Because I cannot remain silent.

[olde_fashioned]

I stumbled across this video quite by accident, but after watching it, I just couldn't not post it here. To be honest, I think I would have felt guilty if I did not.

If evil triumphs because good men do nothing, and ignorance the root and the stem of every evil, then perhaps I will have done some good by speaking out against this horrific atrocity.

Watch the video, and look at the pictures.


Warning: The video isn't graphic, but the pictures that I've linked to below, are, quite frankly, horrific. This isn't CSI we're talking about, with fake dead bodies, these are real human beings. Dead babies that have been murdered. Living souls that have been snuffed out like so many candles. Tiny hands that will never grasp, little hearts that will never beat again.

Unless you're prone to squeamishness, I strongly advise looking at the images, but also taking care while you do so. They are not pretty. They're sobering, they're shocking, and they're thought-provoking. I know it's not fun to look at dead babies, but I think we need to see this.

I do know that a lot of people don't believe that abortion is murder, because a fetus isn't a baby, right? It's not a human being, it's a "fish" or some other such entity. Right? Well, you take a good look at these pictures, and then you tell me what abortion is.

This is what "a woman's right to choose" is. And this, and this, and this. This baby was beheaded.


Comments will be screened.

*sits back and waits for the firing squad*

Comments

[madame-faust.livejournal.com]

I just feel like I should clarify this quote. Margaret Sanger was not a proponent of abortion. She was actually very much involve in the female contraceptive movement. Another quote of hers, from her work Women's Struggle for Freedom, is, "It is apparent that nothing short of contraceptives can put an end to the horrors of abortion and infanticide." She was trying to make the argument that birth control, as a means of preventing pregnancy before life is formed, is preferable to families having more children than they can afford to feed. That was what led her to make the original quote, she was stating that it is a horrifying reality that families, dealing with more children than they can care for, the greater mercy would be to kill any children who come into the family. She was actually very much anti-abortion during her lifetime.

[olde-fashioned.livejournal.com]

And yet she founded the American Birth Control League which eventually became Planned Parenthood.

One of the goals of her organization (as taken from Wikipedia):
Sterilization of the insane and mentally retarded and the encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him incapable of producing children.

She nevertheless advocated certain instances of coercion, in cases where she considered the parents unfit to decide whether they should bear children:

"The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."

Apparently Margaret Sanger was also a racist:
It is said that a fish as large as a man has a brain no larger than the kernel of an almond. In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.

Yeah, what a wonderful woman she was. [/sarcasm]

[madame-faust.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to argue for her goodness as a human being. Certainly her notions of eugenics and theories of human evolution are as dated as they are offensive. I'm just saying that this quote was taken out of context and I don't think it's fair to form an argument or a point of view on something false or misleading.

[olde-fashioned.livejournal.com]

I understand that it might have been construed out of context, but I don't think there was much of a discrepancy there. Obviously Margaret Sanger had little if any value on human life, and believed it was secondary to human expediency and convenience.

Certainly her notions of eugenics and theories of human evolution are as dated as they are offensive.

They aren't outdated, and the fact that people think they are is part of the problem, IMO. We're still seeing the negative effects of evolutionary philosophies being incorporated into attitudes towards other human lives, the notion that one person is better than another, etc. The poorer classes and less financially secure are "less worthy" and so are being urged to not breed. Physically helpless humans are deemed little better than vegetables and so it's okay to kill them, ala Terri Schaivo.

[madame-faust.livejournal.com]

Obviously Margaret Sanger had little if any value on human life, and believed it was secondary to human expediency and convenience.

Well, certainly her idea of how what the value of human life was is very different from yours or even most people's

I respectfully disagree with your opinion of evolution effecting class perceptions. Notions of class and wealth influencing what society considers to be a valuable human life have existed for centuries, first people tried to justify notions of inequality with religion, now it seems that some attempt to do so with science. People will always look for some excuse to justify bad behavior.

[meri-weather.livejournal.com]

*the greater mercy would be to kill any children who come into the family*

Wow! What a chilling comment. I don’t know if you are stating your understanding of Margaret Sanger’s perspective, your own beliefs, or both. If you believe what you wrote, I can’t help but wonder if you truly understand the meaning of mercy. If you are paraphrasing Margaret Sanger to clarify her stance, and agreement or disagreement is not your point, then I would say that Margaret Sanger didn’t understand the meaning of mercy. Mercy is to show compassion *especially to an offender or for one in a position of power to show compassionate treatment to one with little or no power.* So who is benefitting from this “greater mercy”, the mother or the child? Don’t you think that it would be more merciful for the mother to show “mercy” to her unborn child and to allow them to live either in their home or in the home of another? Or is it more “merciful,” for the mother’s convenience, to allow the child’s life to end so that she is not weighed down with the *burden* of another mouth to feed? My best friend, in her youth, aborted three children. She now lives with the burden of that choice and I can assure you, having witnessed the manifestation of that burden in her life, it has not been merciful to her. Upon becoming pregnant, outside of marriage, for the fourth time, she gave birth to the child and gave her daughter up for adoption. She has kept in contact with the child and the adoptive parents and has had the joy of knowing that her daughter is a ballet dancer, and is gifted in music and in art. It has taken her twenty years to heal from her “merciful” past choices and yet she has told me she will never fully heal. She is now involved in the pro-life movement.

Also, who is to say what the future may hold for that mother (in such dire straights) and her family? Who is to say that she is doomed to abject poverty (since that is the argument, right--terrible poverty?) for the rest of her days? Does she have a crystal ball to see the future? And who is to say that that child will not provide some joy in what may otherwise be a grim life. I have witnessed first hand the answer to my question. I have seen someone choose mercy (true mercy) when all seemed overwhelming and grim and I have seen blessings bestowed that were never imagined. Finally, the arguments that are often laid out to justify the killing of an unborn child have, more often than not, very little to do with extreme poverty, rape, and other horrific scenarios, but instead are made to accommodate the lives of selfish, morally lazy, irresponsible woman who choose not to live a life of high character, self-respect, and decency. They are like bad children, “I will do what I want to do when I want to do it because I can and it’s legal.” Yes, but is it right? That is the question.

[madame-faust.livejournal.com]

I was clarifying her statement. It was made specifically in reference to children born to poor families living in America in the early half of the twentieth century. Let me assure you, people living in that kind of poverty were not going to rise out of it without some kind of intervention and it was this intervention that Margaret Sanger hoped to provide by making available contraceptive measures to prevent pregnancy before it happened so that a family that already had more children than they could afford or adequately care for would not have more. Sanger grew up in turn of the century America, she saw first hand the amount of suffering among the poor, the factory workers and especially the children who were dying in great numbers from disease or neglect. She was specifically not advocating abortion, it was horrifying to her the thought that children would die and were dying from parental abandonment and neglect or illnesses born of life in tenements where rats, mold and disease festered. Abortion was already in practice during her lifetime and before, she thought that by making effective contraceptives available to people, it would cut down the number of unwanted or unwise pregnancies. She sought to limit the number of abortions through use of contraceptives.

Edited due to misunderstanding.