Abortion

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a Graphic “Fetus” Poster!

Not content with their ground game, anti-choice zealots are taking over the skies, too.

Photo: The Center for Bioethical Reform.

They’ve taken their signs to reproductive health clinics. They’ve stood outside children’s schools. They’ve even put them outside polling places. Now, anti-choice activists at the Center for Bioethical Reform are determined to confront the public with the alleged “truth” of abortion by taking to the skies as well, as part of a pre-election push in Wisconsin.

Via the Journal Times:

In addition to Racine, CBR will also fly the aerial billboards over Green Bay, Oshkosh, Appleton and Waukesha from Friday, Nov. 2, through Tuesday, Nov. 6.

“Our goal is to make certain that abortion does not become the forgotten issue in an election campaign dominated by economic concerns,” CBR said in a statement to the press. “We intend to force a debate and ensure that that debate is well informed.”

The poster will make its way through the air for the next few days in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, on the ground, the “Vote Pro-Life Truth Truck,” a project of Created Equal, is wrapping up its own voter outreach via bloody “fetus” in Ohio, where they continue to use highly magnified graphic images as an entrance fee for voters who want to cast their ballots early. Created Equal is run by Mark Harrington, who was formerly with the Center for Bioethical Reform.

Graphic images aren’t just in the skies and on the street, of course. The pledge to take the images onto television in as many states as possible has continued even as many of the candidates chosen to participate have dropped off the radar after primaries ended. Still in the running? Illinois “Democratic” congressional candidate Angela Michael, who is challenging Republican incumbent John Shimkus. Shimkus has such a large advantage in the race that the state Democratic party didn’t bother to field a candidate, leaving Michael—a Randall Terry follower—with a clear shot to run anti-abortion television ads.

Michael, who runs “Small Victories” ministry, is a sidewalk “counselor” at Hope Clinic in Granite City, Illinois, the same clinic that Missouri Rep. Todd Akin was arrested at in 1985 and that he defended another protester who was arrested there four years later. Michael herself has been sued for violating medical privacy for photographing a patient leaving the clinic bleeding and obtaining her medical records, then posting those records and the patient’s pictures online. Michael continues to post daily pictures and descriptions of the workers, volunteers and patients who come to the clinic on her own website.

Michael has only a few hundred dollars in campaign donations according to her FEC filings, the Associated Press reports, yet somehow has managed to purchase television ads in the St. Louis media market, which was already saturated with ad buys due to the heavy spending on behalf of the senate race between Akin and Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. Wherever that ad money did come from, it’s clear that anti-choice activists are intent on being sure that a graphic image will be visible any place a voter turns.