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Liberals are masters of hypocrisy, and when it comes
to freedom of speech, they valiantly embrace the old
double standard. They’ll bring lawsuits till
the cows come home to defend some pervert’s “right”
to distribute pornography or other offensive
materials to the public or to engage in displays of
nudity and obscenity on public streets, even though
children may be present, but they’ll fight like
maniacs against public displays of pro-life messages
and disturbing images of aborted babies,
because—they claim—children might see them and be
upset.
We have seen numerous cases in
which leftists have prevailed at gaining court
permission for “teachers” to use profanity in the
classroom, to discuss all kinds of sexual behavior
and obscenity and to expose children to homosexual
indoctrination during school hours. We have
seen cases in which courts have determined that
children have a “First Amendment right” to play
violent video games that contain gruesome, gory
imagery like amputation, decapitation, and
dismemberment, as well as sexual intercourse.
All this is good and well to the Left, but when it
comes to pictures of aborted babies, now there’s something
they believe should be outlawed to protect
“children’s sensibilities”!
On March 4th, The
Thomas More Society filed
a petition
of the Supreme Court to
hear such a case. From
the Society’s report:
… Chicago’s Thomas More Society petitioned the U.S.
Supreme Court to review and overturn a Colorado
state court decree barring Denver pro-lifers from
“displaying large posters or similar displays
depicting gruesome images of mutilated fetuses or
dead bodies in a manner reasonably likely to be
viewed by children under 12 years of age attending
worship services…at plaintiff church.” The
church, Denver’s St. John’s Church in the
Wilderness, was picketed several years ago by
Ken Scott, Clifton Powell, and others during an
outdoor Palm Sunday procession for having “go[ne]
astray from the original teachings of the Bible” and
for “supporting abortion.”
The “gruesome images” ban was entered in a lawsuit
for private nuisance and civil conspiracy filed by
the church after Scott and Powell held graphic signs
featuring photos of aborted human beings on a public
sidewalk across the street from the outdoor
procession. This upset parishioners –
including children – as they processed on the
opposite sidewalk. Scott and Powell had given
prior notice of their protest, and they did not
enter the church, go onto church property, or
disturb the services inside the church where their
protest couldn’t be heard. No violence,
trespass, physical obstruction, or criminal conduct
occurred. Police were present, and neither
Scott, nor Powell, nor any other protester was cited
for any noise or other law violation.
Despite recognizing that the “gruesome images” ban
was a content-based restriction on speech, the
Colorado’s Appellate Court upheld it as “narrowly
tailored” to serve a “compelling government
interest,” namely, “protecting children from
exposure to certain images of aborted fetuses and
dead bodies.” Colorado’s Supreme Court denied
review, but Chief Justice Michael Bender and
Associate Justice Allison Eid dissented.
So, we have a leftist, Episcopal “church” that
supports abortion, and we have a group of pre-born
life defenders who are protesting that church’s
stance. Any church that supports abortion is
not a church of Jesus Christ. You cannot claim
to be in the body of Christ and at the same time
approve of killing pre-born babies. The two
positions are mutually exclusive.
What about the gruesome images? Oh, they’re
certainly offensive on the deepest, most visceral
level. They stir revulsion in the hearts of
those who see them, as well they should. Even
people who support abortion can be moved by the
obscene image of a mutilated, aborted human baby.
Our world has a history of people using disturbing
images to push for societal reforms. As the report
from the Thomas More Society notes,
photographs of lynching victims and the mutilated
body of black teenager, Emmett Till,
caused such public outrage that the Civil Rights
Movement was propelled forward.
The Society report also notes:
Photos of Holocaust victims “similarly helped show
the evil of Nazism in ways words could not easily
convey.” Other examples cited in the Petition
include photos of a Buddhist monk immolating himself
in Vietnam, a napalmed Vietnamese girl running in
terror along a highway, and a terrorist being shot
by a general – all of which impacted national policy
on the Vietnam War. More recently, Time
magazine’s cover boldly depicted the brutal
disfigurement of an Afghan woman – a controversial
step defended by Time’s editor who said he “would
rather confront readers with the Taliban’s treatment
of women than ignore it.”
In his March 8th report
on this story, Matt
C. Abbott quoted Frank Pavone,
who is the national director of Priests for Life, as
pointing out the unconstitutionality of the Colorado
court’s ruling and the need for the world to see
these kinds of images:
It doesn’t take years of law school to see the
unconstitutional nature of this Colorado decree,
especially given the fact that free speech is
protected precisely because the speaker often needs
protection from those who will try to shut down his
message because it is disturbing.
… The need to disturb the public with graphic images
of abortion, furthermore, is simply another
incarnation of a longstanding history of social
reform in which reformers have disturbed the public
with images of slaves in the slave ships, or
children in sordid working conditions in mines and
factories, or holocaust victims, or the damage
smoking does to the lungs, or the disastrous results
of drunk driving. The list goes on and on. One
cannot rationally ban ‘gruesome images of mutilated
fetuses or dead bodies’ without striking a blow
against the entire history of social reform.
And that’s the point about the use of these images.
It is not a question of whether we like to use them.
It is a question of whether history teaches us any
principles of social reform, and whether there is
reason to think that the pro-life movement is
somehow exempt from those principles.
Here is the bottom line on why the Left opposes the
display of gruesome photographs of aborted babies:
it exposes the obscenely grotesque reality of
abortion. Americans are not used to actually
seeing the truth of what it means to abort a baby.
For many people, “out of sight and out of mind”
means not fully comprehending the barbaric evil that
is abortion. There are truly no words that can
convey this reality as these horrible images do.
The devil-inspired Left is fully dedicated to
preserving the practice of killing pre-born babies,
and they know that the freedom to show the ugly face
of abortion will only reduce public support for it.
So, they fight against that freedom.
In the twisted minds of leftists, it’s fine for
children to be exposed to abominable, public
displays of blatant, sacrilegious obscenity like the
homosexual Folsom
Street Fair in
San Francisco, but when it comes to defending
pre-born human life, pictures worth a thousand words
should be outlawed. The hypocrisy is
sickening.