Turned Off By Aborted Baby Pictures

I am pro-life. I've been active in the local 40 Days For Life Campaign. I take part in an annul Good Friday Stations of the Cross For Life march and vigil outside a doctor's office where abortions are performed. I pray with a group of other people every Saturday morning outside a Planned Parenthood killing center.

But this morning when I arrived at Planned Parenthood, Operation Save America was there. They are a national pro-life group in Rochester this week. They've been staging protests, and apparently they decided to take advantage of our regular prayer vigil.

If they had been there to pray, that would have been one thing.

But they were there with large posters of aborted babies.

Mind you, the killing center is across the street from a mall and a major food supermarket. On Saturday, families, mothers, children are heading to that store, or driving along that major roadway.

Driving by those signs.

Yes, I know all the arguments about people needing to see the reality of abortion. Yes, I know they sometimes need to be shocked to get them to think. Yes, I know that at the clinics they might help change the hearts of women going in to kill their babies.

But subjecting young children and families to such images?

I am not opposed to graphic images under the right circumstances. But not in a public place like this.

I believe that kind of emotional/mental violence is counter-productive. I believe it turns more people off than it convinces to end abortion. I believe it reinforces a negative image of pro-lifers.

I went over to the head of our prayer group, and told him I would not be taking part today. I told him I thought what was going on was offensive.

Then I left and went to a 24-hour chapel and said many of the prayers we normally say, including a Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. I prayed for an end to abortion. And I prayed for an end to violence.

I post this not to debate. I'm not interested in engaging in a dialogue with those who support such tactics.

I'm hoping rather that hearing a stanch pro-lifer objecting to these tactics will get them to rethink what they are doing. 

Pax et bonum