I have a question about Created Equal.
Your Signs
It is possible to have a conversation about abortion without showing photos. However, this would be an incomplete presentation of the evidence. The images are not examples of exceptional barbarity, but of common, everyday abortion.
In his celebrated “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes,
“Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.¹”
Dr. King was intentional in having media present at his demonstrations against racism so that the brutality of black citizens being beaten and shot with water hoses would be caught on film. He found this kind of exposure critical to the process of ending bigotry.
We seek to expose the injustice of abortion to the same light of human conscience and air of national opinion as did King, because our society has advanced the lie that the preborn are not human. Words alone are inadequate to describe the brutal deaths preborn babies experience every day.
- King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Viewed online at: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html on 12 April 2023.
We have signed affidavits—both from the photographer and from an abortionist attesting to the veracity of our pictures.
Those who claim our images are fake are making a claim which must be defended. Yet in our experience, those who denounce our pictures fail to provide evidence for their claim.
Furthermore, images of preborn children have long been available and are not contested. Diagrams of abortion procedures in both the first and second trimesters are also available from medical imaging companies. What happens when those procedures are performed on growing babies seen in the pictures? The result is what is seen on our signs.
Fetal development imagery—especially with new technologies, such as 3D and 4D ultrasound—serve a valuable role in educating the public about the nature of the preborn, and we include them in our outreach display. However, while these convey the humanity of preborn children, they fail to convey the horror of abortion. It’s not enough for people to simply hold positive feelings about human life, but they must have negative feelings about abortion as well.
Consider which of the following would be a more successful campaign against racism: a photo of a black family at a picnic or the picture of a black man who was lynched? We know from history that the positive image may indeed convey the humanity of black people, but it would fail to portray the atrocity of lynching. In order to do this, we must expose the actual act in all of its grisly detail.
Abortion images do not disrespect preborn children—their victimization does. Organizations against poverty use images of malnourished children. Media present footage of dead civilians in war-torn countries. Holocaust memorials display photographs of Jewish people killed during World War II. These images obviously do not disrespect the dead/suffering. Further, images of injustice are irreplaceable in seeking to end atrocities and ensure that they never happen again.
The dignity of preborn children is not violated by showing the images; rather, the violation happens when they are dismembered, disemboweled, and discarded. Those who use these images value and respect preborn children so much that they expose the injustice in spite of public backlash. The greatest respect we can show millions of dead preborn children is to prevent others from falling prey to abortion, as well. We have not forgotten them, nor will we allow them to fade from the memories of citizens who perpetuate the injustice, whether by action or inaction.
During Seth Drayer’s 2017 debate against Purdue University professor David Sanders, Sanders raised the notion that victim images of abortion are like pornography. But pornography (or obscene photos or video) is created to stimulate the prurient interest which is defined as a lewd and lascivious focus on genitalia to illicit a sexual response.
This is why images of naked bodies of Jewish people in concentration camps do not amount to pornography. The nakedness is evidence of brutality and the state in which the victims were left, not an attempt to provide sexual stimulation. The same is true for images of aborted babies.
Accusations that abortion victim images amount to child pornography thus say more about the accuser than they do about the photos themselves. No reasonable person sees pictures of victims of abortion, genocide, or other crimes against humanity as having any kind of sexual intent. Victim photos are protected political speech used to reform culture and discourage the acts portrayed.
We do. However, those who attend are almost always pro-life, and we have found this method ineffective in educating the culture as a whole. If we rely solely upon consensual methods of education, we will not reach fence-sitters, thus never being successful in changing public attitudes on abortion.
A society enmeshed in injustice does not willingly or easily admit its own wrongdoing. People rarely acknowledge their own complicity in, or complacency toward, injustice. Even fewer will seek out evidence thereof. Those who need to see the truth (images of abortion) will not go out of their way to view it in large enough numbers to forge a consensus against it. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to go out of our way to bring it to them via non-consensual methods.
We do not deny the emotional anguish experienced by post-abortive individuals when they see abortion images. However, these images are not the actual source of the anguish—they are merely reminders of the reason for the pain, which is the abortion itself. In fact, abortion images are one of many possible reminders faced by post-abortive parents. Seeing a pregnant woman, watching an infant, hearing a sound similar to a suction machine: all of these have been cited by post-abortive parents as painful reminders of their abortion. The goal ought not to be to remove all reminders of abortion; rather, it should be to help men and women find true forgiveness and healing.
While it is possible to oppose abortion and not be a Christian, we believe the Christian Gospel is the only source of true forgiveness. God does not overlook man’s sin, but the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ can atone for all that we’ve done. For more on this, please email Contact@CreatedEqual.org.
Also, it should be noted that in the United States, half of women who undergo abortions have had a prior abortion.¹ Until we reach these post-abortive women with the truth, they may repeat the behavior. We must prevent women and their children from experiencing future suffering by presenting all the evidence.
- Finer, Lawrence B. et al. Repeat Abortion in the United States. Guttmacher Occasional Report No. 29. November 2006. Viewed online at: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/11/21/or29.pdf on 23 December 2010.
We encourage parents who experience the pain of a miscarriage to grieve their children and try to find healing. The pain of those unintentionally lost, however, should not slow efforts to save those intentionally killed. While our images are only of children killed by abortion, it is possible our signs could upset those who have experienced a miscarriage.
However, there are many situations that could potentially cause pain for a parent who has lost a child this way, such as seeing an infant or watching young children play at a park. We cannot remove all potential reminders of painful experiences from society in order to avoid the possibility of upsetting a person who has suffered this loss. Additionally, we encourage those grieving to look beyond personal pain to the plight of the aborted children shown in our photos.
Who are we loving if we hide the truth that abortion kills young human beings? Allowing the crime to continue unseen certainly is not loving to the thousands of children killed daily in America. If you witness one man harming another, it is wrong to “love” the victimizer so much that you allow him to continue harming his victim. We must love both. Furthermore, permitting the man to continue the crime is not even an act of love toward him, since stopping him would prevent harmful consequences of the act.
We cannot focus so much on our affection for born humans that we lose our love for preborn humans.
First, while anger is sometimes a response to our images, it is in no way the only reaction we see. Some are shocked into silence, others express horror that these images are real, and others are struck by deep sadness. Many confess that they had “no idea abortion looked like that.”
Furthermore, when tension occurs, it is not actually the images themselves which create that tension. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”:
“Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.¹”
The tension present at Dr. King’s demonstrations was a result of racism, not the tactic of nonviolent disobedience. Likewise, the tension present at Created Equal’s activities is a result of the ageism that lies under the surface. When we bring this grisly truth out into the open, the tension that has long been ignored is finally revealed.
- King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Viewed online at: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html on 12 April 2023.
The abortion victim images we use are graphic because abortion itself is graphic. The images have not been photoshopped or altered in any way, and while they may be shocking, they are no more so than other images used in history classes to show the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, American slavery, etc. Being disturbing does not mean a photo is not educational. Furthermore, we believe that, to some degree, shock is an appropriate reaction to the realization that almost 3,000 innocent preborn children are legally killed every day in the United States.
Your Audience
In short, because high school students are having abortions.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, “Twelve percent of U.S. abortion patients in 2014 were teenagers.” If students are old enough to have an abortion, then they are old enough to see an abortion. If we can reach these students with the truth, we think they will be less likely to have abortions not only during their high school years but also in the future.
In the classroom, many high school students are taking sex education classes, learning about “safe sex,” and watching demonstrations of how to use condoms. Interestingly, despite so-called “comprehensive” sex education, Guttmacher reports, “Fifty-one percent of abortion patients had used a contraceptive method in the month they got pregnant, most commonly condoms (27%) or a hormonal method (17%).” It is imperative that, as part of their education, high school students learn what abortion is and what it does to preborn children. Since this education will not be done in the classroom, it will have to be done outside the schools.
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of speech.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (emphasis added)
Bringing our signs to the public square is an exercise of this freedom.
For maximum impact, it is our practice to choose large public high schools. We seek to avoid schools directly adjacent to elementary or middle schools.
The young adults we’re reaching are in the age bracket seeking abortions and should have all of the facts made available to them; however, we do utilize “warning signs” so passersby and vehicular traffic can avert their gaze or avoid us altogether if they wish. Since support for abortion is the public policy of the National Education Association, the suffering of preborn children needs to be made public to the students as well.
We do not target areas with children. Nevertheless, there are sometimes children on college campuses and in downtown squares where we take our signs, and it is possible that a child could see the images. However, it is a certainty that preborn children will continue to die so long as abortion is covered up. When weighing the feelings of born children against the lives of preborn children, the latter should be the priority.
Furthermore, our experience has been that children are not “traumatized” by the images. They respond with questions like, “Why did that happen to the baby?” The child’s reaction will be determined in no small measure by the reaction of their parents. We’ve only seen children become upset if their mother or father responded angrily. Seeing their parents’ anger upsets them, not the abortion images.
Your Behavior and Beliefs
When faced with violence, we seek to deescalate the situation as best we can. We then pursue legal measures to bring perpetrators to justice and receive restitution, if applicable.
To fight back would be counterproductive to our mission.
When we conduct outreach at high schools, our goal is to create educational, civil discourse on the topic of abortion. We do not yell at students or force them to engage with us in conversation. We do not trespass on school property, but stay on the public right of way and abide by all applicable laws.
As an organization, Created Equal takes no position on capital punishment. We are made up of individuals with diverse positions on issues such as capital punishment, war, etc.; however, we are all united in our opposition to abortion because we ardently oppose the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings.
This same principle would of course lead us to oppose the execution of an innocent person by capital punishment. However, while we are neutral on the issue of capital punishment, we do not think that affirmation of all humans’ right to life—including the right to life of the preborn—is prima facie incompatible with support for capital punishment. In cases of the latter, the person being executed has been found guilty in a court of law and has likely had that conviction upheld while abortion brutally kills an innocent preborn child.
Our outreach provides a critical piece of education lacking in so-called “comprehensive sex ed.” Indeed, sexual education is not a mere matter of mechanics. It should also explore personal responsibility and morality, including choices faced by pregnant teenagers. Our signs provide an education on one of those choices: abortion. We are thus educating individuals about a topic central to sexuality.
Regarding birth control, liberal dispensation thereof implies acceptance of a sexual ethic damaging to born humans. Our call to individual responsibility is consistent with a sexual ethic rooted in the value of all human beings and the immorality of using people for personal pleasure.
What Can I Do?
Our Justice Rides are modeled after the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights movement, during which students, both black and white, fought for basic human rights. On our Justice Rides we visit colleges and major cities, using images of abortion victims and dialogue to change hearts and minds on the issue of abortion. For more, visit CreatedEqual.org/JusticeRide.
Check out CreatedEqual.org/JusticeRide for more information!