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18 Comments on “Face the Truth 2010”

Please Note: Visitor comments do not necessarily reflect the views of Generations for Life or our parent organization, the Pro-Life Action League.

1. Rebecca says:

   Have you observed hip-replacement surgery? It is horrific and violent. Yet the outcome is improved quality of life. For some women, and those close to them, abortion is the least worse choice in this regard.

   Do you see groups of people standing around outside catholic churches displaying photos of abused altar boys or nuns, or even adult members who have been victims? What if we rallied outside churches showing pictures of women who have died in childbirth? What about photos of grossly deformed babies? Or those who have no chance of survival? A woman who dies simply because her faith precludes blood transfusions.

   I went to your link, and even in regard to just the first section:

   ‘Many of us who hold these pictures first saw them as children’ – that explains a bit then doesn’t it.

   ‘…you would expect the extended exposure of actually holding the signs during a Tour site to traumatize them. But we see absolutely no indications of this.’ – and your qualifications in this field would be?

   ‘…more to do with how their parents react. If parents become visibly upset, irate or, worse yet, begin to shout obscenities…’ – and yet you expect people freely attending clinics to run this gauntlet.

   So if a movie contains true love based ‘lovemaking’, you would be happy for young children to see it?

   Comment posted June 22nd, 2010 at 9:22 pm

2. Jayson says:

   compare the face the truth tour to the open casket funeral held for Emmett Till (google him if you don’t know what I’m talking about)

   This idea has been used to stop racism, child workers, and slavery in years past

   Comment posted June 23rd, 2010 at 8:06 pm

3. Rebecca says:

   Gees, there’s some dust gathering around here! And look, over in that corner, cobwebs!

   Comment posted June 25th, 2010 at 5:15 pm

4. MadisonMadhouse says:

   The biggest objection to the signs used is not really any of the reasons listed, but the fact that the truth makes people uncomfortable.

   People who support abortion don’t want to admit that abortion kills a child. That makes them uncomfortable, so they come up with ‘excuses’ for why the signs are ‘inappropriate’.

   For anyone who has an issue with the pictures, remember that we don’t like them either! If the pictures bother you, work to end abortion.

   Comment posted June 25th, 2010 at 6:08 pm

5. Rebecca says:

   Do you stand around with big pictures of miscarriages and stillbirths and say ‘look what god did’? Or would that be ‘inappropriate?

   Do you stand around with big pictures of your bowel movements and say ‘look what I did’? Or would that be inappropriate?

   Of course pictures of aborted fetuses are horrible. So are many other things which are part of reality, part of life.

   Westboro hate homosexuals so much that they do what they do near the funerals of fallen soldiers. Is that appropriate?

   I don’t like religious tax concessions, I find it offensive. Shall I work to end that?

   Comment posted June 25th, 2010 at 7:31 pm

6. MadisonMadhouse says:

   Rebecca,
   If you don’t mind me asking, why do you find graphic pictures of aborted fetuses horrible?

   Comment posted June 26th, 2010 at 9:21 am

7. Rebecca says:

   For the same reason that you would find pictures of hip replacement surgery horrible. Or photos of a lung removal. or maybe a fistula. Most people are squeamish about the blood and gore of surgery, accidents etc. Heck, even full-term delivery photos aren’t all that enjoyable.

   Comment posted June 27th, 2010 at 1:06 am

8. MadisonMadhouse says:

   hmmm, so you would place an aborted child on the same grounds as a lung or hip?

   Comment posted June 27th, 2010 at 9:22 am

9. Rebecca says:

   It is a medical procedure.

   Comment posted June 27th, 2010 at 4:46 pm

10. RSD says:

    A medical procedure “heals” people.

    Abortion is a procedure that KILLS the unborn and scars/damages/and (sometimes) kills the mother.

    Comment posted June 29th, 2010 at 8:28 am

11. Rebecca says:

    Abortion can also be healing. If it assists a person or a family to survive because they otherwise may not. Rape or incest victims who cannot deal with the trauma. Extremely deformed fetuses which may suffer if actually born.
    The death rate from full-term delivery is markedly higher than that for abortion. And people are also scarred and damaged by having children they cannot cope with for various reasons.

    Comment posted June 29th, 2010 at 4:20 pm

12. John says:

    Rebecca said: “Abortion can also be healing. … Rape or incest victims who cannot deal with the trauma.”

    Tell that to rape victims who had an abortion and and then consider it akin to a “second rape”.

    “Extremely deformed fetuses which may suffer if actually born.”

    I’m trying to get my head around the idea that killing someone is OK to prevent him/her from possibly experiencing what you (or anyone else, for that matter) arbitrarily consider an unacceptable amount of post-natal suffering.

    “The death rate from full-term delivery is markedly higher than that for abortion.”

    We address this in our Sharing the Pro-Life Message handbook:

    Abortion advocates often claim that abortion is much safer than childbirth. However, this claim does not stand up to a close examination of the evidence.

    The official medical term that this claim is based on, “maternal mortality,” includes deaths from abortion, so the claim that abortion deaths are much lower than “maternal mortality” really says nothing. Moreover, “maternal mortality” includes deaths from hemorrhages, blood clots, ectopic pregnancies, infections, complications from high blood pressure or diabetes and more—not just from childbirth itself.

    No accurate accounting of abortion deaths exists. Some studies show that 4% of all maternal mortality is due to abortion while others show 8%. Anecdotal evidence reveals substantial underreporting. For example, Dr. John C. Willke writes that a prolife physician friend did not report a girl’s cause of death as abortion because “that family has suffered enough and I’m not going to add to their woes by revealing that she had an abortion.”

    Because the records of live births and stillbirths are public, it is easy to correlate deaths related to childbirth. Any woman who dies within one year of giving birth is automatically considered a maternal death for record-keeping purposes. But records from abortions are private. This means that unless a woman’s family reports that she had an abortion or somehow a coroner determines that she had an abortion, her death will not be included in the statistics for maternal mortality or abortion death.

    Sources: Department of Health and Human Services: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2007, February. Maternal Mortality and Related Concepts. Vital Health and Statistics 3, No 33. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03_033.pdf.

    Elliot Institute. A List Of Major Physical Sequelae Related To Abortion. http://www.abortionfacts.com/reardon/effect_of_abortion.asp.

    Khan, Khalid S., PhD, Daniel Wojdyla, Lale Say, MD, A. Metin Gülmezoglu, MD, Paul F. A. Van Look, MD. 2006. WHO Analysis of Causes of Maternal Death: A Systematic Review. The Lancet. 367: 1066-1074.

    Willke, J.C., MD. Abortion v. Child Birth: Which Is Safer? Life Issues Institute. http://www.lifeissues.org/connector/2006/Apr06_AbortionChildbirth.htm.

    Comment posted June 30th, 2010 at 9:16 am

13. Rebecca says:

    Some may, most don’t. And what about incest? Or girls so young they may die in childbirth?

    ‘arbitrarily’? – scientific knowledge and experience is a little more advanced than that.

    From numerous independent sources:

    The risk of abortion complications is minimal: Fewer than 0.3% of abortion patients experience a complication that requires hospitalization.
    Abortions performed in the first trimester pose virtually no long-term risk of such problems as infertility, ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) or birth defect, and little or no risk of preterm or low-birth-weight deliveries.
    Exhaustive reviews by panels convened by the U.S. and British governments have concluded that there is no association between abortion and breast cancer. There is also no indication that abortion is a risk factor for other cancers.
    In repeated studies since the early 1980s, leading experts have concluded that abortion does not pose a hazard to women’s mental health.
    The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every one million abortions at or before eight weeks to one per 29,000 at 16–20 weeks—and one per 11,000 at 21 or more weeks.
    Death rate: 6 or 7 per million procedures on average. This is about 9 times safer than bearing the fetus to term and giving birth. 4,5
    Average complication rate: under 1%.
    In 1992, ten women died as a result of complications from legal induced abortions. There were no known deaths associated with illegal abortions, nor is there any reliable data on this topic.
    Complication and death rate rises rapidly with the age of the fetus. If a woman has decided to have an abortion, complications are fewer if she acts on that decision quickly — ideally early in gestation.

    Comment posted June 30th, 2010 at 4:42 pm

14. John says:

    Rebecca said: “And what about incest?”

    Among victims of sexual assault, victims of incest are even more likely to not voluntarily consent to an abortion. A victim of incest more likely will see the pregnancy as a way to get out of the incestuous relationship because it exposes the abusive sexual activity that family members are afraid or unwilling to acknowledge.

    For obvious reasons, the perpetrator will often force his incest victim to have an unwanted abortion.

    Rebecca said: “Death rate: 6 or 7 per million procedures on average. This is about 9 times safer than bearing the fetus to term and giving birth.”

    I’ll restate the key sentence in my previous comment:

    No accurate accounting of abortion deaths exists.

    Christina Dunigan, who knows a thing or two about abortion-related deaths (those from both legal and illegal abortions), addressed this issue recently on her blog in a post titled “Abortion Mortality and the Garbage In, Garbage Out Principle”:

    I spent six months of my life — SIX MONTHS — finding out exactly how the CDC gets their information about abortion deaths. I contacted every health department and vital records office in the United States — the 50 states, New York City, DC, and the Virgin Islands (just to find out if territories worked differently from states). I spoke to the coding clerks that processed the death certificates, who analyzed them to see that they were filled out properly who abstracted data and sent it to the National Center for Health Statistics. I ordered database runs of state death records. I spoke to the people at the CDC who actually produce the annual Abortion Surveillance Reports. I got death certificates, autopsy reports, medical records, health inspection reports, medical board disciplinary documents. I talked to the guys at the NCHS. I spent SIX MONTHS finding out where the CDC gets their abortion mortality numbers.

    What they do is very much akin to sticking a bushel basket under an apple tree, checking to see how many apples landed in it, and concluding that this is equal to the total number of apples that fell in the entire orchard. Note that it is NOT akin to counting those apples and then extrapolating the number of apples that fell in the entire orchard based on the size of the basket and the size of the orchard. No. They count what happens to land in their basket, then publish the numbers as if they really represent the total. And they defend the total on the grounds that sometimes people pick up apples off the ground and toss them into the basket, so they’re not counting just the ones that fall straight down. This is a very clear and appropriate analogy to how the CDC collects their abortion mortality data.

    Comment posted July 1st, 2010 at 9:31 am

15. Rebecca says:

    John, I read Christina’s recent piece. Apparently she was unable to dispute the numerous independent sources of statistical data. Naturally she persisted because what she found did not suit her ‘feeling’, ‘experience’ or position.

    Even if some are not entirely accurate, the cumulative result of all sources and methodologies still present a convincing result demonstrating the stated outcomes. Her apple collecting analogy is spurious and an injection of subjective analysis.

    ‘…knows a thing or two about abortion-related deaths…’ – obviously not to the extent that Christina, and you, would like us to think.

    Comment posted July 1st, 2010 at 5:10 pm

16. Jayson says:

    Rebecca, some of that info is so messed up because sometimes deaths from abortion are counted as deaths from child birth, or if a pregnant women dies in a car crash that could also count as a death from child birth. Just saying….most of those statistics aren’t very true..

    Comment posted July 1st, 2010 at 7:51 pm

17. Rebecca says:

    I think a relatively comparable analysis can be drawn though Jayson.
    And it doesn’t seem to be an issue when the statistics appear to suit anti-abortion folk.

    Comment posted July 1st, 2010 at 11:47 pm

18. matt says:

    just observing the fuss Rebecca is making about women who die in child birth….while any loss of life is tragic, she seems to forget about the life of the child who dies in abortion

    Comment posted July 12th, 2010 at 8:12 pm