Friday, January 28, 2011

Alcorn on proving the accuracy of the pro-life position

Randy Alcorn has a great post on proving the accuracy of the pro-life position by the use of photos of aborted children.   This issue is an emotional, often heated one in which many Christians are divided.  

I remember our years of ministry at Texas A&M when pro-life groups would display giant pictures of the horrors of abortion.   It always produced conversation and debate, even among the believers that I knew.  

Alcorn brings clarity to the issue, IMHO, even if it's uncomfortable.
I’ll never forget years ago when a pro-life candidate ran television ads showing aborted babies, and people were outraged. A CBS Evening News reporter declared the abortion debate had reached a “new low in tastelessness.” Strangely, there was no outrage that babies were being killed... only that someone had the audacity to show they were being killed.
The question we should ask is not “Why are pro-life people showing these pictures?” but “Why would anyone defend what’s shown in these pictures?” The real concern about pictures of unborn babies isn’t that they’re gory, but that they prove the accuracy of the pro-life position.

The Holocaust was so evil that words alone couldn’t describe it. Descriptions of Nazi death camps had long been published in American newspapers, but when these papers started printing the pictures of slaughtered people, the American public finally woke up. If not for the pictures, even today most of us wouldn’t understand or believe the Holocaust.

I visited a college campus where a pro-life group had set up displays of aborted babies alongside the victims of the Nazi death camps, the killing fields, American slavery, and other historical atrocities. Signs with warnings about the graphic photographs were posted clearly, so all those who looked did so by choice. I witnessed the profound effect on students and faculty, including those who didn’t want to believe what they were seeing.

Animal rights advocates argue that in order to make their case they must show terrible photographs, such as baby seals being clubbed to death. If there’s a place to look at such pictures, isn’t there a place to look at pictures of abortions? And if abortion isn’t killing babies... then why are these pictures so disturbing?

Was the solution to the Holocaust to ban the disgusting pictures? Or was the solution to end the killing?

Is the solution to abortion getting rid of pictures of dead babies? Or is it getting rid of what’s making the babies dead?
 What do you think?

2 comments:

Joshua Butcher said...

It has always seemed inconsistent to me that folks would find it acceptable to show the bodies of dead soldiers of war, of dead men and women from genocide, of slaughtered or mistreated animals, and yet balk at the display of slaughtered children from abortion. One must either accept the right to make a point with a picture of the horrors of such deaths, or argue that no such displays are appropriate for debate.

John said...

Joshua, well said, my friend.