Letter: Abortion billboards give an inaccurate message

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The costs of destructive decisions were most certainly brought to light by the displays on Strong's front lawn last week. The giant billboards showed graphic images of post-abortion “victims” with captions reading things like, “Humane?” and “How do we treat the unborn?”

The most offensive part of the display, however, was the gross bias indicative in the demonstration and the shameful skewing of information. Depicted on the towering billboards were images of the end-product of very late term partial-birth abortions. These images were presented in a way that suggested their frequency as the results of all abortions. This was reiterated in a Sept. 10 letter to the editor as the “actual results of abortion." In actuality, only 1 percent of abortions are performed at 21 weeks or after (toward the end of the second trimester), are considered “partial-birth”, and (maybe) have the depicted results, according to PBS. This is also before the embryo is even considered a fetus.

This information was omitted from the public display along with the actual results of 99 percent of abortions in the United States. Although there were many “facts” and implied notions that I objected to on the display, I found the “actual results of abortion” portrayed by Justice For All to be subversive as well as undermining of people’s right to decide on their own personal set of moral values. Because of groups like this one that seek to promote their self-interests through the use of scare-tactics and factual misuse, people are rarely afforded the luxury of making up their minds with the aid of unbiased information. The decision by these people to push their narrow-minded agenda upon KU students, using misrepresentation of the facts and strong images, was indeed destructive: to women’s rights, to more than a few students’ learning process, and, lastly, to the truth about abortion.

—Sara Thompson, senior from Lawrence

Comments

missmia (anonymous) says...

Great letter! This should be front page stuff, so the truth is more widely spread and accessed by people who don't know what they're talking about.

September 12, 2008 at 9:56 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

ben_l (anonymous) says...

mr2b. I will simplify the argument for you. It is about women's right, I feel sorry for you that you can't understand that. I will simplify it more, I will not answer the argument of when a woman can have an abortion, I will keep it at women's rights because that is simply what it is. Pro-life is a name that is a complete misnomer as you have pointed out quite distinctly, you care not about the woman's life. As for your argument about sex, I believe sex is a right for all humans and as contraceptives as you so deftly pointed point out are not perfect, abortion must also be a choice. In contrast to men, childbirth for women more directly impacts both their life and future and since we are not in the 1950s any more that means if a woman should prefer to put having a family on hold or for that matter no wanting children, she should be penalized. And finally, I've always noticed a key fatal flaw with so-called "pro-lifers." Their argument tends to stop after a child is born. What do you see as a future if a mother is denied an abortion and a child is brought into the world? Would you adopt it yourself?

September 12, 2008 at 1:44 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

vntg7 (anonymous) says...

ben-l. Please don't patronize other people by saying that you will 'simplify the argument' for them. We all know that is a stab at the other person's intelligence and has no place in civil debate. Also, you make some pretty insulting generalizations about pro-lifers (and since that is the almost universally used nomenclature, I am not going to add the 'so-called'). First, I and many if not all pro-life supporters do care deeply about the health and the lives of the mothers. Granted, I do believe that if a woman takes the actions that lead to her conceiving a child, she should face the responsibilities of her choice. I also believe that abortions are not wise or moral decisions even in the case of rape or medical difficulties. These are obviously difficult situations, and I am not trying to trivialize them in any way, but I believe that we as a society can love and support women without taking the life of an unborn child. I also don't know where you get that pro-life advocates don't care about a child after it is born. I personally don't have to adopt as many children as I can to avoid being a hypocrite. There are thousands upon thousands of couples that would love to adopt those children, and even if a child grows up an orphan, I still believe that he or she has value and that value should not be overlooked simply because their birth creates difficulties. There are obviously many more discussions to be had on the topic, but please don't resort to insults and off-topic remarks to make your point. Let your arguments speak for themselves.

September 12, 2008 at 4:19 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

kunomu (anonymous) says...

So when do the children have rights???? You can't look at those pictures and tell me that isn't a child in there. Regardless of what you want to believe life begins at the moment of conception.

September 12, 2008 at 5:04 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

carolineislands (anonymous) says...

Its a simple matter of conditioning. We've convinced ourselves that the infant developing in the womb is not human (sound familiar?). Its a "fetus" or "tissue" or any of the other things pro-abortioners like to call it. But it doesn't change the fact that its a developing human being with all necessary parts that moves, responds and feels pain in the 1st trimester.

If you don't believe we are only able to commit this atrocity because we've conditioned ourselves, just try to imagine the same scenario with a different victim.

Lets say - death row criminals. How about baby-rapers, serial killers, pscyhopathic rapist-mutilators... people like that.

Lets say we replace lethal injection with deaths similar to abortion. We'll drown them in a vat of acid, similiar to the saline abortion, or we'll hold them down and jab a 2 foot needle straight into their heart and inject poison, or - the best yet - lets hold them down kicking and flailing their arms like the partial birth victims do and jam a pair of hedge trimmers into the base of the skull and suction out their brains.

How loud do you think pro-abortioners would scream to protect the rights of those psychopathic predators, baby rapers and mass murderers?

Think about it. What we wouldn't even THINK of doing to the worst possible individuals in our society, we do to the most profoundly innocent humans among us.

And we call it "choice." I'm wondering what the infant said when you consulted it about its own murderous death?

Get real people. Anybody who supports abortion has brainwashed themselves. Its a human being with feelings and needs and, YES - RIGHTS.

September 21, 2008 at 10:07 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

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