Should We Use Graphic Images to Change Minds About Abortion? Interview with Joanna Keilson and Lincoln Brandenburg from Center for Bioethical Reform

0:00 I Am Yours, I am yours, I am yours. Send Me, Lord, I am yours. Welcome to the Gospel Center pro life podcast. In this episode we're going to talk with members of the Center for bioethical reform about using graphic images to change minds about abortion. This is an important topic, so stay tuned. I felt show passis touch your use me. Welcome to the Gospel Center pro life podcast. Appreciate you guys who listen, and we have some special guests here today that are from the Center for bioethical reform.

0:46 I said that right. That's correct. Yes, maybe even better known as CBR, and Miss Joanna Kilson, yes, Yep, and Lincoln. I don't know your last name, Brandenburg, Brandenburg. Okay, so these guys are going to share with us a little bit of what they do as an organization, kind of what they're focus and their mission is, and then hopefully some stories of what God has done and how some hearts and minds have been changed. So real quick, Joanna, introduce yourself what your role is with CBR and what that involves. Sure. So, I am the director of recruitment and intern program director, so I'm involved in various roles, but a lot of what I do is recruiting and training staff, of volunteers, new staff, and there's we all wear a lot of hats, so there's a lot that needs to be done. I understand that done them. If we're in a bunch of hat that's the most concise way to say a little bit of what I do. Okay, cool and Lincoln. Well, I am, on paper, my roles the development of staff, or sees me the director of staff developments. Okay, and, like Joanna says, we all wear a lot of different hats and a lot of my role also includes just doing activism outings and planning the things will do out on the streets, which I'm sure we'll talk about here at some point. And Yeah, it's I've been here for about eight years doing this and we've we've traveled where a national organization with international affiliates, and then Joan and I respectively have both been to probably about what ten to twelve different states, and then you've been out

2:17 of the country some working with other pro life organizations. I'm working with people to advance the mission. Okay. Well, I'm glad you bring that up. Advance the mission. What is the mission then, of the Center for about ethical reform. It sounds really like scientific e and in medically and stuff like that. I'm sure there's some of that. But what's the mission? Well, we are very passionate that abortion represents an evil that is so profound that you cannot fully understand it unless you see it. Okay, and so a lot of what we're known for around a pro life circles and wherever is that? Where the people that bring up the pictures and okay, we've actually compiled a pretty much the largest in the world archive of professionally taken abortion victim images. Yeah, and most of the if you even Google for abortion victim images, it's probably our photos that are going to show up because they're they're very high resolution. We usually have them in a picture with some kind of size reference, like a coin or a familiar objects of the people. When these pictures are made large, people can see what it is and see how, even the early trimester, how well developed the baby is. But we've really based this on there's there's biblical reasons for the use of the pictures.

3:37 There's historical reasons that I think are very compelling and it's something that we see both in society at large and also in the Christian community, that it's one thing to have a theoretical position on the subject, but seeing it for what it really is is what really grips people, both in their conscience and in their intellect, to see that, yeah, this is a real human life, this is a real baby, and abortion is an act of violence. Yeah, absolutely. I know we have in our brochures that we hand out at the abortion center, on one of the inside pages actually, when of you guys, pictures of a victim of abortion at eleven weeks. We feel like it's very effective to show it to an abortion amounted woman going into an abortion clinic. We do it in a measured way, you know, ask her, can is it art if I show you what abortion looks like?

4:21 And we've seen God use that image in some some pretty powerful way. So you guys are doing that and more of a big picture way. Right. So Joanna shere real quick. So basically what I'm here from Lincoln is, if I was just to make it in a nutshell, you're trying to make the reality of abortion evident, in the violence of abortion evident in a visual way. And where do you do that at? Primarily or where do you do that? I mean maybe there's a mix, maybe there's not just one place where you guys go. But where does that take place at? So we do a lot of work on college campuses. That is the age range where the majority of people are getting abortions. Yeah, and they're twenty.

5:03 So college and after. Yeah, and it is the thinking grounds of our of our nation, and so we do a lot of work there. But really wherever there are people and wherever we are invited, which is usually the streets, because we're not often for I wanted, and that's why there's neat tod do what we do. So the streets of any city, country, where ever they are people, we pass out there, sure, but really meanly showing them the humanity of the preborn and humanity of abortion. So let me just kind of correct me if I'm wrong. Kind of set of visual through audio for people. You guys go to a college campus and you set up victim images and if people don't know exactly what we're talking we're talking about victim images. Were talking about pictures of a boarded babies. Right, yes, these are victims of a board portion, and you set up these images and again, they're not just like these kind of rough hand drawn images, they're actually real images that have been taken and you kind of just have a display there in the college campus and folks come by, college students, professors come by, and your goal is just to come and just make them angry.

6:13 Is that right? Well, that's there's a little news to that. It does often make people angry, and we do actually I'm of the mindset that when people get angry, that is actually a good sign, because it means that the position that they previously held and perhaps are still trying to defend, they're realizing that they're defending the indefensible. Yeah, and nobody, like myself included, nobody, likes to have a challenge of a position that we hold very close challenged, and we especially don't like to think that Hey, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm you know, and you're holding up something as being about human rights and about women's rights and there's all these euphemism surrounding the way the public at large thinks about abortion, and when we show the pictures for what they are, we're dismantling that euphemism. And so one thing our founder, Greg Cunningham, is quoted often too saying is that when we show the victims of abortion, we are not protesting abortion because abortion protest itself.

7:11 Yeah, when you show it, yeah, that's that's a good, good quote here and we go. I really aren't. Goal is to each that middle fifty percent. So if you think about there's maybe twenty five percent on one side who are strongly pro life and then twenty five percent who are strongly pro choice or pro abortion. There's that middle fifty percent who are kind of you know, maybe they call themselves pro choice, sometimes even pro life, but they're really just kind of unsure and they're very swayable. But those people do not come to us. We have to go to them. They are not looking for the information, they're not listening this podcast, they're not at the abortion clinic, you know. I mean they might be at some point, but yeah, they're really just going about their daily life, and so we have to go to them. And a lot of them are more open and they're they're not the vocal minority on either side. They're they're more silent, the final majority, and so those are really the people that we are trying to reach that are more swayable. Yeah, and they are or open.

8:03 Yeah, and along those lines, with that specific grouping our audience, we tend to not very often. I mean obviously there are exceptions, but typically we're not going out in front of abortion clinics per se. And obviously, you know, we very much support and partner with and believe in ministries, you know, like your own, yes, cities for life, that do that because the need is so great. And and you guys, you know I commend you that. You know you're seeing little baby say, because you're out there right where the the action happens, right where the killing is going to happen if someone doesn't step into intervene. But a lot of that mindset we have with reaching that that middle demographic of the people who are just kind of on the fence or who, you know, hold positions in their mind that are contradictory but maybe just don't realize it. On the FT are are they're just apathetic about it. Yeah, the with reaching them it's the mindset that we're trying to not only save individual babies from abortion, but also trying to change public opinion and trying to shift the way the culture views abortion and and really dismantled that euphemism of choice, which is the word people associate with abortion, so that next time they you know, here, CNN or whoever, talking about women's reproductive healthcare or the freedom of choice, they now have a picture emblaze in their mind that they will not forget of what that choice actually means and that there's an actual, real victim, a real person who had to suffer as the casualty, yeah, of that choice. We don't have the media or anyone in poses of power on our side, so we have to be at me, we have to go out. Where else are the going to see this information? Nowhere, so you have to broadcast it. So in one sense you're forcing a necessary conversation. You're you're forcing

9:39 people. When I say force, a lot of people don't like that, but the reality is that that media, even what we're dealing with now with a think while we were talking before, the podcast mentioned with the Jord George Floyd thing. It's like people are forced to confront an evil by that image. I remember I watch the video of the police officer with his knee on this guy's neck and I just about started weeping right in front of my kids. I'm going through facebook and I see it, I'm like my daughter asked me what's going on. I was just forced to be confronted with a reality. And so you guys, in one sense or for or sing in the market place of ideas. That's what the college campus is used to be. Now, yes, more of a market place of Marxism, but anyway, we won't go there. You're forcing them to think about things that they have already decided about, but really they're not decided about and that and that's important and and I'll just openly admit that I I am fine with the mindset and I know some Christians kind of feel squeamish about this, but the fact is that we are forcing that debate and we are bringing this out to the public square, to an audience kind of without their consense. Yeah, and if you and a lot of that is just that mindset that you know, you look at the biblical profits, you look at modern social or form movements like Dr Martin Luther King Jr and some of his his writings and his tactics, and you just see where, as long as we have this mindset that we're going to and obviously I recognize in the context of an abortion clinic and an abortion minded woman, this is a little bit different. Yeah, absolutely, but in terms of the general public, we can't wait for them to come

11:11 to us or consent to come and hear our message and to see these images, because nobody wants to see this. Yeah, and the whole point is that we are so pathetically, sadly apathetic and comfortable with being sheltered from the hard realities like this that exists even in our own country. And so we are intentionally going out to places that are busy and that a lot of eyeballs will see our message and and granted, we're not going to pressure people to look, we're not going to chase them down to hand them a Rochure, but we do want to create a situation where the default alts is that they will see this image and they have to choose to look away, rather than having this image hidden and they have to choose to look yeah, and so then you get, you know, William Weber Force, the British abolitionist who's wellknown for bringing into slavery in the British Empire. He's quoted as having said that you can choose to look the other way, but you can never again say, but you did not know. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, you know, as we were talking about before we started the podcast, it's a reality that you see in the Bible and it's a reality that we know that human beings are visual creatures. God knows that, right, he knows that and he plays on that. We see that Biblical imagery as we're reading.

12:22 The scriptures are pictures. The prophets choose pictures when we talk a little bit more about that, but we are visual creatures and when you put an image in someone's pathway, I mean, if you think about it and if people are going to accuse, you know, prolifers or accuse you guys of being just blatantly like provocative or whatever, Peter at the other day I was actually at Chick Fil A. Love chickflay. Oh, yes, it's some Christian chicken, that's right, and I was there in the chickflay parking lot and I looked up and there was a billboard in the chickflay parking lot, by the way, that was a person's face, half of the person's facing, the other half was a chickens face, and it was something like it wasn't like chickens or people too but it was something like that, and they were forcing people in the chick fil a parking lot to deal with the reality that they're part of killing chickens. Now, you and I I that's ridiculous.

13:11 Chickens are Yummy, right, I don't agree with them bad you admire their moxie. That, yeah, that's their messaging. There really need to be yeah, and so, in a more important way, you guys are doing that in a college campus context. So you have what's called, if I'm not mistaken about this, the gap project. Describe that side awareness project. Okay, so gap stands for genocide awareness project. What meaneth that? What do you mean by genocide awareness project? Well, there's a sense in which we're we're trying to really provoke the public to think about abortion not in terms of just the individual death of one life, but also thinking in terms of that this is a massive genocide. This is something and I think there's a good case for that, because you look at the comparison between abortion and any other group of humans throughout history that have been deprived and stripped of their human rights and you see certain similarities where, you know, we used to humanizing language to describe the victims. And so the Jews during the Nazi Germany Reign, they were referred to as subhuman or renderment. Yeah, you had the words that people use to describe black people in the United States that were meant to be subhuman and meant to be derogatory. And you know, nowadays we refer to the baby as it's a clump of cells and, yeah, a product of conception, it's a parasite, it's not a person in the full sense of the law. And with just looking at the different definitions of genocide and the mindset behind hind genocide, it's always about a group of people who

14:41 are in the protected class drawing a circle around themself and saying, okay, if you're in this circle, you are human. This is what it means to be a person with rights and respected under the law, and it's the people outside of that who either have something we want or they get in our way or there's some reason why we won't. We benefit from them not having the same yes as us, and so we exclude them. And here with abortion, we would say that the group being targeted is specifically unwanted and unborn children. Yeah, because you can't kill a baby in the womb whose mother wants him, because you know, in most states you will be charged with a double homicide if you kill a pregnant woman. Yeah, and then, of course, if the baby is unwanted but they're born, well, at that point the law protects them. We call that infanticide or, you know, child abuse. But it's a specific, identifiable people group and it's it's really designed to to prick the conscience in a way beyond even just the images themselves, because with this specific display we parallel the images with images from the Holocaust or from the Rwandan genocide or from the massacret wounded. Need just all these different historical references and it's designs that people see. Okay, you know, this is something that I look back a long time ago and we know that was wrong. This wounded the massacre where all the native Americans were rounded up and shot by the US cavalry, and we all recognize that as wrong.

16:03 But see, there's this mechanism that we have where we like to think that Oh, those people a long time ago, are those people far away, those people were backwards and wicked and did something just in humane. But I'm not like that. We're very civilized. We're very progressive, we're very pro equality of human rights. We would never, had we been there, we would never. Oh, yes, we would have. We would have, liked Jesus, would have stood against it. That's right. Jesus condemnsed people who said that same thing. Yeah, it's just that we think we would have done better and yet statistically, most of US probably would not have, and so it's more convicting even than just damages by themselves and that, and so that's especially for a secular society. That's the thrust of our message, is that abortion is not only murder, but that abortion is genocide on a large scale level. Yeah, you know, scripture says there's nothing new under the Sun. Humanity, since the beginning, since there were people groups, has had one people group against the other, oppressing, taken advantage of, killing off of me. It's like it's the human propensity to to take advantage of people when we're able to, and it's in it's evil when it like you said, that's got to be confronted. I appreciate them. Yeah, that you guys are doing that. What is the reception within the college campus? What what are I don't know, maybe share some stories, if you can, of some positive reception, negative reception and, like you said, Lincoln, even before we started this thing, it's all positive as far as your con scerned because if they're angry, at least they're hearing what you're

17:34 saying. But Jamana, share a little bit about the reception in the college campus, even in the Public Square, street corner, that sort of thing. Sure. Yeah, so I think that you know that the message hits every individual at a different place, because every individual is at a different place, but it meets them where they are and that's what we try to do, you know, conversationally as well. But everyone's going to respond differently because they're a different place. So some people are really angry and some people are, yeah, upset, cuss us out, you know all kinds of things. Yeah, so we do get a lot of that, but we also get a lot of positive reception. A lot of people thank you so much for you're doing. You know this is so needed. And we get a lot of positives and then we get a lot of questions and a lot of people who are just kind of going about their life and either they'll proach us and ask US questions they've never heard the answer to you know, they've heard one side, they've heard what they've been told by mainstream society and they've never heard the the answers the opposite side, and so they never had that chance.

18:32 So then, you know, thank you, thank you for answers are Oh, you know, I've really had a good conversation. And and then, you know, we go to that. You know, we approach people, as you know, we ask them, you know, what do you think and all, I don't know, it's not something I really thought about much. Or Oh, I think it's fine because, you know, you know a foe woman's raped or if she's really poor, and then we get to have that discussion with them and what do you think? And then, you know, we go through our apologetics and to just really confront you know, is this really logical? It is this really and you don't get them thinking. We really want them to think. Yeah, because so you're not, like I said, kind of ingest, absolutely ingest. You're not there just to make people angry, but you're there to invoke conversations and thoughts and maybe the perception is which is why you get some of the angry people coming over and they're going to set you straight is that you're just there to make them angry, just there to offend them, and when they come and approach you and they find that you're not like what they thought you were, this bravenoist, anti choice activist or whatever, you actually a loving person that wants to answer their questions. What's the reception on that? And have you ever had a situation where they're coming to set you straight and then, you know, thirty minutes later they're like, thank you, he had all the time, all the time. And there's a sense to in which like where I would say, you know, a little caveat, like in some ways, maybe we are trying to make people angry in a sense, and what I would explain that as is that we know we're going to get a reaction and we know that some people, a lot of people are not going to agree with us. And almost everywhere we go we get protesters who set up and

20:03 they'll have their signs that are, you know, usually handmade, or they'll be out there trying to cover us up or, you know, trying to engage on their side of the issue and people the target audience that we're trying to reach, that Joanna describe those people in the middle. They come by and they see the contrast. Yeah, they see the horrible pictures, they see US responding to people gently, having civilized conversations, being challenging perhaps, but at least not being derogatory or mean spirited. And then they go to the other side they see them, you know, at in some cases they've seen them vandalize our signs. And so, you know, one person I was talking to, he's pro a pro choice young man at a college in I want to say Florida, and someone came in just through some pain on our signs and ran off and that really touched him. He was like, oh my goodness, like your position must be pretty poor if you feel like you have to do that to get it across rather than engage people. Yeah, we had a there was another school in Florida where this guy on a motorcycle, you know, with his jacket, he comes by and he was just very he was not going to commit to either side. He had his notepad in his pin and he came to us. He asked his hard questions and he was sitting there writing our answers and he was just very engaged.

21:14 And then he went to the other side. He said, okay, I want to go hear what they have to say, and he walks across the protesters, spends a few minutes with them doing the same thing. He comes back to us and he's frustrated. At that point he says, you know what, you guys actually have articulate reasons and logical explanations for why you believe what you believe, and all the other side has is catch phrases and slogans and just things that they've repeated and parroted that don't actually have any substance to them. Yeah, and so it's really creating a situation where people see the other side trying to defend the indefensible and they see the slogans and they see just the the vileness of that. Yeah, and hopefully see the contrast and it causes them, it forces the time, I think, to one examine hey like not only the facts of the issue, which we certainly want them to but then also, you know, remembering the pictures and they're remembering the fact that they were treated with respect. And what did they see on the other side? Yeah, and we're sewing seeds, you know, a a lot of times it's not oh wow, I can't believe us so stupid.

22:12 I didn't know. You know, they don't. It's not an immediate conversion, but sometimes it is. But a lot of times more often, you know, we know any time where any of us are confronted with someone says something that's different what we already think, you know, we kind of argue back a bit and you know, I think it because of this, is what about this? You know that then you go home and think about and that's what they do. You'll go home and think about it and sometimes, you know, years later, but you know, you come back and tell us, yeah, I didn't see, yeah, I was angry, and change my mind. So you've got a let's say you've got a you got the gap project set up and you're displaying these contrasts, or actually these comparisons between abortion and other genocize that have taken place in human history, and a pro abortion person comes up and they have their sign that did just handcrafted from a pizza box and they wanted to set you straight and they're blocking your signs and they're trying to get people not to look at what you've got to say.

23:02 How do you deal with that person? So there is a verse, and I think it's proverbs two, five hundred and twenty six. That's, I think, very needed in the church today, very needed among Christian circles and people who do what we do, and you're probably already familiar with it, but it says that, like a muddied spring or polluted well, is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked. And so you know, there's a sense we're willing to go out there and there is a context for turning the other cheek. Yeah, but when we're out here standing not for ourselves but for the victims, and we're out there showing pictures to tell their story and to stand for their well being on their behalf, we will we will not tolerate people coming out there and trying to to block that or to censor that, because they have a legal right to free speech. And so we don't. We don't tear their signs out of their hands, we don't try to block them, we don't try to mess with their ability to get their message across and we expect to be treated the same way. And so if people come and they try to block things or vandalize or do something like that, that's illegal. You know, we will call the police or we will, you know, ask them to move and we will even take legal measures, because that does come to the point where, okay, we're not going to be you know, being being a Christian doesn't mean that we have to be pushovers. Yeah, and we're standing for something that is righteous like this, we won't be pushovers. Yeah, yeah, we've had situation just from personal experience, at the abortion centers. We've had pro abortion people.

24:25 Had one point, a pro abortion lady tried to go on to the mobile ultrasound unit and get a a mom off of there because we had had her on there too long and she wanted to go inside and get her half on a likeness. What in the world. So I call the police on her rather than, you know, in this kind of twisted version of turn the other cheek. Obviously, I stood my ground and stood in front of the door with letter. That's just my experience. It's a little bit of what you're talking about. Share it real quick, Joanna, if you can. A story of a person and who had changed their mind about abortion is for us, the the reality of it and that sort of thing. Yeah, there's so many. Also amazing what happens. I'm amazed when we go out there, just like you're saying earlier, I got me to you and you know, just gives you opportunities. You will save lives and change minds.

25:07 And sometimes it's not immediate or every conversation, but there's so many, so many opportunities to share the gospel. But there's just all kinds of funny situations. I'll share one. Okay, funny one stands out in my mind. There's this guy who's just been, you know, standing there for you know, meant twenty minutes, maybe thirty, just, you know, just going around in circles basically, and you know, we're trying to share everything we can and, you know, with him and and he's just not having he says, you know, you you're just trying to hurt women, you're just making them feel like they're not seas. You know, you're well comparing this the Holocaust and you're just, you know, trying to feed up women, basically. And we're trying to tell him that's all we're doing and explain to him, but he just won't hear any of it. So then here walks along this young woman who doesn't look the difficult part of a pro life or definitely not just coming here smoking, you know, and it's just real LAXA daisically and she's standing there and just listens for a few minutes. I've no idea what she's gonna say, and then after a few minutes, she says, you know, I'm a woman and I don't feel like they're trying to tell me a not see like now. I'm not say. I feel like they're just really trying to say that abortion is wrong. And she says and I've had an abortion and I don't feel like they're condemning me. I feel like they're just trying to show what it is and many's validation. That's no words, like, you know, for out of the words of its money, when God just brings us situations like that, I could school are more all the time. But yeah, it's amazing. Have you, Lincoln, share a story of a situation where you've had to stay in your ground and maybe you had to get the law involved so that people understand, like what

26:38 you guys are dealing with? It's not that you're just there again to make people ain't you going to spur conversations and you're there in a very nice and approachable demeanor, but I'm sure you've been, maybe not physically attack maybe, I don't know. We've we we see, we've seen just about it. Well, I don't want to say everything because something will always play out that surprises you. And Yeah, we had a situation where we were at a very liberal campus in here in North Carolina and and this kind of goes along to with the theme of just, I guess, the ants that we feel where the news media is not fair to our cause and will often misconstrue things or paint things a certain way that those who observe the events did not observe.

27:18 And we're at this campus and we had a group of people that were kind of the ANTIFA types where they were just very in your face, they were very brash. There were about three or four them in particular that would just follow our people around and just kind of make jeering comments at them or like make demeaning comments on our even our physical appearance, or just things that were very personal where you could tell they were trying to get under our sore. Non Scientific argument, not at all. They did not want to talk, they did not want to engage, they just wanted to intimidate. And we had this one young woman who was a black young woman and she was a specially antagonistic like to me for a while where she was just getting in my face and and doing all these things to try to intimidate, and then she would she would beat on one person, then she would go to the next person and just be saying things that were silly or derogatory or unkind as she would just be following people around. Well, at one point she ended up grabbing a piece of paper that has some sensitive information on it from one of our volunteers and she refused to give it back. She just took it just brazenly, as if she thought she could get away with it and that we weren't we were just going to Keel over and let her do that.

28:25 And so I think it was, I guess it was me. I probably called the police honor and told them that, you know, this was going on. Yeah, and the officers came over there and, a long story short, she at first denied that she had done it and then she tried to hand the piece of paper off to want of her cohorts and you know, obviously that was kind of literally getting caught randhanded here and so the the officers, they had her turn around, they arrested her, I think, for Larceny. And just little little side detail the story, like the officer that arrested her was a black female officer, yeah, as well, who put the handcuffs on her wrists and they took her away and I think she spent just a little bit of time, you know, and detention there for that. But later on, when the news article came out about it, it was kind of portraying it. As you know, black woman gets arrested.

29:15 You know, become was of pro life people. It was something to the effect that, oh, this PORP and they were quoting her something. She get tweeted about how her risk hurt and how she had been detained against her will for all these hours and and the whole you're reading this whole story thinking, Oh, she's the victim and she's this poor innocent black woman who's been treated unfairly. And I mean we it was just bizarre and ironic because it became something where it wasn't about the facts and it wasn't about what the people around observed. It was about creating her to be the victim, even though she was the one and like, very actively and aggressively harassing all of us, including volunteers on our staff who are also black, like she was just harassing everybody. But the news didn't cover that, they didn't say that, and so that's just one of many instance is where we've had to stand our ground and and part of it is showing them that we will not be bullied. Like we're out there. We want to be kind, we want to be civil, we want you to have your rights to free speech.

30:07 We've believed in the value and dignity of every human being, regardless of their race and, obviously, their level of development, but that doesn't mean will allow someone to bully us or think that they can just do that kind of thing and get away, because it sends a message that, oh, Christians and pro life people are weak and if you just intimidate them and harass them enough, they'll either capitulate or they'll just go yeah, well, like what you said when you said it's not really about us, it's not about US standing our ground for our sake. Yeah, but it's these babies. You know, I believe, and you probably have stories to share, maybe even as many stories as you have to year of people being angry and people you know, and all of that of moms that have even chosen life based on what you guys are doing. I mean, in one sense, you guys are getting them and planting those seeds of truth about abortion before they get to us, to the abortion center. So I know God uses you guys in that way. It's not surprising, they lincoln that the news media wasn't on your side and wasn't, you know, speaking positively about and and that's constantly why we insist have to go around them and that's why we go to the streets, to busy intersections, to college campuses, two places where we can interact and and that's really part of the beauty of the pictures to is that, you know, we've talked about and we love the stories about the conversations, but you know, for every ten minute, thirty minute conversation I have with an individual, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people walking by that I'm only one person and we only have so many people on our team and we can't directly engage each of them. But at the very least they took a few seconds. They looked over to see what the commotion was about, and they have been reached in a way that is powerful and perhaps

31:41 even more powerful sometimes than even our words. Yeah, yeah, well, I know. One of the things, it's kind that I wanted to get to and want you guys to talk about is some of the receptivity. It's no surprise again, that pro abortion people, especially those who in majority, I would say, on the college campus, would probably identify maybe as pro choice. where. I could be wrong about that, I guess, depending on the campus. Either way, it's no surprise you'd be rejected there. Of course, the media and rejection that's there. But what about with then the church? What about those who are on the college campus who claim to be Christians? What's your receptivity there? I know it's mixed, but is there a negative reaction and if so, how do you respond to that?

32:22 Yeah, that's a big and really important question and I think it's similar, I would say, in terms of the receptivity. As far as you know, are we wanted or allowed to come in? And that's a No. I mean, yeah, what we would need to write if this was being taught in churches, schools, homes, you know, but so many people don't even know we had a kid last year at our youth camp who's in middle school and he was a you know, obviously sent there by a Christian family, pro life family, and he was leaning pro choice. And he says this and he says but after this, no way, you know, but he's never been taught. And so people anyway, there's a lot there. But there's I think the establishment of just kind of the business of the church can kind of in the status quote, can sometimes take precedence over.

33:06 Okay, what's actually important, and we just this is always what we've business as usual, what we've done, and so something to come in and disrupt that and we're not sure and this is controversial and we're going to alienate people and maybe this isn't even, you know, about the Gospel. So maybe we should just kind of avoid it and not talk about it. And then so when when we do or we try to meet with pastors or it's a lot of times called shoulder or, you know, universities. They don't want us, but but it's amazing. So then when you do kind of go around that leadership, if they don't want to talk to us, then the students. You know, we've been to a seminary recently and and they're, you know, I'm sure, teaching a lot of great things, but we're not welcome. And so, but then the students, you know, I have this conversation with one of the students here comes by and he's wrestling with even just what he's supposed to do as a he used to be as he said, he used to do street preaching out with and he's an NC state and you know, he's asking me all these questions that I'm confounded that I am having answer for him. I'm so grateful for the opportunity, but literally, he is, you know, and don't go to heaven any way.

34:08 And is it something we really should stand up about and people just need to hear the Gospel. And this is so, I think, just evident in of what of what the situation is and what people are they're not being taught to deal with the actual issues of today's society and culture. And you know, and he says, you know, by the end a conversation I feel like God is, you know, using you to speak to me, like I need to stand up and I need to see up against he's like admitting, like I'm afraid to confront anything in our culture, even like ever say that homosexuality is wrong or anything like abortions a guide. I do need to see end up. And you know, there was another woman that same place who came by and she said she was angry at first. She said, I know they warned us, you were they're going to be pictures here. But I she's I I'm a Christian, but you know, I've had an abortion and this is offensive to me and this is hurtful, and I just calmly, gently explain to her like I'm so sorry that you know whenever you went through and but you know, obviously you you know. She said she regretted it, but I said, obviously you reat that. Do you really not want other people have the chance to not have to go through that and just to be able to see the truth? You know? And and one of ourvolunteers asked her and would you have gone through, would you have gotten an abortion if you had seen these pictures? And she said probably not.

35:13 And so no one had ever told her and you know. And so I was able to offer her, I was able to pray with her. Jell me pray for her. I said, how do you ever feel like you've gotten healing and, you know, forgiveness for what you what how we did and what happened, and she said no, it's never been address. I said, well, you know they're there are resources. You know, when I gave her the post abortion healing Info and she said can I have another one? I have a friend who had just got an abortion. I'm like yeah, of course. So it's just yeah, it's just sad to me, I guess, when the stuff is not being addressed, and I could tell you story after story of things that I'm shocked by that just this is not dealt with in the church. Yeah, and there's this this mindset that we encounter so much among even like just very evangelical circles that doctrinally and otherwise I would typically associate with, where we kind of think that, you know, obviously we recognize that we want to change people's heart through the Gospel and not just change their external behavior, and so, you know, I get that and I sympathize with that, but we kind of create, you know, as a maybe a faulty outflow of that is that, okay, we don't need to actually be concerned about justice, we don't need to be concerned about matters of physical life and death, because we just need to preach the Gospel to people. We just need to only share that and not really worry about you know, because we think that abortion will kind of take care of itself or racism will take care of itself if we're just doing evangelization. And I think that's faulty on two fronts. One, you know, just biblically, you look at the fact that God does care about justice, that God does care about how we treat our neighbor in terms of their actual physical needs as well as their eternal need for salvation. The parable of the Good Samaritan

36:46 and Luke Ten I. It's really revealing that Jesus uses that as a example for the fulfilling the greatest command to love your neighbor as yourself. Yeah, the second commandment. And you know, you look at that parable and it's almost telling that the person that Jesus holds up as the hero didn't, at least in the story. There wasn't any sense of like, you know, giving here's the the center's prayer, Here's, you know, how to have peace with God and here's how you can, you know, go to here's a church you can go to. Know, he saw that there was a physical, tangible need that his neighbor had that was literally a life and death need and he stepped in and intervened and ministered to that need, and Jesus holds that up as the example. Yeah, and so then historically you see people like a missionary, so many people. You See Amy Carmichael, Alice, see Lee Harris, who's one not as well known. She was a missionary to the Congo and the urban nineteen hundreds, sent from from Britain and when she got down there she's doing her evangelization, but she also becomes aware of a situation where the Belgian basically the Belgian king, has people who are subjugating the local population to essentially be forced labor for rubber production, because rubber at that time was a very important commodity in the world. And they are literally threatening these people with death, with like maiming them and like actually dismembering hands and arms and feet. And she goes on this campaign to show the pictures. She took a lot of pictures documenting the injustices against the Congolesee.

38:21 Yeah, and through that was able to eventually put international pressure on the king of Belgium to treat the people humanely and to no longer force them into that. But she did that as an outgrowth of her walk of faith as a Christian minister and it wasn't something where she just said, Oh, let's just preach the Gospel and just kind of allow that to you know, people will kind of put the puzzle together on their own. Yeah, she went directly and said no, these are literal people who are dying and suffering and as a Christian I should be on the forefront of the fight to in this injustice and not just leave that, you know, passively, to someone else. Absolutely it's a good example. I mean, you know I've had conversation, I'm sure you guys have to, of pro choice, pro abortion, people who kind of want to equate us with like the Christ I've been called the Christian teliband before. You Christians, you know you're nothing but the problem.

39:12 But Will you start to recount human history and you look at injustice? As you know, Chinese footbinding comes to mind, where they would bind up little girl's feet so they would stay small because that was attractive to the men. It was Christians that got that injustice. That's right removed from that society, even if I forget what it's called, but it's in India where if a guy, a man, husband was to die, his wife would actually be burned alive with him. That was a practice in India and Christians got that. So that's you bring that up. Is just another example. And certainly as Christians we have our flaws and the Lord is sanctifying and making us more like Jesus every day and then. But it is Christians who do and who are called to confront evil. And you know, as far as this in the last few minutes that we have, as far as appealing to Christians who might say something to the effect of yet understand what you're doing, and I see you know, people have been the minds have been changed, the Gospel has been shared, babies even been saved, but still yet. I don't think it's appropriate to show people victim images. What would you say to that person who is open, who is, you know, like they're pushing back because they feel like you're being judgmental and you're being whatever, but they're willing to hear. What would you say to that person? I would say I would just lovingly and as a brother challenge their question in a sense, and just ask why wouldn't you want to show the victims? Because you know,

40:43 we know abortions wrong and we know, you know, hopefully for a lot of our friends listen to this podcast, that this is something that's happening, that this these are real people that are being killed every day. And you know, by God's grace, you know, and only by his race, we are in the state of mind to where we've been regenerated, were open to the truth. We're seeking that and we're sensitive to it. But for people who do not, are not there yet, there needs to be that hard dose of reality and it really does take seeing. You know, we're told in the FESIANS, I think it's eleven, to have no part in the unfruitful work of artness, but instead to expose them. Yeah, and that is our calling as Christians. And you know, you can look biblically at how you know even the crucifixion we were talking about before the podcast, that that was apart from the man, the side of man's involvement, and it from God's perspective. This was ordained by him and it was a it was a bloody public spectacle, it was something that visually showed in a very public way that this is the horror of your sin, this is the ugliness of your sin, but then also this is the love of God, this is how much he was willing to sacrifice and go through on behalf to reconcile you to him. Yeah, and so that's important, I think. And then just also historically, you look at a lot of people you know who probably listen here maybe watch the film amazing grace. They're familiar with William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkston. You look at the ending of segregation and just how the

42:14 marches that Dr King used were designed to make people uncomfortable with racism and force them to see peaceful protesters who were being attacked, you know, by police when they were not rioting, they were not looting, they were just trying to march and draw attention to how they were being treated unfairly. And so I would just challenge anyone who isn't sure about this look at history, look at the Bible, look at the fact that, yes, this is uncomfortable and I will freely admit that to some degree you go out there and it never quite feels like, oh, this is easy this is something that I enjoy doing. I love showing abortion photos to people. It's like, no, I don't. But the victims ultimately have no voice. They are completely dependent upon someone who is not themselves in danger caring enough to step up as if it was their own life and to speak out and to be a voice on their behalf. And so if there's a better method than showing the victim images, I am all for it and I will put my signs down and Jump On that bandwagon in a heartbeat. But yeah, I think it would be intellectually and spiritually very challenging to to come up with the case that the victim images are not effective, even if they are something that causes people to be hangry. Yeah, yeah, a lot of our gage as American Christians is what something makes me feel like, what I think, what I feel, and it's just not that's the the whole point of this podcast, not just this episode, but the thing from from beginning to end, is that we can't base what we do as prolifers on how we feel and what society

43:46 says. It has to be founded in the word of God. When we look at particular behavior ministry, calling methodology, it should always be. What does the Bible say? What does the Scripture say? And you know, I've had people try to argue about and then we use as sub what counsels? We use victim images, we use them in our brochures and we use them if we display them. We don't always, but when we do we display them away from the areas of engagement with the mom who's abortion minded, because it just tends to be more of a cordial conversation, or at least more of an engaging conversation. But I do see them to be effective. When I had I've had Christians tell me, and even they are affective, we shouldn't use them because they're offensive, and I'm like, well, chapter in verse, because the Bible tells me that God is certainly into displaying victim images. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example. We see that through the the New Testament of the Old Testament, how God shows images. We are visual creatures and God, God, capitalizes on that, so to speak, to bring certain realities to our attention. So I appreciate what you guys are doing.

44:47 Appreciate you guys being out there. It's uncomfortable, I know, and you know what's kind of like what Jesus called us to, though. What did he say? Take up your couch and lay on it with me, he says. Take up your cross and follow me. It's a cross to bear going out to these college campuses. It's across to bear. You know, it is the same with what you do and just how you know you're out there ministering on the front lines and it's not comfortable and there's that happiness of knowing that the woman going in like at you know, it's what we do. At least we can plan a seed a lot of the time, and we do and we see lives say from that. But I know there's, you know, certain heaviness when you know that this is the final chance for that baby. So I commend you guys for what you're doing and appreciate your your similar mindset because, you know, you know with the whole thing about it being offensive and how Christians kind of don't have a category in their mind for things that might be offensive. But maybe that's good, you know.

45:37 You look. You mentioned the gospels and how Jesus himself was very offensive to some people and he knew how to handle being graceful with being truthful and sometimes he had to call things out firmly as they were. And you know, it was him who who said of our walk as his followers that a servant is not greater than his master. If they hate me, they will hate you also. If they persecuted me, they will prosecute you also, and we just have to have a category for that that, even in the United States, with all of our freedom and all of our prosperity, that we are called to suffer like the master at times, and if persecutions what it is, then that's our road and we have to accept it because that's the road he went on before us. Yeah, that's good. Well, guys, I'm going to wrap this thing up, but I do appreciate you guys coming and sharing. Appreciate your heart to serve, appreciate, you know the get, the fact that you guys are sharing the Gospel and what you're doing, but also confronting this evil and just keep doing it, keep serving the Lord and absolutely friend. He use exposing evil and by God's grace and we'll see abortion come to an end in our nation. I hope so, and if it doesn't happen, it won't be because we didn't do it.

46:47 Dares. Yeah, yeah, Amen, you've got the good work. Thank you. Yes, I God's grace. Yeah, yeah, well, I appreciate you guys who've tuned into this podcast and just hope that you guys will share this podcast with others. If you want to get in touch with these guys, it is. What's the whims? Go to abortion no dot Org. Okays, our website and, as you could probably expect, it does have some graphic content on there that's nevertheless challenging and needed, but you can go there and you can touch with us. Okay. So abortion no dot Org can in touch with these guys and if you want to get in touch with me, you can email me at d parks, at cities for lifecom. You can go on our website, CHARLOTTE DOT cities for Life Dot Org.

47:28 And until next time, God bless give for love, give me our loft for gratitude. I know it will cost me my life. Nothing's too precious. And some you