I concur wholeheartedly.  I have also gotten into these same discussions.  I am wondering about the desensitizing it can do.  There have been studies showing that young people who play hours of video games depicting violence become less sensitive to actual violence.  I believe an image of a baby via ultrasound - at any age - can create a more nurturing response to anyone entering or walking by.  I’d be curious what such a poster or sign would do for the clients and/or the personnel.

I think the graphic pictures can be helpful. I am now a more committed pro-lifer. But initially most of it was in my head. Not until I heard a radio program of a performed abortion where the abortionist was applauded as the heart stopped beating on the ultrasound; and viewing the many aborted babies on the priests for life website that the visceral, gut wrentching truth of abortion became clear to me. The truth of the Shoah was demonstrated in much the same way with a big impact. We are a very visual, sensory culture, that needs to be informed in many ways before we “get” it. It wasn’t until my mind and my heart changed that I am now willing to do more with my hands and feet.

I agree that the images are not necessaruly fit for kids to see, but would there be kids at an abortion clinic?  I think the customers going in there deserve to see the reality of what they are contemplating.  There are women who have been deceived by the rhetoric and euphemisms used to conceal the nature of the act and been traumatized later when the reality hit them.  They need protecting as well as the babies.

I agree…it seems to me that showing the videos/pictures of babies in the womb at early stages, along with details such as when the heart begins to beat, and all the other details, goes a very long way for pro life.  The shock things only give the other side things to throw back at us pro lifers. 

Christ’s peace!

I am also not interesting in my children seeing such images.

However, adults must confront the reality of abortion.  It is not some simple, painless surgery (well, perhaps it is for the mother).  It is an horrific crime.  The truth must be brought to light.

I would not take my elementary aged children to see the Holocaust Museum in D.C., nor would I take them on a tour of Dauchau in Germany.  I myself toured Dauchau many years ago and forced myself to look at the photos - what the camp looked like when the liberators arrived.  Piles of emaciated bodies.  What looked like walking skeletons, but were barely alive survivors.  A picture truly is worth a thousand words.  I didn’t need those images to be convinced that genocide was wrong.  I needed those images to grasp the magnitude of the crime. 

Likewise, I think we need images of aborted babies to grasp the magnitude of the crime.  In this way, the pathos arguments one might use when faced with an unexpected pregnancy will not dull the moral senses which will recoil when they remember that photo.

Abortion images   show the grim reality of abortion. Only seeing such images of abortion can bring us to the kind of indignation needed to sustain the sacrifices that will be necessary to finally bring an end to this injustice.

Abortion is a reality which is so horrific that words alone can never convey its meaning.

It’s especially critical to show people the images of babies aborted in the first trimester. It is in regard to such children, who constitute 90% of abortion victims, that the myth persists that they are not really children at all.

Successful pro-life organizations such as Priests for Life,  Human Life International,  Vida Humana Internacional, Center for Bioethical Reform all make very successful use of such images. 

In the UK and other countries where such images have not been widely used, the pro-life movement has had little success.

I have been on the fence with this one as well, but I recently saw something that has me leaning a little more in favor of showing the images. This video and its commentary at Jill Stanek’s web site, which I keep meaning to write something about, talk about the principle of double effect when it comes to children seeing these images and claim that showing them does in fact save lives.  It gives one something to think about. I am not as inclined to doubt the sincerity of the offended women’s distress as the commentary seems to do, and I don’t know if bigger is better—a 7’ banner is larger than just about any adult alive, and is probably more traumatizing than effective. I think poster size is plenty big enough. 

http://www.jillstanek.com/2010/09/street-video-when-kids-see-photos-of-aborted-kids-the-principle-of-double-effect/

I am not comfortable with my children seeing graphic images of aborted fetuses.  HOWEVER, I do agree with the importance of having at least a few of these images near abortion clinics (where, presumably, not a lot of kids would see it, unless an adult took them there)—some people NEED to be shocked to see the horrific reality of abortion.  Too long we’ve hidden the truth that needs to be told.  I think it’s also hypocritical that most of society is okay with all the indecent/obscene images all around us—on billboards, on TV, etc.  and yet something REAL that happens ~4000 times a day in America isn’t acceptable???

We will be at the 40 Days for Life campaign this month and next, but I will be picking days (or trying to anyway) when the images are not there, or will choose a spot where we can pray without my kids having to look at the images for a long time.  There are several of us homeschooling families and we do recognize the importance of praying there with our children.  In this case I’d rather err on the side of too much exposure than too little.

While I am 100% pro life I am totally against this sort of image being used.  I would not want to walk down the road and have to explain that sort of image to small children.  Neither did I want to walk into Church one Sunday morning and be handed a flyer showing nine week old aborted babies in a black bin liner, three days after I had miscarried at 9 weeks.  People showing these images may have a good intention but have no way of knowing what hurt other people are carrying in their hearts

A.M.D.G.

I am of the opinion that abortion won’t end until people actually see what it looks like.  It’s similar to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.  It wasn’t a problem for some people until t.v. cameras saw cops turning hoses and dogs on black people.  If it’s just a normal surgical procedure like the abortionists claim it is, then they should have no problem with the general public seeing exactly what an abortion is.  Until then, it’s simply something unimportant that happens somewhere far,far away.  People need to truly grasp that abortion is brutal and demonic.  I have no problem with a terrifying visual aid of the awful truth that abortion is murder.

Maybe if women see what they are killing perhapse they won’t go through with it.

Some might consider the holocaust images too graphic as well.  However, our job is to win hearts.  And that means we need to give people positive reasons to not kill their children before they are born.  I agree with you whole heartedly.  Some day there will be a place and time for those type of images but perhaps not now or in that venue, as this will do us no good right now.

I completely agree with Michelle Reitemeyer.  Yes, there is an appropriate age for children to see images of abortion, but as Fr. Frank Pavone says, America will not reject abortion until America SEES abortion.  The truth is ugly and graphic and offensive.  The images should not be anything less.  Displaying these images does not make for an unpeaceful protest or demonstration, nor do I think it makes the demonstrators seem like crazy bullies.  It’s time to dispel the cultural myth that abortion can be peaceful and benign.

It’s amusing that you are distressed Danielle at your children not seeing something inappropriate for their age.  I take it you don’t turn on the t.v. at your house?  Even the ads will catch you by surprise!  This issue is about how do you help someone and what is love?  Fr. Pavone thinks truth is love even when it is difficult to see.  Others differ.  Love, that is truly Christ-centered will be expressed by individuals in many different forms and perhaps this is one of them.

If people had not seen pictures of Nazi atrocities from concentration camps-the piles of emaciated corpses the results of “experiments"they would have not believed in the holocaust or the extent of it.

These graphic images are intended to shock as abortion is not a medical procedure it is the violent murder of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters in the most dangerous place on earth-the womb.These victims are ripped apart and the abortion attendant has to count all the pieces to make sure none are left in the womb.This is a civil rights issue and justice begins in the womb

During the American Civil War there was outrage expressed when the bodies of slain soldiers were photographed and exhibited.

Whether you have delicate sensibilities or not we are at war with Molloch-Satan-a REAL war,and Kumbaya abortion protesting is not as effective.If nothing else it brings the number one cause of death and deliberate state sanctioned murder to the fore and shocks the left who keep repeating"The Issue Is Settled.“No it ain’t.This war is just beginning and we already have martyrs in Canada,Australia,The US and the UK.

Lead or get out of the way.

In Los Angeles, there are offensive billboards of half nude women that I don’t want my children to see but they see it as we drive on by. (Totally out of my control - advertisers do it for dirty money.) My children see nasty symbols and vulgar words on the tee-shirts of teens in the malls.  Television and movies contain a barrage of filthy - graphic images. I didn’t know that abortion was the practice of killing unborn children until I saw a photo of a aborted baby in a bucket.  My viewpoint changed instantly that day at the Mariposa County Fair.  I will never think of an unborn child as a ‘fetus’ which isn’t a living human being - ever again. (I was taught in high school that it isn’t alive until it is born. Now how stupid is that???  Bring it on - Show the graphics - educate us and raise awareness so that some of us idots will get our heads out of the sand.

when pro-aborts refer to the child in the womb as a ‘parasite’ this tells me of a lack of depth ,vision, compassion and love in that person- a lack of nurturing. The scientific definition of a parasite is an organism living off another with no benefit to the host. The child in the womb carries 50% of the mothers Dna i.e it is not a foreign organism. And at what point does the ‘parasite’ become a child you love. Such an stunted view of life in the womb.

I think if more people saw these graphic images there would be less/no abortion. But a placard would have sufficed.