Dear Partners and Friends, 

This month, we complete our coverage of CBR’s Key States Initiative.  This was a huge undertaking and we thank God for making it possible through your generosity.  We pray that He continues His work in the hearts and minds of voters this year.  Thank you so much for your faithfulness.

Fletcher and Jane

Key States Initiative 2004 is a Rousing Success!

People are in on the sidewalk (above).  People are in their cars (below).  We’re taking these picture to where people are.
As we related in our June 2004 edition of this newsletter, CBR’s Key States Initiative (KSI) was CBR’s biggest and most aggressive campaign ever.  For 37 weeks, beginning in February and continuing until Election Day, we pulled together our entire fleet of box-body trucks plus our airplane tow-banner and visited 18 states where abortion was sure to be a hot election-year topic.  These were states in which the Presidential race was expected to be close or there was a contested Senate race between a pro-life and a pro-abortion candidate.

The states visited were Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico.  During the last month of the campaign, we abandoned plans to go to the west coast and focused instead on Ohio, Florida, and South Dakota.  How big was that?!

This was a huge project!  It was a huge undertaking.  When fully staffed, we had 16 people on the road at any one time.  More precisely, 12 on the road, 1 in the air, and 3 providing on-site management and supporting functions.  That’s not including 7 staff and 2 volunteers working full-time doing the less visible (but just as critical) tasks of recruiting drivers, arranging travel, arranging overnight truck parking, arranging housing for drivers, raising money, arranging media coverage, paying the bills, etc.  Add to that the people all along the way who welcomed our traveling team with open arms, collectively providing >2000 nights of lodging and >6000 meals.  It was a real blessing!

Impact on the election.  In a close election, who can say which factors were the decisive ones?  Certainly, there were many such factors in this election.  But it is clear that moral values were on the minds of many, many voters.  It is also clear that these voters came out in record numbers on Election Day.  We believe that the KSI helped facilitate and amplify these trends by giving hundreds of thousands of marginal voters a dramatic reminder of what it means to vote for “choice,” or even the consequences of not voting at all.
Impact on people.  Although the elections and societal reform were the focus of KSI, we must not forget the impact of the pictures on individual lives.  For example, we know of a woman in Cleveland, Ohio, who saw one of the trucks and promptly canceled her appointment to have her baby killed.  Here are some quotes from street interviews or from people who called our hotline or visited our website:

I used to think that it was just sucking out goo and tissue … but now I understand that it is wrong.  (14-yr-old female, Mt. Juliet, Illinois)

Images and concise text make what is seemingly a complex issue into a simple one, that is, abortion kills a human being.  (21-yr-old male, Minneapolis, Minnesota)

The pictures are terrifying.  there aren’t words to describe the horror.  (19-yr-old male, Rapid City, South Dakota)

The pictures are controversial because they are convicting and effective.  (19-yr-old male, Arthur, Illinois)

Before I knew they were killing innocent children, but after seeing your photos and statistics of how many people have abortions I am outraged and disgusted with abortion clinics and the murders that occur there.  (19-yr-old female, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)

I am 7 weeks pregnant and I had my mind pretty much set on getting an abortion.  I have now changed my mind because of the pictures, and it hurts to think I almost made the biggest mistake of my life by taking the life of my own precious child.  (18-yr-old female, Georgia)

I have always been against abortion, but seeing the banner on a truck today with my little sister and the two children I take care of gave me goose bumps and brought tears to my eyes.  (19-yr-old female, Springville, Iowa)

Oh my gosh!  I did not fully know what abortion was and what it was like and what a great deal it was.  I almost cried when I saw the pictures.  Thanks so much to who ever started this.  (15-yr.-old female, Des Moines, Iowa)

I was already strongly opposed to [abortion], but seeing these images and the one on your truck driving through my town made me very excited.  It’s a kick in the face to anyone that sees it.  America needs this so very badly.  Thank you for having the guts to do this when no one else wants to step up.  (20-yr-old male, Mustang, Oklahoma)

Extending our reach.  We got excellent media coverage almost everywhere we went.  This magnified the impact of the project by beaming horrifying abortion pictures into hundreds of thousands of homes and by bringing people to the CBR website who did not actually see the trucks.  One such viewer in Webster City, Iowa left this message on our website:

I’m against abortion, where before I was probably pro-choice, although I really hadn’t given it a lot of thought.

Unpicked cotton.  Of course, the abortion industry hates the fact that we are exposing the truth about abortion.  One of the more comical responses to KSI came from Kate Looby, South Dakota Director of Planned Parenthood, who was quoted in the Aberdeen American News:

Obviously, I wish this group would spend their time and money on the source of the problem which is unplanned pregnancy.  I'm disappointed that they need to try to use scare tactics to divert people's attention.

It’s a classic case of changing the subject.  In the early 1800s, her slave-trading counterparts might have said it this way:

I wish those extremist abolitionists would spend their time and money on the source of the problem, which is unpicked cotton.  I’m disappointed that they scare people about slavery to divert people’s attention from the real economic hardships we face.  If we don’t get this cotton picked, our kids will have to drop out of school and they’ll be doomed to a life of poverty.

Impact on CBR.  As a result of KSI, CBR has also changed.  We will be a different organization from now on.  Some of the fruit of KSI include:

  • New staff and new offices for CBR, primarily in these same key states that we visited.
  • New financial supporters, which will enable us to do more work with greater impact.
  • More visibility for some of our other projects.  For example, students at the University of North Carolina saw the trucks and then invited us to bring our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) to their campus, which we plan to do this spring.

Thank you!  Thank you so much for making all of this possible.  Words cannot express how you have touched the lives of others by your support of this important work.  To arrange your automatic monthly bank draft to support our work:
1. Download and print the Electronic Gift Transfer Authorization:
http://www.abortionno.org/...GiftTransferSE.pdf
2. Fill out the form.  Make sure you designate the gift for "CBR Southeast"
3. Enclose a voided check or deposit slip bearing the account number of the account we should draft.
4. Mail the Transfer Authorization form and a voided check (or deposit slip) to CBR Southeast, P.O. Box 20115, Knoxville, TN 37940.

Please pray that God will raise up others to help you support this life-saving work!