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Graphic signs stop traffic
Traveling anti-abortion group aims at emotions for its cause
By Jason Alley, The News-Herald
PUBLISHED: June 19, 2005
Larry Caruso/Photo Editor
About 75 members of the Wisconsin-based anti-abortion group Missionaries to the Preborn stopped in Lincoln Park Thursday for a rally. The group is known for the large, graphic photos it uses of aborted fetuses to get its message across. "When something is so horrifying we can't stand to look at it, perhaps we shouldn't be tolerating it," its four-page brochure says.
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LINCOLN PARK — Some honked their horns in support. Others rolled down their windows and spewed obscenities.
But everyone who drove by Dix-Toledo and Southfield early Thursday afternoon got an eyeful from about 75 anti-abortion protesters holding up graphic photos of aborted fetuses.
"The pictures are so people can see exactly what a preborn child looks like after he or she has been in the hands of an abortionist," the Rev. Matt Trewhella said. "A picture is worth a thousand words. People need to know what abortion really looks like."
Trewhella heads up the Wisconsin-based group Missionaries to the Preborn, which has members throughout the United States.
The group was on a nine-day mission, dubbed the American Atrocity Tour, in Michigan last week when it made a 90-minute stop in Lincoln Park. Areas are chosen because of their high-traffic volume, Trewhella said.
Men, women and children of all ages lined the streets, passing out the group's four-page color brochure to anyone who would take it. The flier is just as graphic as the posters, showing pictures of aborted fetuses ranging in development from 2 to 7 months.
Walking into the Rite Aid Pharmacy at the corner of Fort and Dix, Paula Carr of Allen Park stopped for a minute to read some of the signs.
Holding her 20-month-old and walking with her 4- and 7-year-old children, she said the signs were a little graphic for younger children to see.
But she said she supports the cause and was happy to see "the truth being spread."
"It's kind of hard to look at, but it's reality," she said.
Not everyone agreed with the event, however.
Stopped at a red light, some motorists used those few seconds to scream at the protesters. Using many vulgarities, one woman rolled down her car window and asked the group who planned to pay to raise all the children whose mothers were unable to.
Another woman, riding by on her bicycle, cussed out the group, telling the members that "it's all about choice, not about murder."
Group members are used to attracting people who disagree with what they are doing, Trewhella said.
In the 10 years they have been displaying the graphic posters, he said, group members have been pegged by eggs, spit on and shoved. Trewhella, a 44-year-old father of 10, said he was beat up once in Illinois and hospitalized.
The majority of the group's protests are done in Wisconsin, where most of its members live.
Since their crusade began, Trewhella said, abortions in his home state have dropped 46 percent. The number of abortions performed last year was at an all-time low since the state began keeping those statistics in 1974, he said.
"I've got to think we are responsible for that," he said.
So far, Trewhella said, his group has traveled to 31 states and recently decided to concentrate heavily on Michigan because it is one of a handful of states where abortions are on the rise.
Eighteen-year-old Michael Raatz of Wisconsin said he can't remember a time he hasn't been involved with the group. His parents introduced him to it at a young age.
"Abortions are wrong, but not many people are doing anything about it," Raatz said. "By not doing anything to help, I'm just as guilty as the doctors who kill the babies."
Besides the people standing along the roadside, the group also had two small trucks plastered with abortion photos that drove up and down the streets in the neighborhood during the protest.
Police Chief Thomas Karnes said his office received several complaints because of the graphic nature of the posters.
Two police cars were dispatched to the area "to make sure they were behaving in an orderly, safe fashion," Karnes said.
The event was mostly peaceful, he said. Two protesters were ticketed for minor traffic violations, Karnes said.
Contact Staff Writer Jason Alley at
jalley@heritage.com or at 1-734-246-0867.
I'm sorry, whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, it is just WRONG to be showing these images to children. If I were walking in to a store with my 4 year old niece, I would have covered her eyes. That's not something children need to see. Or even adults. I'm so glad I didn't drive by this cuz I probably would have been one of the people yelling obscenities. And the neighborhood they speak of that the trucks were driving through have a lot of younger children. I wouldn't want that shit driving down my street.
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