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I have a personal challenge to make. I have long believed abortion procedures should be as accessible in broadcast as other operations like brain, heart and eye surgery. For anyone who has access to a video tape of a partial birth abortion, I will commit to "airing" it on WorldNetDaily (if it meets our standards). I think everyone should be fully informed before undergoing surgery, counseling a loved one, or voting on a bill. Only the stark reality of truth can provide that.

Mrs. Farah has good intentions in this, I'm sure, and there's no question that she is ardently opposed to the practice of child killing by abortion techniques. But I would like to return a challenge:

Dear Mrs. Farah,

I challenge you to withdraw your offer to air a video tape of a partial birth abortion on WorldNetDaily.

Do you really want to show a video of a helpless child being murdered by an abortionist? Is it proper, is it truly a good thing, to broadcast video footage of this violence -- not a diagram showing how the crime is committed, but actual pictures of a child being put to death? At least, if you will, reconsider: suspend your personal challenge until you and others at WND have carefully considered what this is you are committing yourself to do.

Consider:

Vivid images of violence will not work in one predictable way on everyone. I know that your intention is to use the video of a child being murdered to awaken in morally lethargic people a genuine outrage at what is being done. But not everyone will look on such a video and be outraged. Some will be hardened. Some will only be angered that this is being shown to them, and out of embarrassed indignation they will come more callous. They will not pity; their hearts will not grow softer. They will become course, like the crowds of people who once brought picnic lunches to public hangings. They will not flinch at the injustice; they will make ugly jokes and laugh. 

There are people who seek out violent pornography because it feeds a lust for something they want.

You may think I'm putting too much emphasis on this, and perhaps I am. I confess that I won't watch The Silent Scream because it would be just too terrible to watch that little child die, and I definitely would not allow my young children to watch that video or, needless to say, any video of a child being killed by the partial birth method. I have great admiration for Operation Rescue -- we will one day honor some of this organization's members as true American heroes -- but I do have doubts about their use of large posters of Baby Malachi (Malachi's body was found, I believe, in a dumpster behind an abortionist's place of business).

Here is an theoretical sort of question, but it gets at something I hope you'll think about: If you were to show a video of a child being murdered to a cross section of the American people in 1999, how would they react? What percentage would be outraged? What percentage would be hardened? How many would be titillated? I have to tell you, I don't think that most would be outraged. I believe most would fall into the other two categories. I fear that the "outraged" would not even be a large minority, unless their number were allowed to include the "somewhat uncomfortable".

This is very gloomy, you think, but I see around me glaring signs that this nation is already terribly hardened about the treatment of children. I saw our President stand up in public and defend a practice that everyone with ordinary common sense recognizes is bloody murder... He was not impeached and thrown out of office for this! I don't recall that anyone even stood up in Congress to call for his impeachment. The Senate could not even muster enough votes to override the presidential veto of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. That means that a third of the senators felt politically secure enough to cast a vote aligning themselves with the president!   What does that say about the American people?

Glance at a television sometime, at random. This nation has been well conditioned already to see violence without reacting to it. People watch violence for entertainment. Do you think that television watchers will look at a video of a child being murdered and suddenly be horrified and stirred by  a passion for justice? That would be like a school of fish deciding suddenly they'd rather walk and breath air. The nation is full of television watchers, the nation put Bill Clinton in office after he revealed his feelings about children, and in hundreds of cities the abortuaries are tolerated, their presence never even an issue in local elections.

I'll listen to views about this that are contrary to my own, but I have to say, I don't believe this is a nation that will be shocked by seeing an abortionist murder a child, however grisly the technique used. On the contrary, it is a nation fully capable of absorbing such a video as just one more bizarre entertainment, never flinching, never caring. Is the slain child worthy of any respect? Yes. He or she should not be held up as a spectacle in order that a brutish audience can spend a few witless moments watching real torture and murder.

[By the way, if you do obtain a video of a child begin killed, it should be preserved -- and protected. Lord willing, it can be used one day in a court of law as evidence against one of the serial killers.]

Mrs. Farah, I will recall for you your own words, from the column in which you issued your challenge:

My point should be clear! In discussing evil and death, a portrait of love and life is the finest, most compelling argument. 

Regards,

Peter Barry 11/19/1999

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