Hey there! Let’s begin diving into why we use graphic images of abortion victims at NZCBR. We know it’s a big topic, so hope you find this blog post, (the first of many!) to be helpful …
Abortion Victim Photography
Images of aborted babies are incredibly heart-breaking and difficult to see. I personally used to have a lot of concerns about using “abortion victim photography” (AVP) in prolife outreach, and have spent several years wrestling with my questions.
Achieving Social Reform
The biggest thing that changed my mind was studying the history of successful social reform movements. When we look at these movements, we can easily see that a crucial component of their effectiveness involved showing the victims of injustice, not just talking about them.
For example, if you want some homework, go and research how the slave trade abolitionists used artist images of slaves and diagrams of slave ships to help people understand the injustice. Look at how the child labour reform movement would frequently take images of young children working in pitiful conditions and then display these to the public. See how during the civil rights movement a mother’s decision to have an open coffin for her brutally murdered son Emmett Till changed the tide of public opinion.
Even today we see multiple reform groups using victim photography to try and reach people, for example ads against drunk driving, images on the back of cigarette packets, news photos of desperate refugees, and youtube ads on animal cruelty. We are a visual generation living in a visual culture who need visual evidence.
Can you think of any injustice that has ever been overturned by hiding the victims of that injustice?
In the words of prolife activist Jonathan van Maren:
“Without a public display of abortion victims, their private destruction will remain covered up”
I personally was greatly challenged by this question: “If we lived in a society where thousands of 2-year-old children were being brutally and legally killed every year, would we hesitate to use graphic images of those slain children, to show people what was happening?”
If we would use them to rescue born children, why would we not also use them to rescue unborn children?