortion does to a baby.
I was particularly impressed with Tom’s response to an objection often raised about these pictures: the mere fact that they upset people doesn’t mean that what they depict is wrong. After all, pictures of many other surgical procedures would be just as unsettling. Here’s Tom:
Viewing blood which was shed to heal does make people feel squeamish, but viewing blood which was shed to kill makes people feel horror, assuming they have a functioning conscience. And most people do have a functioning conscience, and so when they see these pictures, they are repulsed by them at different level than, say, seeing brain surgery or another surgical procedure.
And the reason is because we can recognize in these pictures the humanity of the unborn child which was dismembered, and that’s the injustice that speaks to all of us, and why these pictures are so bothersome to people.
Kudos to Tom for scuttling Wilson High School’s attempt to limit their students’ exposure to the pro-life message, and for so winsomely and articulately explaining why we must show the victims of abortion in the public square.
You can listen to the whole interview here.
