Dodging the issue

The Canadian branch of the Center for Bioethical Reform (CCBR) is headed up by Stephanie Gray. CCBR has just launched their own truck campaign, displaying billboard-size pictures of aborted babies on the sides of their trucks.

This has caused quite a stir among the "we-want-abortion-we-just-don't-want-to-see-abortion" crowd north of the border.

And then, there was news that a Vicki Saporta, Executive Director of the National Abortion Federation agreed to debate Miss Gray for half an hour live on Wednesday August 14th.

Well, come August 14th, Saporta backed out.

At the very last minute Saporta was replaced with a Canadian representative (Dawn Fowler), while the debate format itself was scrapped, and replaced with an interview format. According to LifeSiteNews.com:

Pro-lifers across Canada were waiting expectantly last night to hear Stephanie Gray, the Executive Director of the Canadian Center for Bioethical Reform (CCBR), discuss the recent abortion billboard truck campaign. She was set to be interviewed with U.S. National Abortion Federation (NAF) representative Vicki Suporta on CKNW 980's "Nightline BC."

[chop]

Stephanie Gray told LifeSiteNews.com that she had understood that she would be facing Vicki Saporta and that the show would involve some measure of debate. Thus, she was surprised to find out at the last minute that it would be a non-debate format.

Gray was allowed to speak first and also received more time on the air. The host Michael Smyth listened to her and asked questions for about 15 minutes. Fowler was then interviewed separately, such that no interaction between the two was possible. Gray tried calling the program back during Fowler's interview, but no one answered her calls.

Nevertheless Gray's pro-life case was so strongly presented that Fowler was unable to refute it afterwards. During the ten minutes in which Fowler was allowed to speak, one of her main tactics was evasion. Host Smyth was clearly dissatisfied with Fowler's responses. He asked her why she believed that the abortion images are misleading. Avoiding the issue, however, Fowler referred to the CCBR website as untrue because it claimed that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Convinced by Gray's arguments, Smyth continued to press the point, saying that the website isn't the same thing as the abortion pictures. He also noted that Gray made a good case.

This is all very typical, of course.

The pro-abortion movement has been dodging the issue for decades.

Framing the debate in terms of "choice." Using vague terminology to describe the unborn child as a "clump of cells" or the "product of conception." Lumping their activism in with the civil rights movement, as though killing her baby is a mother's right.

So this is nothing new. Last night's showdown was just another dodge, in a string of dodges.

No matter. The pictures of abortion will end abortion.