LETTER TO A POST-ABORTIVE WOMAN

In January 2007, CCBR’s executive director, Stephanie Gray, received an e-mail from a post-abortive woman who strongly disagreed with CCBR’s use of graphic visuals and who CC-ed her message to several pro-life and religious leaders.

Because the concerns the writer brings up may be raised by others, Stephanie’s response is provided below as a teaching tool. The writer is addressed by the pseudonym “Kate” and personal references have been removed to maintain confidentiality.

For complete context, read the original e-mail that prompted this letter.

Dear Kate,

I write you as a sister in Christ. Thank you for sharing your experience of redemption. I found it particularly beautiful that your daughter was the impetus for your conversion to the Catholic faith. God is indeed abounding in wisdom and mercy.

Before I address your concerns, I’d like to provide some background:

Post-abortion grief is something I encounter everywhere. In my ministry of working full-time for the pro-life cause, I frequently travel across North America speaking to people of all ages and backgrounds. I have met many, many post-abortive women on university campuses, public streets, and churches, to name a few. I have worked with post-abortive women. I have been billeted in the homes of post-abortive women. I have spoken with them, listened to them, hugged them, and both offered and received messages of hope.

Some post-abortive women have approached me after hearing my presentations to share their stories. In fact, just last week I was in Alaska and a woman approached me after a presentation in which I showed graphic visuals. She shared the stories of her abortions, of how she has had post-abortion healing, and how she wants to help and get involved. Others have confided their experience over private discussions. Some have greeted me with anger and hostility. Others have welcomed my message and shared their regret. Each woman’s experience is unique yet they all have one thing in common: pain.

I have observed that some are in pain because their abortion is a sin they have not yet repented of; they are in denial. Others are in pain because they are experiencing conviction of sin. Still others are in pain because, while forgiven, they are not yet healed. Women who are graced with both forgiveness and healing no longer experience such a sharp pain although the memory will always remain.

As for crisis pregnancies, I certainly acknowledge that the burdens and complications can be many. As a young child I frequented pregnancy care centres (PCCs) because my mom was a volunteer counsellor. Furthermore, I worked in a PCC and saw first-hand women’s difficulties. Finally, I am routinely consulted about women in crisis pregnancy—requests for both prayers for conversion and for advice when interacting with such women.

I want you to know, therefore, that my comments below come from a deep awareness of and love for “the walking wounded.” And while I don’t pretend to know exactly what it’s like, I do share in their grief as a sister and as a fellow sinner. Furthermore, I don’t need to know exactly what it’s like, in the same way a drug counsellor does not need to have been addicted to drugs to form positions on drug use and to help drug addicts.

It is my love for both the unborn and for the born that compels me to expose the injustice of abortion visually. “What kind of love compels someone to show graphic pictures that make people feel bad?” some may ask. Genuine love, for you cannot have love without truth.

If you were about to drink a glass of water with poison in it, to love you would be to inform you of that. It doesn’t matter how parched you are; I need to tell you. With that knowledge you’ll act differently. Alternatively, if you have already drunk a glass of water that I know has poison in it, again—to love you would be to tell you. For with that knowledge you would know to go to poison control.

There are many, many women who choose abortion because they are not more horrified of the abortion than they are terrified of the burdens of the crisis pregnancy. No matter how much help is offered, they believe abortion is the lesser of two “evils.” We cannot convey that abortion is the greatest evil by covering up the best evidence we have to prove that.

We cannot convey the evil of abortion by showing “pretty” pictures of unborn babies just as we cannot convey the evil of the Holocaust by showing “happy” pictures of Jewish boys at their Bar Mitzvahs. Can we convey the beauty of the life lost through such injustices? Certainly, and there is a place for that. But such images do not capture the other half of the message—the nature of the injustice itself, the very problem people’s consciences need to be pricked about in order to be inspired to solve.

Contrary to your reference to images of victims car accidents not being appropriate, I encourage you to read the story of Jacqueline Saburido (http://texasdwi.org/jacqui.html). She survived a brutal car accident that was inflicted upon her by a drunk driver. She is now the “poster child” for an anti-drinking-and-driving campaign in Texas. The image of her beautiful face pre-accident is contrasted with her burned, distorted, and deformed face post-accident. Jacqui’s story resonates with young people precisely because they see what one person’s “choice” did to another person’s life.

Does the young man who ruined Jacqueline’s life regret his decision? Does he feel badly each time he sees her poster or another campaign against drunk driving? Quite possibly. But bad feelings do not excuse, nor should they cover up, bad behaviour. In fact, bad feelings follow from bad behaviour for those with functioning consciences—and that’s a healthy response.

In order for the young man to be healed of his sin, he needs to be forgiven. In order for him to be forgiven, he needs to repent. In order for him to repent he needs to be convicted that there is a need to repent. Conviction follows recognition of wrongdoing.

You think conviction will follow from pictures of children “missing” from a playground or “missing” from a family photograph. Perhaps in some cases. But the bulk of the history and the present of the pro-life movement involves vague, innocuous approaches like that and abortion is still going strong.

People need to feel bad in order to change and currently they don’t feel bad enough—and that’s why the pro-life movement is losing. The interesting thing is that people feel bad about abortion to a degree, so that they don’t want to see it; and yet, they don’t feel bad enough about it to not commit it, to not permit it, to, in large numbers, seek forgiveness and healing regarding it.

The history of social reform movements (a point I discuss in my presentations) shows the important role that graphic pictures play in making people respond differently to injustice, including making them feel bad. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not arguing for replacing rational arguments with a sole appeal to feelings (after all, abortion advocates base their arguments on feelings). I’m arguing that the imagery is the evidence that supports verbal argumentation for the moral wrongness of abortion. It just so happens that the imagery also has an effect on feelings which helps people come to the correct conclusion about abortion, namely, that it is morally wrong.

Furthermore, the experience of our organization shows the important role of graphic imagery. Every time we speak to high school students the audience members fill out surveys, explaining their position on abortion before and after the presentation. Time and again, people change their minds on abortion and often credit the role images played in that conversion. Here is a powerful example from a teenager who attended a CCBR presentation to a Catholic youth group:

Actually, I thought that I might be pregnant and I was going to get an abortion. After the video, it showed me what I would have done to my child.

More testimonies can be read here: www.unmaskingchoice.ca/evidence.html

Our American affiliate receives over 50,000 unique hits to its website, www.abortionNO.org, each month (a site which shows abortions). They receive a constant stream of e-mails from women all over the world who say they decided not to abort their babies because they saw graphic imagery. Here is a testimony from a 17-year-old in West Virginia:

Well, things have been very depressing lately and my mind and body seemed like they were telling me to get an abortion, but after seeing this my heart lead my mind and body in the right direction!!! I AM TWO MONTHS PREGNANT AND I AM KEEPING MY BABY!

An 18-year-old in New York wrote this:

I was 16 when I found out I was pregnant and I considered having an abortion [until] I saw pictures of how wrong it is. Now I have a beautiful baby girl and I wonder how people can murder an innocent child.

Read more testimonies here: www.abortionno.org/AbortionNO/web_response.html

Conversely, we have also received heartbreaking e-mails from women who wish they had known several years ago what they encountered now (graphic images). Had they seen the brutality of abortion, they would not have killed their babies. A 51-year-old woman wrote the following:

Unfortunately these pictures are 30 years too late for me, and I’ll never know what it’s like to have a child. I wish you were present with these pictures in 1976.

Read more testimonies like that here: www.abortionno.org/AbortionNO/hurt.html

So the question we are left with is this: “If we don’t like abortion and we don’t want people to experience abortion, why not use an approach that we know will convince people not to abort?”

If we avoid saving lives in order to save feelings, that calls into question our very determination to save lives.

Beyond that, I would argue that avoiding graphic imagery to “save feelings” doesn’t save feelings at all. It often leaves women in a state of denial, where they aren’t given strong enough motivation to seek the healing that’s available for them. And beyond that, many women who abort have subsequent abortions. So we spare women the pain from multiple abortions when they “hurt” from realizing what the first (and after conviction, only) abortion did.

One post-abortive woman told me that when she had her abortion she immediately felt bad. “But,” she said, “The world told me I had no reason to feel bad. So I felt worse.” She explained that she had an inner struggle going on: “I feel bad, but I shouldn’t feel bad. I feel bad, but I shouldn’t feel bad.” She said that it wasn’t until she acknowledged those bad feelings as legitimate that she was able to move through the healing process.

Graphic pictures help many women move out of denial. Will that process hurt? Absolutely. But not because of the images; instead, it hurts because of the recognition of the injustice of abortion. Denial of sin is short-term gain at the cost of long-term pain. Acknowledgement of sin is short-term pain endured for long-term gain:

When I declared not my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. [Then] I acknowledged my sin to thee, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’; then thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin (Psalm 32:3–5).

It is not a sin to show pictures of injustice. Quite the contrary, we are commanded to expose injustice by St. Paul who said, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11). Graphic images save lives. Graphic images move people to repent of their sin.

Exposing wrongdoing to move people to repentance is biblical. In fact, in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians he wrote this:

For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it (though I did regret it), for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting; for you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret… (2 Corinthians 7:8–10).

Post-abortive women, like everyone in society, need to understand the full measure of abortion’s evilness, so that they can accept the full measure of their guilt, and thereby receive the full measure of God’s forgiveness and mercy that He greatly desires to pour out.

Showing images of aborted babies shows no disrespect in the same way that showing images of starving children in Africa shows no disrespect, or showing Jesus Christ on the crucifix shows no disrespect, or showing images of the brutalization of Blacks from the civil rights movement shows no disrespect. What is disrespectful are the acts themselves: killing the unborn, starving the born, crucifying an innocent man, or beating up peaceful people simply because they’re black.

Disrespect for human life continues when it is kept secret. As my colleague Gregg Cunningham has pointed out, “Injustice that is invisible inevitably becomes tolerable.” But as people of good will, we are called to be a light in the darkness. Light exposes things for all to see.

Would I want to be remembered as a dismembered aborted fetus, you ask? If I was killed at a time where my peers were also being killed, I certainly would want the evidence of the crime, through my dismembered body, shown. My concern would not be, “I don’t want dismembered pictures.” My concern would be, “I don’t want dismemberment.”

Anyone who is a victim of injustice desires that the evidence of the crime be made public, if not for themselves (it may be too late) but for other people and generations. I regularly spend time studying history and social movements and it is very evident that those who inflict injustice are desperate to cover it up; conversely, people who face injustice are desperate to expose it. Even forgiven and healed post-abortive women recognize the need to expose—not cover up—injustice by sharing their testimonies, the facts of their stories, so that others will not do the same (e.g., the movement of post-abortive women called “Silent No More” does this).

In the same way, the born must share the testimonies of the aborted unborn (since they themselves cannot). Graphic pictures are a powerful tool for this.

The pro-abortion movement has succeeded by trumpeting feelings over lives. In other words, the feelings, concerns, and burdens that may come with the crisis pregnancy are given more importance than the unborn child’s life. And so, unborn babies are killed as a result. The last thing the pro-life movement needs to do is to follow the same pattern of putting feelings over lives, of hiding the horror of abortion because exposing it makes us feel bad. All the while, babies get killed precisely because the horror of abortion is not known. In understanding God’s grace and finding true healing, we should realize that the pain of one’s own loss should not prevent others from being saved.

In 1955, a 14-year-old black boy, Emmett Till, was brutally beaten and killed by white racists in Mississippi. When his mutilated body was recovered, his mother held an open casket funeral saying, “Let the people see what I’ve seen” (“The Murder of Emmett Till,” PBS documentary, 2003). Through this story and image, Emmett is credited as being the catalyst for the civil rights movement (see research by Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems who wrote the book, “Emmett Till: The Sacrificial Lamb of the Civil Rights Movement”). Was Emmett’s mother, Mamie, heartbroken? Most certainly. But not because of the image of his dead body. But instead because he was dead, because he was killed. She didn’t want any more children to suffer the same fate as her own child.

With regards to the civil rights movement, Dr. Alveda King is a post-abortive woman who is the niece of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She is a pastoral associate with Priests for Life in New York. In her essay “Visual Learning and the Culture of Life” she writes the following:

For many years, I have been an outspoken advocate for the unborn child, because in a culture of abortion, the child is like a slave. The new civil rights movement of our time is the pro-life movement, and as I seek to preserve the dream of my uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and of my father, Rev. A.D. King (Martin’s brother), I ask the question, ‘How can the dream survive if we murder the children?’ I grew up seeing these two great men fight for the equal rights of their people.

But equality is not something you can see. What you can see are people. My uncle knew that the ugly reality of segregation had to be seen visually by the American public. He therefore organized events at which the eyes of the media could broadcast the way our people were treated when water hoses and dogs were unleashed on their peaceful marches. People responded to those images, not simply to abstract concepts of ‘segregation’ and ‘equality.’

Likewise, people—and especially African Americans—respond to the disturbing images of aborted children. Sure, some people get angry when we show them. But everyone who fights injustice has to be ready to pay a price. My uncle did, and so did my Dad. So does everyone who has the courage to show the ugly reality of abortion. Don’t be afraid to do so. Many people are grateful. As a woman who has had two abortions, I am grateful that the truth is being shown, so that others can avoid this pain in the first place (www.priestsforlife.org/articles/visuallearning.htm).

I sincerely pray my message is received well by you, Kate. I mean only good will. I pray that you will be able to offer up your suffering of being reminded of your abortions in the interest of saving babies. While it is too late for [your two children], it is not too late for others.

I certainly recognize that there are many things to be done to rid the Culture of Death and to build a Culture of Life. I applaud the essential work of post-abortion ministries. In fact, it is my plan for CCBR to meet with such ministries in the Calgary area. I know [name of pro-life leader who was CC-ed on both the original e-mail and this response] and this plan will involve us meeting with her and [said pro-life leader's post-abortion ministry]. So while I thank you for the invitation to attend [said post-abortion ministry] with you, we will begin such networking via [said pro-life leader].

Far from CCBR’s approach counteracting other pro-life activities, such as post-abortion ministries, it is a fundamental base. Like the story of Emmett Till, graphic abortion images act as a catalyst for change and healing. To understand our role in the broader pro-life movement requires much more writing or a whole presentation. Thankfully, I am doing the latter at your parish. I pray you will attend.

Most sincerely and with prayers,

Stephanie Gray

Executive Director

P.S., As for your offer of coffee, yes, I would be happy to meet with you and hear about your journey of reconciliation. Please provide some dates and times that work for you.

For complete context, read the original e-mail that prompted this letter.