Tennessee Woman's Suffrage Memorial on Market Square. Note GAP display in background.

When we were on Market Square in Knoxville last week, we were stunned but pleased to see that the City of Knoxville had put up a monument to the pro-life position.  It wasn’t just pro-life, it was pro-family and pro-God.  It was awesome!

In fact, the pro-life monument has been there since 2006, but we enjoyed pretending that the City of Knoxville put it up just to endorse our message.

You all know about the pro-life convictions of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Perhaps we could add Lizzie Crozier French (1851-1926) to that list.  She was the founder of the Knoxville Equal Suffrage Association.  She wrote these words that appeared on the monument:

Thanks be to God that in giving Woman the crown of motherhood He made her the giver not the taker of life.  Woman has no greater claim to the rights of the ballot than that she is the producer not a destroyer of life.

Heard this on the radio the other day.  Anybody else remember this one?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G75cORqX_oQ

Young people learning the truth of abortion.

We displayed our Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) on Market Sqauare in Knoxville.  Here are comments from passersby:

“This is really plain. I have cancer and cannot have children. Why don’t these folks give birth and let people like me adopt?” (young couple from Kentucky)

“We have both seen the destruction of societies from the kind of ‘real’ genocide (the kind most people identify with). But abortion is no less a genocide. We are destroying our own children for selfish reasons. We have seen what a society is like when life is not valued and we do not want America to become like China.” (travelers recently returned from Africa and China)

“China has a one-child policy enforced by the State. America has a 2-child policy enforced by the Church. And the pastors’ refusal to talk about contraception, the ‘full quiver’ (God determining family size), and abortion. And the outcome is still the same . . . death to the preborn.” (male passerby)

“Thank you for being brave to put this truth up for all to see.” (male passerby) (Note: we appreciate the thanks and the admiration, but frankly, we’d rather have your help. Thanks and admiration by themselves will not buy new signs, new handouts, truck fuel, nor anything else.)

“It is so wrong that you cut the water off so children can’t play in the water fountains today.” (female restaurant employee)

“The pictures are just awful; you should be ashamed to put them up.” (male passerby)  (Note: When Lewis Hine showed photos of children working under abusive conditions, he said people would look at the photos and get more angry at him for showing the pictures than at the industrial bosses for abusing the children.)

“The people that took info from me were not really interested in talking but extremely engrossed in taking in every detail of the display, some slowly digesting every photo-mural. Polite and very contemplative are two words I would use for the older (than college age) crowd at Market Square. I did notice that there were very many who looked at the display intently from a distance, whether walking by or from the surrounding restaurants. I did speak with one UT college age male who was glad we were there and remembered us from UT. The Deeper Still table had several come by, and a few ask for information about their post-abortion healing ministry.” (CBR volunteer)

That’s what they say.  What do you say?  Please leave your comments!

Market Square GAP

The Genocide Awareness Project (GAP) has made it’s first appearance on Market Square in Knoxville.  Lord willing, it won’t be our last.

Before we had even set up the signs, a woman walked around the display and studied each one.  She was almost in tears as she asked, “Do you mean to tell me that abortions like this are legal in Knoxville?”  I explained that the first trimester abortions depicted in most of our signs are performed routinely in Knoxville.  Although the 22-week abortion depicted in two of our signs are legal in all 50 states (because of the Doe v Bolton decision), they are not routinely performed here.  She said she had thought all abortions were done on a small blob of tissue, and that we had certainly changed her mind.  I know she will be talking about the signs to her friends as well.

All day long, it was a steady stream of people passing the display.  Almost every one of them stared at the signs and studied them intently.  It was clear the signs were doing their work in the minds of all who saw them.

What do you think about Urban GAP?  Please comment!

CBR and LEARN at NAACP

You may know about the NAACP Convention going on in Kansas City this week.  What you won’t see on the news are CBR’s abortion photos on display outside the Convention Center.  The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and Pastor Clenard Childress of BlackGenocide.org are in Kansas City asking “Why No Outrage?” about the destruction of Black children by abortion.

“NAACP Security” issued bogus demands that Pastor Childress move the signs away from the sidewalk adjacent to the Convention Center, but he promptly ignored them.  He told them that “only the Kansas City police have any authority to ask us to move.”

Pastor Childress told us that

This was our most effective NAACP picket to date.  We were ideally positioned for maximum exposure to delegates at the main entrances to the Convention Center.  When thousands of delegates rushed out, along with young visitors just brought in to hear First Lady Michelle Obama, they flooded all around our people and our graphic signs.  As I looked over our team, for the first time in all the years we have been doing this, everyone was simultaneously engaged in dialogue with Convention attendees.

Great job!  One of the Convention attendees encouraged us:

We know who you all are.  We’ve seen you here before.  …  Why are you still outside with your message?  Why haven’t they invited you in?

Fat chance of that.  Another Conventioneer:

If a bunch of white people brought these signs to our Convention, I would not have come up and spoken to them.  Thank you for coming.

I saw this video by Lia Mills yesterday.  I think she’s 13 years old, maybe 14.  In this video, she explains the difference between personal preference choices and moral choices.  What do you think?  Please comment!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa-DOrhaymc

I was honored to be invited to address the Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Right to Life next week.  Here’s the announcement that went out to their members and other pro-lifers in the area:

You are invited to come and hear a presentation by Fletcher Armstrong PhD, Southeast Director of The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, entitled, “Lessons From the Past, Learning How to Win,” sponsored by the Atlanta Chapter Georgia Right to Life.  CBR is well know for Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), which is the world’s first large-scale abortion photo outreach to college students. Fletcher will explain how this and other CBR projects are effective because they are modeled upon the most successful social reform movements in history, including the movements to end the slave trade in England, slavery in America, abusive child labor in the early 20th Century, and racial injustice in the 1960s.

When: Thursday, July 22, 2010 7:00 PM

Where: Cathedral of Christ the King, Hyland Center

Some comments about GAP:

• “I saw minds and hearts changed right before my eyes. I believe in GAP and its ability to effect change.” (Tanya Comer, President, [University of] Georgia Pro-Life)
• “There is no doubt in my mind that GAP is the most effective pro-life project that any pro-life club can bring to their school.” (President, Students for Life, U of New Hampshire).
• “It is saving babies like nothing the pro-life movement has ever undertaken and is worthy of our heartiest support.” (Fr. Frank Pavone, Director, Priests for Life)
• “I’ve been doing this my whole adult life. And yet I have never heard a more compelling way of presenting the pro-life message.” (Hon. Trent Franks, U.S. House of Representatives)

If you know people in Atlanta, please let them know about this event.  Thanks!  I’m scheduled to speak in Athens on the evening of Wednesday, July 21.  I will link to my slides for both of these talks sometime next week.

If I can speak to your pro-life group or event, use the feedback form on our website to let us know.

ProLifeOnCampus Logo

You may have been wondering about the Pro Life on Campus logo.  This logo tells the simple story of what we are doing with our campus outreach project (GAP) at CBR:

Winning Hearts … Changing Minds … Saving Lives

These achievements are represented by the three icons that you see:

• The first is a heart, representing emotion.  Any salesman will tell you that the first step toward achieving behavior change is to touch the emotions of your audience.  They have to care about it; they have to think it’s important.  When people see our display, they are suddenly aware of a victim they had been taught to ignore (the defenseless baby) and an injustice they had been taught to trivialize.
• Next is a head, representing reason.  Using our display to start the conversation, we are able to engage the minds of students.  As pro-choice students and others repeat back the mantra of a pro-death culture, we ask questions to clarify the confusion in their minds.  We help them see that their justifications for abortion are no more compelling that the justifications given by the purveyors of slavery, the Holocaust, and the many other forms of systematic injustice.  They have been taught to hate these other forms of injustice; reason demands they hate abortion in the same way.
• Next is the baby’s hand, representing lives saved.  The first time I saw CBR’s campus outreach project was at the University of Tennessee in 1998.  We know of 9 babies lives that were saved.  One of them is now featured in a GAP sign that is shown all over the world.  Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life says this project is “saving babies like nothing the pro-life movement has ever seen.”

The text on the logo, Pro Life on Campus, points people to our website, www.ProLifeOnCampus.com.  So now you know!

To win hearts, change minds, and save lives, we need your help!  If you click here and give $5 or more, I’ll send you a Precious Feet lapel pin!

CBR at 2009 NAACP Convention

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and Pastor Clenard Childress of BlackGenocide.org are planning several days of outreach using CBR’s GAP signs and truth trucks at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) national convention in Kansas City, MO on July 12-13. Bill Calvin of CBR commented:

“With 33% of all abortions performed on black women – that is black genocide. With over half of all pregnancies to black women ending in abortion – that is black genocide. When African-Americans make up 13% of the population but continue to kill babies at such an astounding rate it is way past time to confront the leadership of the NAACP in their complicity in black genocide.”

I’ll have updates from the field.  We can’t do this without you.  Your gift of $50 pays for one hand-held sign!  Click here to stand with us.  By the way, I’m running a special this month.  Give any amount online, and I would love to send you a Precious Feet lapel pin!

GAP sign for NAACP Convention reveals racism behind Roe v Wade. (Click to enlarge.)

"Wow, I think God really sent you to me."

We’ve been saying it for years.  Now, national pro-choice leaders agree.

The president of the pro-life student group at the U of California recently said, “Berkeley Students for Life hosted the most high-impact pro-life event our university has ever seen ….”  It was our Pro Life on Campus GAP display.  A public health class turned into a 2-hour discussion of abortion.  A professor told us said how “compelling” he thought our abortion pictures were.  A female student exclaimed, “Wow, I think [God] really sent you to me.  I say that because I’m pregnant.  I was actually considering abortion.”  We see these kinds of astounding reactions on every campus we visit.  That’s why the president of Students for Life at the U of New Hampshire told us,

“There is no doubt in my mind that GAP is the most effective pro-life project that any pro-life club can bring to their school.”

How effective?  Five years after CBR’s 1998 launch of GAP—it was the world’s first, large-scale, abortion photo outreach to students—the pro-abortion New York Times reported a shockingly pro-life opinion shift among students.  The article “Surprise Mom: I’m Anti-Abortion” (March 30, 2003) reported that the “… most commonly cited reason for the increasingly conservative views of young people is their receptiveness to the way anti-abortion campaigners have reframed the national debate on the contentious topic, shifting the emphasis from a woman’s rights to the rights of the fetus.”  It was our photos that “shifted the emphasis.”

Five years later, the Los Angeles Times published an even stronger affirmation of the power of CBR’s abortion photos.  “Abortion’s battle of messages” (January 22, 2008) was authored by Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman, two of the abortion industry’s most strident proponents of “reproductive choice.”  Ms. Kissling was president of “Catholics for Choice” and Ms. Michaelman was president of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL – now “NARAL Pro-Choice America).  The authors made a startling admission:  “Advocates of choice have had a hard time dealing with the increased visibility of the fetus.”  Meaning the “fetus” they deceitfully dismissed as a blob of cells.  Even more amazingly, they concede that

“in recent years, the antiabortion movement [meaning CBR] successfully put the nitty-gritty details [meaning pictures] of abortion procedures on public display [meaning university campus exhibits], increasing the belief that abortion is serious business and that some societal involvement is appropriate.”

These pictures are precisely why our success with students continues to build.  Just last month, Newsweek published an article (“Saint Sarah”) that quoted a study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  That study revealed that 70% of “young, white evangelicals” want more restrictions on abortion, compared with only 55% in the “older generation.”

The one thing that pro-choicers and pro-lifers agree upon: Young attitudes are changing and the reason is our abortion photos!

Every year, we get far more requests for assistance than we can possibly handle, because we lack sufficient funds to visit more college campuses.  We struggle even to keep our current projects funded.  To make matters worse, this tough economy is increasing pressures to kill babies at the same time it is decreasing our ability to save them.  On behalf of babies and moms, we need your help.

I’m asking you to look at last month’s check register and/or credit card bills and see if you can’t find a place to cut ten (or even five) dollars you could begin sending to CBR on a monthly basis.  Only $10 a month will take our Pro Life on Campus display to 240 college students every year.  If you can afford cable TV ($40/month), an equal check to CBR will take our display to nearly 1,000 students every year.  Think about that.  Please act now.

Your willingness to live a little more modestly could enable you to give a little more generously.  The result could be a baby’s chance to live any life at all. Please save a baby’s life right now!

I think this is a hoot!  What do you think?  Leave comments below!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2KlpT3AIKA

Last week, Nancy Pelosi assured analysts that they could “take it to the bank” that the Democrats would hold onto the House.  But after a series of polls that came out on Monday and Tuesday, I would seriously think twice before making a trip to Wachovia.  These polls have only reinforced the view I have held from April of this year that a 50-seat loss or so is the midpoint scenario for Democrats this fall, rather than the 25-40 seat range that most analysts seem to be talking about.

This week’s generic ballot tracking poll from Gallup shows Republicans with a 5-point lead, tying their previous best showing from 1994.  The previous two weeks revealed a 6-point lead (the largest in 50 years of Gallup tracking) and a tie.  Three datapoints do not a trend make.  But it is hard to ignore that two of the best three generic ballot showings for Republicans ever in Gallup occurred in the last two weeks.

More …

At this critical time, let us not grow weary nor complacent.  We at CBR will be doing everything we can to put abortion on the agenda again this election year.  We will be focusing our truth trucks and our Pro Life on Campus exhibit on key election states and districts where pro-life candidates will be running against pro-abortion candidates.  Please help us as generously as you can!

40 Days for Life at Cherry Street Abortion Clinic

Been wanting to do something about abortion in Knoxville?  Believe in the power of prayer?  Got an hour?  If so, then I’ve got a deal for you!  Pro-lifers from all over Knoxville are praying at the new Planned Parenthood abortion clinic every Friday, and they want you to come and stand with them.  The new clinic is on Cherry Street, just a few blocks south of I-40.  It’s easy to help:

1. Click here.
2. Sign in with your name and phone number.  It’s easy.
3. Pick an hour and sign up.
4. Show up.  Parking is available just across the street at Trinity Tabernacle Church of God, 2615 Washington Avenue.

 I’ve heard it said that 80% of life is just showing up.  If you’ve never been a part of pro-life activism, this is an easy way to get started!  Here’s the link: www.40daysknoxville.com/vigil/

The body of Christ has been left on this earth to bring good news of salvation to the afflicted, to bind up the broken hearted, and to set the captives free.  Deeper Still is a ministry of God’s mercy and healing power, bringing healing and lasting freedom to abortion-wounded hearts.

If you want to bring the Deeper Still ministry to your community,  your church, or your pregnancy center, here’s your chance.  Deeper Still is hosting a training seminar in August, and you need to be there.  The training seminar is on Friday-Saturday, August 6-7.  The cost is only $65.  By attending this seminar, you will:

• Gain – wisdom and understanding about the abortion wounded heart.
• Expand – your healing ministry skills.
• Become – envisioned to start a Deeper Still chapter in your church or pregnancy Center.

For more details, click here.