Can Barbaric Images Sway Public Opinion?

JUNE 2, 2004
By GREG RUMMO

     WHAT WERE SOME of the most hideous images to appear on television, in newspapers and on the Internet over the last few months?

Certainly most came out of Iraq starting with the photos of charred corpses hanging from a metal bridge in Fallujah. You remember—how could you forget?—They provided the backdrop for crowds of America-hating fanatical Muslims who cheered the deaths of those innocent contractors.

Then there was Nick Berg’s beheading at the hands of hooded terrorists—blood curdling—even if, like me, you didn’t actually watch the entire video but instead listened to someone explain what took place. 

Here’s another recent image you might not think of as frightening: U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton's ruling earlier this week that the partial birth abortion ban act is unconstitutional. In her ruling which affects the entire nation, the judge agreed with abortion rights activists that a woman's right to choose trumps everything and it is therefore “irrelevant” if the baby suffers pain when a pair of scissors is driven into the back of its skull and its brains are then sucked out.

Talk about barbarism—I can almost see fanatical anti-right-to-life groups from Planned Parenthood cheering in the streets over the judge’s decision. And what was it that her ruling accomplished?—the legalization of the removal of the inside of another human’s skull.

Does this comparison offend you? Good. It should offend you.

If you think such comparisons can be dismissed as the ranting of some right-wing Christian fanatic it’s probably because you haven’t been exposed to enough photographs and in-depth, investigative reporting on the issue.

The cover story in the April 17 issue of WORLD Magazine entitled “Brutal Hearings” reported on one Federal Judge’s line of questioning aimed to force the abortion industry into full disclosure of the hideous procedures it uses under the guise of “a woman’s right to choose.”

Here’s one exchange that took place in a New York Courtroom between an anonymous abortionist and Federal Judge Richard C. Casey. (The entire article may be read at worldmag.com by clicking on the archive tab.)

“‘What they did, they delivered the fetus intact until the head was lodged in the cervix,’ the doctor said. ‘Then they reached up and crushed it. They used forceps to crush the skull.’

‘Like a cracker that they use to crack a lobster shell?’ Judge Casey asked regarding the forceps. The doctor answered, ‘Like an end of tongs you use to pick up a salad, except they are thick enough and heavy enough to crush the skull.’

Judge Casey responded, ‘Except in this case you are not picking up a salad, you are crushing a baby's skull.’

Then Judge Casey asked, ‘The fetus is still alive at this point?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The fingers of the baby opened and closed?’

‘I did not observe the hands when I observed the procedure.’

‘Were the feet moving?’

‘Yes, sir, until the skull was crushed.’” 

WORLD Magazine is “a voice crying in the wilderness” on this issue. They were apparently the only print media that covered the story in any detail. That these hearings were not covered by the mainstream media supports the contention that the abortion industry “thrives on secrecy.”

And so I am left to wonder: If the recent partial-birth abortion hearings had been covered with the same intense journalistic scrutiny as, let’s say, the Abu Ghraib scandal; if newspaper editors felt the same pangs of conscience to publish images of babies brutalized by abortion doctors that led them to publish the photos of charred corpses in Fallujah, is it possible that public opinion about abortion could be swayed similarly to the way it has been over the US’s involvement in Iraq?

I leave it to the reader to draw his own conclusion. n

Greg Rummo is a syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage, www.GregRummo.com.