al Qaeda vs. Planned Parenthood
Dear Friend of CBR,
Our aborted baby photo campaign is so powerful that it routinely converts supporters of abortion rights. On September 26, 2006 we received a message from a twenty-two-year-old woman from Billings, MT who was a self-described supporter of abortion rights. She characterized our aborted baby photos as “Very dramatic. I didn’t think the baby was even remotely close to looking like a baby.” We get these expressions of incredulity from the other side all the time. Many don’t long remain on the “other side” after seeing the truth.
Many people who are on the “other side” don’t realize that that is where they are until they see our photos. They are deluded into believing that as long as they are “personally opposed” to abortion, what happens to the unborn children of others is none of their business. On September 25, 2006, a twenty-eight-year-old woman from Bristol, CT was awakened from indifference by our photos: “I was always against abortion as it pertains to myself. “However, after viewing these photos it is truly heart wrenching and unbelievable how a woman can think this is a legitimate choice.” No it isn’t. In this era of pagan depravity in which we live, it is actually quite believable that women who have never seen an aborted baby photo would think abortion “is a legitimate choice.” This CT woman was moved from a “personally opposed” position to a “maybe others shouldn’t be permitted to do this” position by the sight of an aborted baby photo. Countless other women (and men) who have seen these photos have now rejected the notion that abortion “is a legitimate choice.”
That is why the abortion industry and its shock troops are so desperate to push our photos from the public square. The pictures are a game-changer and most pro-aborts understand that fact much more clearly than most pro-lifers.
Suppressing evidence is what thugs almost always do to stifle a debate they know they are going to lose.
Amnesty International (AI), a human rights group which has traditionally been abortion neutral, is in the process of adopting a policy which will promote the decriminalization of abortion worldwide. A related news story published April 27, 2006 on www.canada.com/nationalpost:
According to the AI chief, ‘Governments … must act with due diligence to punish abuses of sexual and reproductive rights by private persons, organizations and other non-state actors.’
The passage is a ‘direct attack’ on the anti-abortion movement, said John-Henry Westen, editor of LifeSiteNews.com, which first obtained the AI proposals.
‘If they include abortion as a sexual right as they’ve proposed and ask governments to ‘punish’ those who would impede those so-called rights, then Amnesty would find itself working to shut down the pro-life movement and everyone who believes in the right to life for the unborn,’ he said.
Mr. Westen is troubled by another proposal calling for laws compelling health care workers to perform abortions regardless of their personal beliefs.
AI attempts to strengthen its case for criminalizing opposition to abortion by parroting the radical pro-abortion dogma of a former United Nations feminist:
Former UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Radhika Coomaraswamy , has stated that ‘acts deliberately restraining women from … having an abortion constitute violence against women ….
How twisted is that? Abortion isn’t violence against babies; pro-life activism is violence against women. Amnesty International doesn’t get the irony in its protection of some dissenters while it oppresses others. Pro-aborts are so intolerant of opposition that they are beginning to remind me of Islamic terrorists. Consider some parallels.
On November 2, 2004, Dutch film maker, Theo Van Gogh was killed by a Muslim extremist who knocked him off his bicycle and repeatedly shot and stabbed him before slitting his throat with a butcher knife. Van Gogh’s offense was his production of a ten minute film “exposing the shameful abuse of Muslim women by Muslim men in Europe.” City Journal (www.city-journal.org) published an online article dated November 15, 2004, titled “Why Theo Van Gogh Was Murdered” which understates the painfully obvious fact that “There are still many who would rather kill than brook any contradiction of their opinions of beliefs, even while they live in the most tolerant of societies.”
Last week CBR flew one of our aborted baby photo billboards back and forth over a football game at the University of Montana. Almost immediately the local police called me to warn that they were receiving so many threats of violence against our pilot that they had decided to meet him as he taxied one of our planes into the airport parking area and escort him to his car. Why would a mob want to attack him? Because our photo exposed “the shameful abuse of Montana unborn children by Montana college students.” The public display of CBR’s aborted baby photos so frequently provokes death threats that for years we have required that expensive, bullet-proof vests be worn by the drivers of the billboard trucks on whose sides and backs we display aborted baby photos.
When Pope Benedict XVI recently delivered a university lecture in which he quoted a Byzantine Emperor once suggested in the 1300s that Islam promotes violence, Islamists refuted the Pontiff’s scurrilous accusation by threatening to kill him in the name of Islam. The concept of irony really is dead. The London Evening Standard’s Website (thisislondon.co.uk) on September 18, 2006 carried a story headlined “The Pope Must Die, Says Muslim:”
“A notorious Muslim extremist told a demonstration in London yesterday that the Pope should face execution. Anjem Choudary said that those who insulted Islam would be ‘subject to capital punishment.”
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A nun was shot dead in Somalia by Islamic gunmen and churches came under attack in Palistine.
Choudary’s appeal for the death of Pope Benedict was the second time he has been linked with apparent incitement to murder within a year. The 39-year-old lawyer organized demonstrations against the publication of cartoons of Mohammed in February in Denmark. Protesters carried placards declaring ‘Behead Those Who Insult Islam.’”
MSNBC.com put up a story related to the Pope’s comments on September 18, 2006. The article quoted the “Mujahedeen Shura Council” which mocked the Pope and Christians as “cross worshipers,” “infidels and despots” and vowed to “chop your necks ….”
On September 27, 2006 Reuters reported from Berlin that “Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans on Wednesday not to bow to fears of Islamic violence after a Berlin opera house canceled a Mozart work over concerns some scenes could enrage Muslims and pose a security risk.” On September 30, The Los Angeles Times reported that “The opera company said … it would consider staging the production if it had security assurances.”
Offensive perspectives or inconvenient facts can motivate Islamist to kill you. Annoying points of view or awkward truth may move pro-abort kooks to at least threaten to kill you. Here are just a few of the threats we have recently received:
“I think you should all die … if I had an AK[47] I would come to wherever you guys live and I would blow all your heads off.”
“I wish I had a bomb [so I could blow] your plane up.”
“We’re going to cut your tires and brake lines …”
“Tell the pilot that he can expect a visit out at the airport the next time he comes in for a landing.”
“If I see your truck again I am going to run it off the road and hopefully kill the driver.”
“I will run [your trucks] off the road.”
“I am going to take a 50 caliber and shoot the pilot.”
“You people ought to be shot in the head.”
And sometimes the threats go beyond talk. The Great Falls Tribune reported on September 22, 2006 that in Helena, MO, a former city commissioner was arrested and pleaded guilty to charges related to pointing a shotgun at our airplane as it towed an aborted baby billboard overhead.
You can listen to this sampling of recorded phone threats on our Website at www.abortionNO.org
There are other unflattering similarities between Islamofascists s and enemies of effective pro-life activism. The Washington Post, Sunday, September 3, 2006 published a story titled “AlQaeda Leader Arrested In Iraq:”
Iraqi armed forces have arrested the No. 2 leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq … along with 20 other senior members of the Sunni Arab insurgent group, which is believed to be responsible for savage beheadings of kidnapped foreigners and suicide attacks that sometimes killed dozens of civilians in a single strike ….
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Saaydi was hiding inside a home surrounded by women and children whom he was using as a ‘human shield’ ….
This tendency for terrorists to hide behind women and children has been seen repeatedly with the Taliban but Hezbollah pulls this manipulative little stunt better than anyone in the Middle East. Sheik Hassan Nasrallah attacks Israel, retreats into residential neighborhoods and demands that the Israelis not defend themselves because doing so threatens the children behind whom he is hiding. He uses this clever to change the subject. He isn’t the villain for launching unprovoked attacks against innocent Israeli children. Israel is the villain for attempting to defend those children. The enemies of meaningful pro-life activism play the same game.
They hide behind women by arguing that our photos are inappropriate because they upset post-abortive women. But nearly half of all abortions are performed on post-abortive women. Their first abortion apparently didn’t “upset” them enough to deter the second. That is where we come in with the most “upsetting” photos we can find. But we additionally offer Christ-centered post abortion counseling.
Our adversaries also hide behind women who have had miscarriages. They argue that our photos are wrong because they remind these grieving women of their loss. We share their grief but which is worse, sadness or murder? We implore them to accept more of the first to help us stop the second.
But our opponents hide behind children too. On September 19, 2006 we received the following E-mail message from just such an enemy:
I was driving down the road with my 11-year-old daughter and I stopped at a light next to one of your trucks. I don’t know which one of us was more stunned. She was very upset by the graphics and didn’t understand why you would have something so horrible on the side of a truck. I felt sick and flush, to have to explain something so delicate to an 11-year-old girl is hard enough. But to do so while on the road because of unavoidable circumstances was appalling! Freedom of speech is one thing; educating the public is one thing; but your campaign is offensive and subjects children (even younger than mine) to horrible images.
You are pro-life, pro-children, yet your very message has a horribly negative effect on these small lives. Please, for the sake of those you protect, end this campaign.
We get lots of letters of this sort. Sometimes the complaining parents are pro-aborts who are ashamed to have their children see the horror which mom and dad support (and may even commit). Sometimes the complaining parents are pro-lifers who are ashamed to have their children see the horror which mom and dad’s indifference has made possible. Either way, these parents demand that we stop defending unborn children because doing so “harms” born children. But many mothers have told us that they would have killed their unborn children had they not seen our photos. Which is the greater evil; allowing a born child to be upset or allowing an unborn child to be killed? For a look at just some of the horrifying photos which children routinely see on the front pages of the newspapers delivered into our homes and on the covers of the news magazines on display in the grocery stores to which we take our children, please visit our Website, abortionNO.org.
Another perverse commonality which links Islamists and pro-aborts is an obsessive belief that their “dignity” can only be restored through mass murder. The New York Times, August 20, 2006 featured a story headlined “And Now, Islamism Trumps Arabism:”
The lesson learned by many Arabs from the war in Lebanon is that an Islamic movement, in this case Hezbollah, restored dignity and honor to a bruised and battered identity.
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Dr. Fares Braizat of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan [says] … ‘the new nationalism [replacing Arab nationalism] is going to be religious nationalism and one of the main reasons is dignity. People want their dignity back.’
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When asked if she would vote for a Muslim Brotherhood [radical Islamist] candidate in Egypt, she said ‘Yea, why not?’
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‘If they have a solution,’ she repeated, ‘why not?’
A solution to what?
‘Loss of dignity ….’
In 1995, feminists Dorothy Fadiman, Daniel Meyers and Beth Seltzer produced a pro-abortion propaganda film titled “From Danger to Dignity, The Fight For Safe Abortion.” The National Abortion Federation Website (prochoice.org) proclaims that “With Choice Comes Autonomy and Dignity for Women.” The Website for the National Network of Abortion Funds (hyde30years.nnaf.org) says “Fund abortion. Protect dignity and justice for all women.” We don’t think “dignity” means what Islamists and abortionists think it means.
Jihadists and feminists are also connected by a commitment to mass murder as a means of achieving economic gain.
The August 14, 2006 Los Angeles Times printed a story called “Seeds of Islamic Militancy Find Fertile Soil in Britain:”
…[Y]oung, educated British Muslims say they feel discriminated against in their efforts to move up the socioeconomic ladder …. ‘There is no equality in jobs,’ says Mohammed Khan ….
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Although she said she would never resort to terrorism [she is ‘personally opposed’] herself … Mahamada Sultana, 19, acknowledged that there is a strain of sympathy for jihadism among younger Muslims.
She is “pro-choice” about mass murder — wouldn’t do it herself — but apparently doesn’t think it should be against the law. Who does that sound like?
How about Lydia Bean, who writes a blog for the New Vision Institute (newvisioninstitute.org)? Ms. Bean combines the “dignity” and “economic gain” rationales for abortion in a post titled “Speaking with Moral Authority:”
Rather than privileging autonomy … a better approach would start from our concern with equal worth and human dignity. This approach would offer a clear way to speak to pressing issues of economic inequality and the welfare state ….
Then there is former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America who told the Seattle Times on May 3, 2005 (“Personal crossroad was path to activism”) that abortion delivered her from a life of economic privation and “helped propel toward a lifetime of activism.” She says “I talk about my life, of being a homemaker, a mom, of having to go onto welfare and to struggle and to struggle hard to support my family.” She and countless sister feminists justify the greatest blood bath in all of history by arguing that for women, all power (especially economic power) comes not from the barrel of a gun but from the cannula of a suction machine.
On December 10, 2004, The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, on its Website (jinsa.org) published a chilling article featuring intelligence disclosures by Michael Scheuer, (first disclosed on the CBS news show “Sixty Minutes”). Scheuer is the former Central Intelligence Agency Officer who headed the agency’s bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999. Titled “Osama bin Laden’s Mandate for Nuclear Terror,” the story’s opening sentence refers to “An Islamic religious ruling … granted Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders permission to use nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons against the United States and its allies:”
[Sheikh al Fahd] justified the mass casualties and destruction that would be expected to result from an attack of this nature. He wrote in the fatwa that ‘some brothers’ have provided an estimate of the number of Muslims killed by American weapons to total almost ten million; therefore, an attack against America that would take an equal amount of lives is permissible. In his own words, ‘if a bomb that killed ten million of them and burned as much of their land as they have burned Muslim’s land were dropped on them, it would be permissible, with no need to mention any other argument. We might need other arguments if we wanted to annihilate more than this number of them.’
Kill ten million Americans? Is that the best they can do? These al Qaeda guys are pikers; rookies, amateurs! Planned Parenthood and its abortion industry partners have killed perhaps 40 million unborn children since 1973 in the U.S. alone! The World Health Organization says that some 50 million are killed worldwide every twelve months! Osama bin Laden has a lot of catching up to do if he is going to do mass murder in Planned Parenthood’s league.