There are a lot of things wrong with this poster:
“If killing an unborn baby at six months bothers you, vote no.”
This pro-life poster is cruel and manipulative. Anyone who decides to get an abortion at six months does not want an abortion. No one would decide six months into a pregnancy that they no longer want a baby.
Late-term abortions at six months or later are being done due to serious risk to the mother or because the child won’t survive outside of the womb. It is being done to spare a mother or a child (or both), a painful and unnecessary death. This is a wanted child, and to terminate it is a truly unfortunate final option. It isn’t done out of selfishness or a sudden change of mind; it’s out of necessity.
Labelling anyone who is forced to abort a wanted pregnancy as a “killer” is vile. To subject people who have suffered through this to seeing these harsh posters in the street is cruel. To use and twist their suffering to further the pro-life agenda is shameful.
There has been no proposal of any abortion being allowed at six months. The proposed cut off point being discussed at the moment is twelve weeks. As well as being heartless and insensitive, this poster is simply spreading lies.
As these posters are being put up throughout the country, the Irish Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (ICBR) are protesting outside colleges and public places with posters of aborted foetuses. These images are graphic and upsetting and all the while being displayed publicly in the street.
While I understand and respect either side’s right to protest, the pictures are far too explicit to be on the street, especially where kids can see. Children who are too young to be aware of any part of the debate shouldn’t be forced to see them, and they can be extremely emotionally triggering for women who have recently suffered through miscarriages or had abortions themselves.
While ICBR argue that to point of these images is to evoke an emotional response in order to educate people on the reality of abortion, it’s simply unnecessary to display them so publicly. People know what abortion means and what it does. There is no need to upset people with these posters; in fact many people have been so disgusted by the use of them and the aggression of the protest that they have been turned off the pro-life campaign.
It is only fair to allow each side of the abortion debate to protest and campaign. But to manipulate the public with lies and attack the public with such aggressive methods of campaigning as the pro-lifers have been doing is unfair, and as each lie on their posters and their canvassing social media is exposed, they are harming their own movement, and risking losing the referendum. I would advise the pro-lifers to re-evaluate their methods on how to get their points across better to the general public.
Erica Carter