A couple of years ago, in one of the local parades hosted by the small city near which I reside, a local pastor marched with signs featuring photos of what happens to a fetus when it's aborted. The pictures were gruesome and repellant, which they were intended to be, and there was much tut-tutting by the local commentariat about the tastelessness and vulgarity displayed by the pastor. Children, after all, saw those signs and being too innocent to realize that it's okay to dismember unborn babies, they were upset.
Now comes word that HHS is considering requiring tobacco companies to put gross pictures of dead people on cigarette packs to try to discourage people from smoking.
Never mind the problem of having government insist on telling you what's good for you and compelling a legal business to incur the cost of packaging their product in such a way as to deter people from buying it. What I'd like to know is why it's okay to show photos of corpses on cigarette cartons to dissuade people from smoking, but it's over-the-line offensive to show people what happens to a baby in an abortion. Might the acceptability of the photos depend on the interest group which is being targeted?
If tobacco companies are forced to put these photos on their products shouldn't Planned Parenthood be obliged to put photos of aborted children in their brochures and on their walls? If not, why not?
