Bad news of a new abortion clinic in Casper traveled fast. It prompted a pro-life rally and prayer vigil in front of their building at 918 E. 2nd Street, on April 21st. One media outlet estimated there were about 150 demonstrators expressing their opposition to the arrival Circle of Hope Clinic. Clinic supporters, including president Julia Burkhart, perched stoically on their lawn chairs, admonishing anyone close to violating their space. They displayed a deceptive sign, “Love is the language spoken here.” Counterfeit love. Killing babies isn’t love. Many prayed. Signs were displayed by pro-life advocates. One was, “Remember the Unborn.” Another “Pray to end abortion.” Still, something was missing. What was it? Too sedate? Too antiseptic? No images?
Some questioned, “Where are the images, photos of lifeless, aborted, dismembered babies, whose lives have been deliberately snuffed out, to be waste for a back alley dumpster.” Praying for an end to abortion is a righteous cause. However, nothing snags observers attention like the images of dismembered babies that shock the conscience of onlookers, as an “in your face” approach of images designed to repulse damsels of death, who’ll profit from killing the unborn with impunity. Sixty-three year-old Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, before the SCOTUS imposed “buffer zone,” boldly blockaded entrances to those butcher shops. His style drew praise, persecution and prosecution. In 1986, he was first arrested for chaining himself to an abortion clinic sink. And forty times thereafter, for activist violations and ignoring court orders.
Americans value photos and images. A picture’s worth a thousand words. Six years of unrelenting televised anti-war protests softened an ever obsequious public’s will against the Viet Nam Conflict. Those graphic photos hastened its demise. The New York Times and other major news outlets did their best to stoke anti-war sentiment. Second Lieutenant, William Calley was charged with six specifications of premeditated murder on September 5, 1969, associated with the MyLai massacre of around four hundred unarmed South Vietnamese civilians on March 16, 1968. Calley was convicted of personally murdering twenty-two civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was reduced on appeal to twenty years, and further reduced by the Secretary of the Army. Many still believe he was the “scapegoat.” He was paroled in 1974. His photo appeared on the April 12, 1971, cover of Time Magazine, titled “Who Shares the Guilt?” Images matter.
Following the Korean Conflict, television was a new medium for world coverage to the American public. Around 10 % of American homes owned a TV in the mid 1950’s. By 1966, that figure spiraled to around 93%, setting the stage for non-stop coverage of the Vietnam Conflict. New technologies permitted reporters to distribute photos and video materials. Near the end of 1960, with the death of many South Vietnamese civilians, in a failed coup against Catholic President Diem, who was later assassinated in 1963, the New York Times dispatched their first reporter to Saigon. As the war intensified, the number of press corp in South Vietnam escalated rapidly, from forty in 1963, to over four hundred in 1965. Soon, by 1967, it was nightly fare on CBS and NBC, and the proliferation of images began.
After the 1968, Tet Lunar New Year Offensive, media coverage was predominately negative, as images of civilian and military casualties assaulted the viewing public nightly. An iconic photo of the execution of Vietcong Guerrilla, shot at point blank in the head, and the naked Vietnamese nine year old, “Napalm Girl” severely burned in an aerial napalm attack, screaming for help, while running down Route 1. That image was indelible in the American psyche. Vietnam was aptly described as the “living room war.” Graphic images helped turn the tide of American sentiment against the United State’s role in Vietnam. It was a political miscalculation by the LBJ administration, not a war.
Casper’s proposed abortion clinic painfully reminds us of the disastrous 1973, Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade decision, foisted on us nearly fifty years ago. Abortion supporters are nervous since more than twenty states passed legislation with most severe restrictions on abortion-on-demand. For years abortion supporters complained about the graphic photos of aborted babies carried on signs by anti-abortion supporters. One Boston reporter carped that his wife was offended by “grisly” photos of a seventh-week aborted, dismembered baby, asking, “Where do you take these photos?” From dumpsters, among other places. For many years, a Madonna University professor, Monica Migliorino Miller, supplied the anti-abortion movement with its imagery. According to the National Catholic Register, she recovered thousands of aborted babies that were improperly disposed in dumpsters outside a Midwest “women’s healthcare” facility. She began photographing the dead babies in 1987.
The abortion industry prefers the Latin term “fetus.” It sounds more clinical, and less incendiary than “baby.” These handmaidens of death loathe photos that cast light on their evil deeds-killing babies. In the late 1990’s, the Canadian Center for Bio-Ethical Reform compiled an extensive library of photos and videos of abortion procedures and lifeless, dismembered babies, or what Planned Parenthood labeled as a “product of unwanted pregnancies.” If more Americans saw these shocking, revulsive photos of dismembered dead babies in a bucket, the tide of abortion-on-demand would drop precipitously. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness aren’t granted posthumously.
Mainstream media has fought this effort vigorously for years. Thank God for independent media sights and podcasts. If these images were viewed in every state legislature, streamed across news outlets and cable, it would shock the conscience of most Americans with an ounce of humanity. Only the coldest, soulless individual would continue to advocate for abortion after viewing those vile, appalling images. According to a recent Marist Poll, the majority, over 66% of Americans believe life begins at conception. The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, New York OBGYN, who participated in 75,000 abortions, was convinced by images.
We’ve seen images of the Auschwitz holocaust. Crustaceans have more protection than the unborn. Switzerland banned importing live lobsters because “it feels pain.” Drowning a litter of kittens would bring vitriol and death threats to the perpetrator. Ripping a baby from the womb-only a yawn in their domain. Evil never rests.
Animal rights activists unabashedly blitz us with photos and images of “endangered” seals, polars bears, tigers, and shivering caged animals, to shape public opinion, appealing across every media platform. The general public seeing those ghastly images of dead babies, is the damsels of death’s worst nightmare. No capitulating. Let the citizens of Casper see the images of what will take place at 918 E. 2nd Street. Hatred is the oxygen of the pro-abortion crowd. It isn’t love. What do you think?
Mike Pyatt’s a Natrona County resident. His email’s mikepyatt44@gmail.com
Where are the images? See them here –> Galleries of Images of Aborted Children