By Dave Andrusko

Part Two gives you a chance to subscribe to the "pro-life newspaper of record" at an inexpensive rate. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  If you'd like, follow me at www.twitter.com/daveha.

"This slide show includes images that are very graphic."
     -- From "Behind the Scenes: Picturing Fetal Remains," by Damien Cave, which appeared on the New York Times website last Saturday.

To say that I was stunned last weekend when the New York Times ran (by Establishment Media standards) an even-handed portrait of pro-life protestors would hardly do justice to my amazement. That the Times proceeded to carry a second story, a kind of hybrid photo essay, in its "Lens: Photography, Video and Visual Journalism" section found on the Times' web page, set my jaw to dropping.

The two came together when Cave, as part of his story on pro-life protestors, attended the memorial service for James Pouillon, a veteran pro-lifer who was shot and killed as he sat outside an abortion clinic in Owosso, Michigan. Cave tells us "Mr. Pouillon was holding an anti-abortion sign at the time, with a baby on one side and an abortion on the other."

He explains, "I often wondered about the source of these images. Who took the pictures? Where did the fetuses come from?" Cave then tells us, "At his memorial service, I met Monica Migliorino Miller, who told me she had a lot to share about the use of abortion imagery."

The history of her involvement, and her evolving views on how best these photos might be used, can be found on the Times's web page. Cave's fascinating interview with the woman whose photographs of aborted babies have appeared all over the country "since the mid-1990s," and the four photos of aborted babies can be found at http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/behind-19/?scp=2&sq=damien%20cave&st=cse.

What is amazing for pro-lifers, of course, is that the topic was discussed at all and, even more breath-taking, that the Times would have the gumption to show photos of aborted babies on its website.

We see a mid-1980s photo described by Mrs. Migliorino Miller as "Unborn baby, 5 months' gestation, aborted with saline abortion technique"; "Foot--broken at the ankle," a 14-16 week-old baby killed by suction abortion in 2008; "Hand of baby aborted 16 weeks gestation by suction method" in 2009; and "The feet of unborn baby 6 months, prostaglandin abortion method" from the mid 1980s.

Almost as riveting was the heated give-and-take in the comment section which followed. You expected what you read in the first few (which were indicative of many), people whose hatred for pro-lifers is almost clinical. They need to distance themselves from the horror of what they saw, assuming they had the courage to look, and, I suspect, from their own involvement, at least in some cases.

So, they string together the usuals--that pro-lifers only care about "fetuses"; we hate women; what about "unwanted children?"; most abortions are done in the first trimester when the unborn have "flippers" [!]; we couldn't care less about babies after they are born; and, in general, mind your own business.

But to find in the New York Times the eloquence--and the number--of the pro-life responses was startling.

They debunked each of these threadbare pro-abortion rationalizations. One of my favorites is, "An 8 week old fetus does not have flippers or a tail. It looks like a tiny human."

Perhaps most revealing is that the pro-life respondents refused to be pigeonholed. As one writer put it, "What does it matter liberal or conservative, republican or democrat, religious or secular?

These are human beings and what the abortionists do to these babies would not be allowed to happen to dogs."

Which helped put the e-mail from the self-described "classic, left-clinging liberal in all ways but the abortion issue" in context. Her eyes had been opened when, many years ago, she took a friend to a clinic to have an abortion.

"Although these photos are horrific they do speak a truth, a truth that so many pro-choice types refuse to admit," she wrote.

And then there was that most telling voice, the voice of sad experience. "I was once fooled into killing my child," wrote one woman. "It ate my heart out from within until I found help and healing. Now a part of the pro-life movement, and still a single woman, I have had the great privileged of adopting 2 children whom the pro-abortion movement would have preferred to see dead."

Finally there was the woman who wrote about her involvement many years ago in the pro-abortion movement which was, I gather, a reflection of her liberal views. "I haven't changed in my political principles and values, but there has certainly been one change: I am now against abortion, and now -- for the first time -- speaking out against the violence of dismembering our children."

She concluded with this remarkable statement: "Do not tell me that my own two babies expelled from my womb are something subhuman or sub-personal. It is I who failed the test of being 'human' or 'personal' when I aborted them…"

Please take a few minutes to visit http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/behind-19/?scp=2&sq=damien%20cave&st=cse. I would also encourage you to write the Times to thank the paper for its courage.

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Part Two