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1. Won't you just upset children?
2. Won't you just upset women who have had abortions?
3. Won't you just upset women who have had miscarriages?
4. Using pictures of dead babies is just emotionally manipulative isn't it?
5. What about rape and incest?
6. No one knows when life begins anyway
7. The baby isn’t conscious and doesn’t feel pain so what’s the problem in getting rid of it?
8. The baby isn’t a baby it is just an embryo or foetus!
9. It might be a human being but it isn’t a person because it isn’t sentient or had any experiences yet!
10. The embryo or early foetus is a potential human just like an acorn is a potential oak tree.
11. If abortion is made illegal thousands of women will die in back street abortions.
1. Won't you just upset children? 
This by far has to be one of the most common concerns we hear about the use of graphic visual aids. In fact some people have called us hypocrites because we want to protect unborn children from abortion yet we risk exposing born children to seeing what abortion looks like.
It is certainly not our aim to upset born children. We don’t deliberately take these images where there will a high number of very young children but it is worth considering the following points:
• Every time we hold a public education project using banners or film, someone changes their mind about what abortion is and does. We know that revealing the reality of abortion SAVES BABIES LIVES. That is why we endure the insults.
• While we are concerned about the feelings of born children we are far more concerned about the lives of unborn children. In short; lives trump feelings.
• More often than not it is the reaction of the parent or adult that will determine the reaction of the child that accompanies them. Parents have approached our displays and calmly explained in a relevant way what the pictures depict and the children have not been upset.
• One of the factors involved in the parents unhelpful reaction is their level of guilt in relation to either their involvement directly or indirectly in abortion or their past apathy towards it. Now they have to explain to their child why they have done little or nothing to stop these babies being tortured to death.
• Children are already exposed to all kinds of horrific imagery on television, computer games, magazines, newspapers and so on. Yet when the issue is regarding abortion suddenly the rules change. We do not accept this double standard.
• There is an aggressive campaign of government pressure groups to push access to abortion in schools. Already your 12 year old daughter could get an abortion and you will know nothing about it. No consent, no letters, no permission slips. We think if your daughter is old enough to have an abortion she is old enough to see what abortion will do to your grandchild.
2. Won't you just upset women who have had abortions?
Again we don’t aim to upset women who have been through this traumatic experience. We believe they are worthy of our care and our deepest sympathy.
Here are a few points to think about:
• Despite our deepest concern for these women’s feelings our priority is to save babies that can be rescued. A woman’s feelings are important, but she will have a chance to work through this pain. The need to save a baby who is booked in to be ripped apart in their mother’s body is more pressing and urgent. Again lives trump feelings.
• 33% of women who had an abortion last year previously had one or more abortion/s, sometimes numbering 7 or 8. For this reason women who have had an abortion need to see what it is they have done before they repeat the mistake.
• Anyone will tell you that in order to come to terms with something and start on the road to healing you must first overcome denial. There is huge denial surrounding abortion. In some instances women even deny they have had an abortion. There is also denial that the baby that they got rid of really was a baby. Until those affected by abortion come to terms with what they have done they will not be healed.
• Occasionally women who have had abortions have thanked us for showing these graphic images. They have told us that they are suffering deeply after their experience. When they have approached those who provide abortions they are told they have nothing to feel guilty about. This is of no comfort for these grieving women. We identify with them and take seriously their pain by recognising that they have lost a child.
3. Won't you just upset women who have had miscarriages?
Of course it isn’t just women who are affected by miscarriage or indeed abortion. So surely it is insensitive to go parading these pictures that will remind people of their tragic loss.
There is good reason that we grieve after losing a child even early in pregnancy. If what was inside the woman was just a “blob of tissue” or “pregnancy” then why would grieving be appropriate? We are rightly upset because we have lost a child. If that is the case why wouldn’t you want to prevent people from deliberately killing their children?
We grieve the children lost through miscarriage and those killed out of choice.
4. Using pictures of dead babies is just emotionally manipulative isn't it?
It would be appropriate to ask “How is using pictures emotionally manipulative?” Consider this:
• Firstly, it is true that the pictures are emotional, but they are emotional because killing defenceless children is emotional.
• Using graphic imagery to depict an atrocity is a perfectly legitimate means of communicating other lessons in moral education. Why should it be different for abortion? Would you tell anti-Semitism groups that they could educate about the holocaust but they shouldn’t manipulate people by showing the holocaust?
• How many schools was the very disturbing film Schindler’s list shown in? This film depicted nudity and scenes of mass murder. Yet the educators recognise that without seeing what happened, children won’t understand the horrors of the Holocaust.
5. What about rape and incest?
This concern is expressed just as often by people who claim to be pro-life as well as those who are pro-abortion.
To have a more full understanding of this issue you should read THE CASE AGAINST ABORTION section on this website. This will help you understand the reasons why the unborn should be treated as a human being just as valuable as the mother who carries him/her.
Supporters of abortion regularly bring up this hard case. Their intention is to attempt to make those who value life look heartless by forcing these suffering women to carry a child they never wanted. This is what is termed a smokescreen - they do not want abortion legal just for rape, but for any reason or no reason.
Ok, so how do we answer this? Obviously Rape and incest are one of the most horrific experiences a person could go through and there is no doubt that this is a very emotionally complex subject. This however doesn’t mean that it is morally complex.
• Why should the unborn child be punished because of his/her father’s crime? Just because a person’s father was a rapist does not devalue them as a human being. Imagine your best friend was conceived through rape. Does that mean it should be lawful to kill them? Likewise if the offspring of the raped woman is equally valuable as a born person why should we be allowed to kill them?
• So often supporters of abortion talk of the child being just a part of the woman’s body. You may have even heard someone say: “Abortion has nothing to do with men, it's a woman’s choice!” After rape isn’t it strange that now suddenly that the unborn child is talked of as “the rapist’s baby”
• In some countries if a woman is raped they kill HER because of the shame she will bring on the family. In the UK we kill the unborn child. What is the difference?
• Killing this child (which is also the woman’s child) will only compound the pain, now adding guilt to list of things to deal with. Having an abortion will do nothing to take away the violence and hurt that was inflicted on the woman.
6. No one knows when life begins anyway!
Believe it or not this is one of the desperate attempts to justify killing the unborn child. This really exposes the fragility of the pro-abortion rhetoric and is very easy to deal with:
• If you read the medical testimonies and the scientific evidence supporting the humanity of the unborn child it is simply not true that no-one knows when life begins. Doctors know when life begin, abortionists know when life begins, even abortion providers know when life begins – AT CONCEPTION.
• But let us pretend for a moment that we don’t know when life begins. Is this justification for abortion? When a building is going to be demolished, the demolition team are very careful to ensure the building has been evacuated of all people. They don’t say just before they push the button, “Well I don’t think there is anyone inside, we can’t be certain.” Uncertainty is reason to err on the side of caution, to give benefit of doubt, not to blindly carry on regardless!
7. The baby isn’t conscious and doesn’t feel pain so what’s the problem in getting rid of it?
Let’s suppose this is true, that the early embryo or foetus doesn’t feel pain (though there is evidence to the contrary). Is that a legitimate justification for allowing the killing of an unborn child? Are you permitted to plunge a knife into the heart of someone who is sleeping just because they won’t feel the pain?
Of course I hope your answer is “NO!” The issue here is confusing harm and hurt. If you knife someone while they are sleeping or in a coma they may not feel pain but they have certainly been harmed!!
8. The baby isn’t a baby, it is just an embryo or foetus!
The term embryo means “growing within” and foetus is Latin for “unborn offspring.” Just because a newborn is called a newborn, a toddler is called a toddler or a teenager a teenager doesn’t rob them of their humanity. These are simply names for a certain stage of development. Learn more in: THE PHILOSOPHICAL CASE AGAINST ABORTION
9. It might be a human being but it isn’t a person because it isn’t sentient or had any experiences yet!
For a more in-depth look at this see personhood under CASE AGAINST ABORTION – POLITICAL – PERSONHOOD.
History is strewn with the bloody consequences of this kind of thinking. If there is a group of people who are in our way, we seek to make them dispensable by dehumanising them with derogatory terms like sub-human and parasites etc.
As it is undeniable and uncontroversial that the unborn child is a separate, unique and living human being, (SEE CASE AGAINST ABORTION – BIOLOGICAL – MEDICAL TESTIMONIES) those who wish to cling to the ideologies of the pro-abortion movement have had to concede this point. But instead of coming to the conclusion that abortion therefore is wrong they just change the premise of their position. Now they say that it isn’t wrong to kill a human being but it is wrong to kill a human person.
We find arbitrary (and self seeking) reasons like sentience for excluding persons from rights of personhood. What moral weight does sentience have in determining someone’s value? None.
Does our value decrease if we are in a coma or a deep sleep? You might say: “That is different as the person in a coma previously had experiences!” This goes to show that it is not the current abilities that grant our value but the inherent.
Like almost all reasons for denying rights to the unborn child, sentience confuses functioning as a person with being a person. Functionalism says that in order to be valued you must be able to perform certain tasks that we as bigger stronger people will set for you.
The case should be that just belonging to the human species is adequate to grant rights of personhood.
If self-consciousness is important for determining whether someone is a person or not, new born babies are at risk of extermination. A child maybe self aware but she doesn’t become self conscious until she is around a year old.
10. The embryo or early foetus is a potential human just like an acorn is a potential oak tree.
This is another example how flawed thinking can have disastrous consequences.
Right from conception, a unique, living human being comes in to existence. He or she may be small but everything is there for self integrated development. The sex of the child is determined at this point as well as eye colour, blood type height and so on.
The newly formed (but rapidly developing) embryo is a human WITH potential not a potential human.
This is also unsound thinking from the start. How can something be a potential something? If it isn’t a human being it must be an actual SOMETHING. Potential cannot exist in the abstract. Supporters of abortion must answer the question of what this "potential" thing actually is.
Another error in thinking is that an acorn is not an oak. Actually an acorn IS an oak. The acorn belongs to the oak species and looks just how it should at that stage of development. An acorn is a potential tree just like an embryo is a potential newborn or adult. It is complete in itself and all that is required is the right conditions to mature in.
11. If abortion is made illegal thousands of women will die in back-street abortions
This is one of the most common protests of pro aborts or poorly informed members of the public. They hark back to the days before legal abortion and women dying in back-street abortions. To argue against this can really set you up for sounding like a heartless monster. This is of course their purpose, to put you off taking your point any further. Here are a few points to consider:
i) Firstly they are assuming there is only one person involved in the abortion procedure. This is exactly the point that we have have to get them to defend. They are "begging the question."
ii) There is huge confusion about abortion before it was made legal. Actually there are no figures as to how many women procured illegal abortions and there are no figures to say how many died. Pro aborts throw around ideas that thousands of women were dying at the hands of back-alley butchers. This is simply a lie.
Think about it, if someone dies they have to have a death certificate stating cause of death. If a woman turned up at a hospital with severe bleeding due to impaling herself with a coat hanger and later died under a doctors care, it would be in that doctors interest to not be held responsible for the death of that woman. He would therefore make it clear that she died from someone else's actions.
iii) Because something is unsafe doesn't mean it should be made legal. For instance because some criminals die in high speed crashes after stealing cars should we legalise car crime?
iv) These women aren't being forced to abort. A huge majority of the time it is their own decision.
v) Women also die from legal abortions. These numbers are hard to find as clinics only have to report complications up to the time of discharge after the procedure. Studies have shown that perforation of the Uterus is far more common than was once thought. Also if there is any parts of the baby, sac, or placenta still left in the womb this will cause hemorrhaging but this may not cause death until after the woman leaves the clinic/hospital. ( See case of Manon Jones)
Remember if a pro abort comes up with an argument like this, bring it back to the question about who is being affected by the abortion. If the unborn child is not a human being then there is no reason for abortion to be illegal. But if the child is a human being they have got some explaining to do.
