Abortion foes put graphic message on parade
By Erika Fricke
© 2002 Toledo Blade

LIMA, Ohio - Anti-abortion advocates drove through here yesterday with images of aborted fetuses on the side of large trucks, in the hopes that pictures will do what words will not: convince viewers that the unborn deserve rights.

The pictures portray fetuses, with tiny hands and feet, in pools of blood and labeled by the week of gestation and the single word "Choice." The organization, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, uses pictures on trucks and on banners that get flown over beaches, as well as in displays on college campuses.

"We’ve got to get people to realize that the unborn are persons," said Mark Harrington, executive director of the organization’s Midwest region. "The pictures prove this. He looks like us, he’s just smaller."

Staff and volunteers will be driving the trucks in Findlay today and Toledo from tomorrow through the end of the week, before continuing on to other parts of Ohio.

But abortion-rights supporters called the images "scare tactics" that prey on emotions rather than provide information. Many viewers on both sides felt uncomfortable with the graphic nature of the pictures. Anti-abortion residents of Lima who saw the images described them as powerful and hoped that they might convince women not to have abortions.

"Yeah, it’s gross," said Geoff Bermosk, 49, of Lima, "Most people don’t want to picture that in their minds. I think they need to see how devastating it really is."

But many, on both sides of the abortion issue, said images alone won’t change minds, and the pictures weren’t appropriate for the street.

"It’s aggravating me more than anything else, because I don’t want my children to see that," said 34-year-old Kris Burden. She said she tries to protect her two children from violence on television and doesn’t want it on the road, even for social issues.

"Should we have signs of children dead in playgrounds to show gun-control issues?" she asked.

Before deciding to join forces with the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, founded in Southern California, Mr. Harrington used to encourage women at abortion clinics to change their minds, with little success.

He said he hopes the images convince people before they’re in a moment of crisis.

The word "choice" is abstract, but the pictures help people "connect-the dots" he said, from the word to its effect.

And the pictures don’t only reach women but voters who might change abortion laws, Mr. Harrington said.

"If people are bothered by our trucks, that may lead them to be bothered by abortion," he said.

Abortion-rights advocates in Toledo said that the gruesome pictures may make people feel uncomfortable, but they don’t explain the issue.

"If people want to convince a person to make a decision, one way or the other, it’s with concrete information, not scare tactics," said Sue Postal, director of the abortion clinic Center for Choice.

She said that because fetuses have obviously human characteristics, it doesn’t mean that they are as developed as they appear.

She described fetal development using the analogy of home-building: When the frame of a house is built, it may have a roof, she said, but when you open the front door, there still isn’t anything inside.

"The biggest question is when does a person get a soul," Ms. Postal said. "That’s a question that none of us know, that’s a value in our hearts. That’s not something you can scare us into."

"What we believe is what we get to live with," she said.

Controversy has followed the group, including protests on college campuses, but yesterday many Lima residents didn’t notice the trucks as they drove in a loop through downtown from late morning through midafternoon.

Christine Coolick, the education coordinator for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League of Ohio, said her group too could find similarly violent images to make its point, but it would be inappropriate - for either side.

"It would be easy for us to use images, graphic images, of women who attempted their own abortion," Ms. Coolick said. "This isn’t a movie we’re making; it’s not about who can show the most violent image in the shortest amount of time wins."