Abortion photos tell a truth that goes beyond

Dear editor:

The Daily Kent Stater Editorial “We’re Only Losing Our Appetites” (Oct. 10, 2007) makes CBR Midwest’s point loud and clear. The Stater Editorial Board lost more than their appetites; they lost their capacity to possess a functioning conscience.

The “consensus opinion” of the board called our abortion pictures “horrific.” They stated that students will be “angered at the sight of the billboard.” Why would anyone be angered by a picture of an abortion? I thought that abortion simply represented the removal of a blob of tissue during a benign medical procedure. If abortion is such a good idea, a constitutional right, then why would a picture of it be “horrific” and anger people?

The answer is simple: Abortion is an indefensible act of violence that kills a baby, and the photographic evidence of that injustice speaks louder than words. “Adults” and those “mature enough to have critical thinking skills” like those on the Stater Editorial board have become part of the problem regarding abortion. The Stater’s Editorial uses the rhetorical coping mechanism of changing the subject to hide their complicity in baby killing.

Words fail to adequately describe injustice. Could you imagine attempting to describe the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon in words alone? After viewing the tragic events of Sept. 11, how much more information did Americans need to know about Islamic terrorism? Answer: Not much. It was the images of Sept. 11 alone that united our nation against terrorism. The difference is Americans did not attack themselves on Sept. 11. However, many Americans are responsible for abortion killing and trying real hard to find arguments to justify it.

Finally, the Stater is right about one thing. “Public opinion is still split the same way it has been for years” on abortion despite over three decades of “debate.” This is because when someone says “abortion is murder,” they are dismissed as only stating their opinion. But when someone shows a photo of a baby tortured to death by abortion, that no longer represents an opinion, but it represents the incontrovertible evidence of a crime.

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Midwest believes in having informed “grown-up conversations” on abortion. However, a discussion of abortion WITHOUT the accompanying evidence of the killing is wholly inadequate. The Genocide Awareness Project combines the evidence of abortion along with the arguments against it.

I wonder if the Stater would welcome GAP to the campus because it “creates a dialogue”? For some reason I anticipate that they will denounce GAP too.

Mark Harrington

Executive Director

Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Midwest

Even libertarians can’t say no to child health care

Dear editor:

In response to Dmitry Chernikov’s libertarian view that children do not deserve health care, I propose that we consider the issue of health care based on the reality that all of us enjoy a mix of socialism and capitalism. We do not blink paying $1 or more for 16 to 20 ounces of bottled water, or nearly $2 for a 12-ounce cup of coffee, but balk at paying $3 a gallon for gasoline. We happily pay the equivalent of six to eight dollars per gallon of water and nearly $10 a gallon for coffee. A prime example of capitalist “consumer sovereignty” at work.

On the socialist side is the fact that government subsidized commodities like agricultural products and oil are essential to the maintenance of our standard of living. Libertarians clearly have bigger fish to fry than uninsured children. If people cannot be persuaded on the basis of classical liberal economic rationality to give up artificially cheaper food and gas, it seems downright vindictive to deny subsidized health care to children based on the same rationale. Yet presuming one sticks to libertarian economic principles, and would do away with all subsidies, there remain problems with Mr. Chernikov’s economic and ethical arguments.

If a moral hazard is created by economic assistance that may encourage the poor to have more children, then private charity creates the same moral hazard. Regardless, the proposition that economic assistance has that great an effect on the population growth of the poor is dubious, since the poor tend to multiply faster than the affluent everywhere in the world, and most of the world cannot afford even minimal social welfare services.

Undoubtedly, the more well-educated civically and financially we all are, the better off we will be. However, those enamored of privatization insist such education is the individual’s responsibility alone. Though we live in a capitalist society, society owes no individual anything but a crash course in consumer capitalism, and all for the sake of having no impediments to the acquisition of wealth? This unjustly sacrifices social responsibility on the altar of individual freedom. We must not allow economic principles to be held more sacred than political principles. A true libertarian will concede that it is essential that the people dictate to their governments what their rights are. Including, perhaps, a right to health care.

Tim Quigley

Senior History Major