John Mortell’s blog

So, at work today we found (thanks to someone bringing it to our attention) that someone had placed a load of ‘postcards’ (for lack of a better phrase presenting itself) inside many of the books.

These were all full of disgusting pictures of supposedly ‘aborted’ babies and then various political messages against abortion.

Now personally I find these sort of shock tactics for two reasons irritating.

Firstly assuming that it was the people behind the postcards that put them into the books, it’s grossly irresponsible as children especially could come across them and these were images that would turn anyone’s stomach and certainly something that children should not be introduced to.

Secondly, by placing these things in an unsolicited way in the way of people you remove from them the option of not choosing to engage you in conversation. And with such disturbing imagery there is a certain amount of cop-on that must be engaged. If I had such an image placed in front of me without someone at least asking me ‘do you want to see what abortion involves’ and I responding in the positive and there was an abortion referendum tomorrow I would vote yes to abortion simply out of spite. I found the sneaky, childish way that this was done as offensive as anything else.

But that’s what gets to me about a lot of anti-abortionists – this ‘know-it-all’ moral superiority, violently ‘you must agree with us or your a murderer’ attitude. If you want to change my mind, engage me in conversation, not in this sort of childish bullshit.