Antiabortion Group to Drive Trucks Bearing Graphic Pictures on So. Cal. Freeways
The Los Angeles-based Center for Bio-Ethical Reform on Monday launched the "Reproductive Choice Campaign," which will involve driving a number of "large, box-body trucks on whose sides will be displayed billboard-size, color photos depicting aborted human embryos and early fetuses" on Southern California freeways. Designed to end the "massive denial about what abortion is and what it does," the campaign will take advantage of the high concentration of traffic in the area and plans to run the trucks every business day on Southern California highways. An estimated 500,000 people are expected to see the photos on each truck per hour, as "the freeway is the last place where viewers can neither turn the page nor change the channel." Routes will be added in Central and Northen California, with a "nationwide expansion" projected by year's end. The center reports that the campaign is a "long-term project which will continue indefinitely," with the intent to "make abortion impossible to ignore or trivilize." Acknowledging that children should be protected from exposure to "disturbing photos," the billboard trucks will be based in industrial or commercial zones, and not spend too much time near residential neighborhoods or "knowingly drive past elementary schools, playgrounds, daycare centers." But the center notes that there is "no operating location in which we can guarantee that no child will ever see these painful images." The group says, "Abortion is not exacting enough of an emotional toll on American society" (Center for Bio-Ethical Reform release, 6/25).
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