23 January, 2003 9:40 AM
I've been struggling whether to respond to this 'pro life'/'planned parenthood' campaign on Blogs4God. When I looked at the site on my morning round of the blogs I had a strong internal reaction to these strongly worded posters. I guess that this is the reaction that I was supposed to have. It is an important issue to talk through and debate (as we have been for decades now) and therefore part of me thinks the posters and slogans are worthwhile as they will stimulate debate. HOWEVER I am also very uncomfortable with them and the slogans in the links on the site.
In having a poster and slogan competition are we perhaps trivializing and emotionalizing an issue that touches on a very deep part of so many?
I guess I speak out of my involvement as a minister with two people who were deeply affected by this very issue. They struggle on a daily basis with it because for different reasons they made decisions to terminate pregnancy. Whether their decisions were right or wrong is not something I wish to discuss here apart from to say that they were not simply cases of 'poorly planned pregnancy' - the situations were complex and incredibly painful for all concerned.
My question is how will these two women react to posters like the one above from B4G? How do they react to slogans like Gregory Popcak's "Just Kill It", "Genocide - It's not just for Nazis anymore!", "This holiday season, give the gift of death." or "Babies. The other white meat." or Mark Shea's "Depopulating the world one person at a time", "Life without consequences", "Reach out and abort someone" or "Betcha can't kill just one".
Where is the Grace that Jesus talked about? For a woman who is struggling with such an emotional decision to be confronted with such an emotive slogan or poster by Christians (by anyone!) is a shocking thing. How is she supposed to react to that? What will it do to her emotional wellbeing, to her self esteem and to her faith?
Are we over simplifying, humorising and trivializing something complex with such a campaign? Are we polarizing things into black and white without hearing the pain of people living in the grey? Are we casting stones at broken women that Jesus would have stood alongside and loved.
Yes we need to continue to talk - but perhaps we can think about the impact of the way we stimulate the debate.
UPDATE have been saddened to find this comment left in the last hour or so by Sally a hurting woman in response to this campaign (Mark Sheas site). Puts a personal face to things doesn't it.
UPDATE 2 alot of blogging is being done on the topic - Kathryn (original poster on B4G) shares a personal and appreciated response to the criticism of her post, Rachel, Richard and Richard all add to the conversation with good posts.
