The author argues that “trying to change people’s minds by showing them pictures” is misguided.

I propose that vivid and appalling pictures can indeed be “mind altering” and conscience-provoking as well. An example from history is the effect of photographs of the Vietnam War upon American consciences. Those graphic and painful images very much changed the attitudes and opinions of many Americans toward that war.

Certainly those who present graphic images of aborted fetuses hope that attitudes and opinions are changed. Those photographs of bloody human remains are undoubtedly offensive, just as those of napalmed children were very offensive.

Those who participate in the horrors of abortion suffer the consequences of participating in the horrors of that war. Just as, in fact, each and every one of us living in a human body suffers the consequences of our inevitable participation in the evils of this world.

Thanks to God that there is forgiveness, healing and hope – not in avoiding looking at the graphic evidence of our sin but in looking steadily at the greatest evidence of it – which is Jesus dying a bloody death on the cross. It is possible to look steadily at that cross in full acknowledgment of one’s own great guilt and accept the full forgiveness that He alone is able to offer. It is the meaning of “salvation” and is available to each and every one of us.

Julie Murphy, SIU alumna, Carbondale