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NRL News
The
Ultimate Visual Aid Putting a Face on Abortion It’s nearly impossible to fathom. Thousands of lives lost every day, over a million every year and upwards of 47 million since 1973. Early on in my pro-life career I realized that there was no way I could grasp this reality unless I could see it laid out in front of me. It made sense to my 14-year-old self that if people could see the toll abortion was taking, they would be less likely to allow it to continue. So I naively set out to make “the ultimate visual aid.” I got out my glue stick and scissors, raided the catalogue shelf in the living room, and set out to cut and paste baby faces to represent the number of children killed by abortion every year. At the time, in the early 1980s, that number was 1.5 million. Anyone with a math gene is laughing right now—perhaps loudly. After all, only a really mathematically challenged child would think such a thing were even possible. By the end of the day every catalogue child under the age of four in our house was headless. There was glue everywhere, and I was sobbing inconsolably. After a day’s work I had only enough baby faces to represent the number of children killed by abortion in one hour. It occurred to me that unborn children were being killed faster than I could cut them out and glue them onto paper. I was devastated. For years I traveled with that single sheet of paper representing the number of babies killed by abortion every hour. About a decade later, a group of resourceful teens took up the project, this time with a more reasonable goal: representing the number of babies lost every day to the scourge of abortion. They succeeded in putting together an incredible representation of abortion’s devastation. “The Babies,” as they are now known in Wisconsin, have attended state and national conventions, teen leadership camps, college training seminars, and have even visited college campuses. Everywhere they go, people are shocked to realize the visual impact of legalized abortion. The Babies make people think. And more often than not, The Babies make people cry, too. And so we have decided to take The Babies to the next level—to mass produce them and make them available to other groups. But there’s a catch. They are all cut from magazines—photos in magazines have copyrights. It would be illegal to reproduce them. The only way to avoid copyright issues is to use personal baby photos. Who has more babies than pro-lifers? We’re pretty sure the answer to that is “no one.” And so we are seeking baby photos—your baby photos. In fact, we are seeking personal photos of children ages four and under—when we have compiled enough photos (approximately 3,750) we will put together The Babies—Version 2.0 and make them available to pro-life groups around the nation. Photos can be sent in hard-copy format or in electronic file format to us—we’ll do the rest. Please just make sure that along with your photos or e-mail you include permission for us to use your baby photos. Photos can be mailed to 9356 E. Ash Ave., Solon Springs, WI 54873 or e-mailed to jlittle@wrtl.org. If you are interested in obtaining a set of The Babies, please also e-mail us at that address. The actual compilation of The Babies—Version 2.0 will take place at our Wisconsin Right to Life Summer Leadership camps, so The Babies will not be ready for “adoption” until sometime next fall. (Trust me, it’s a pretty huge project.) But it’s worth it. We live in a visual society—teenagers, especially, are very visual thinkers. And The Babies are doing their part to educate and motivate wherever they go. Please help us make them available to anyone who wants to use them! |