Abortion Ads
My guts say that abortion is still a hot topic in Poland. I guess about the temperature of recent pro-vs-anti-abortion conflict, which was provoked by the controversial ruling of Constitutional Tribunal, by counting the billboards on the topic in my rather small neighbourhood. Currently there are two.
I like the first one. It is tasteful, powerful and it delivers the message. It shows a fetus connected to mother’s placeta with an umbilical cord. The background is pink-red and captions say something like: “get a grip on yourself, I’m yours”. I wouldn’t have noticed it if not thanks to Przemek, who showed me “the baby inside mommy’s belly”. He was quite happy about seeing the baby, because he’s waiting for a birth of his little sister.
The other one rotates regularly every month. One month it’s about what “LGBT lobby wants to teach our children in schools”1 (according to EU’s guidances), the other month it’s anti-abortion. I don’t mind the LGBT variant because it’s mostly text-only, but when it’s anti-abortion, it displays a hideous bloody fetus lying on a pile of pills, syringes and needles. This month it was modified with a picture of 3 young women (“Abortion Killing Team”, the title says), who apparently sell drugs inducing miscarriage2. I guess its authors hope to frighten or intimidate these women. The billboard stands next to the road which is constantly jammed, so I have a lot of time to familiarize with it.
So does Przemek, from the backseat. Yesterday he asked: “Daddy, what happened to this child? Is it dead?”
It pisses me off that such images are publicly displayed. Now my son knows that children can die as well, without really understanding what death actually is. Knowing about your mortality is a good thing when you’re adult, but when you’re a small child you should be mostly concerned about having some fun before maturity hits you in the face. Who thought that this billboard is a good idea, dammit?!
On the other hand, I haven’t seen any pro-abortion billboards, only some grafitti-style posters glued to the walls, reading “abortion is your right, not privilege”, no pictures. I wonder if it’s the matter of money, taste of pro-abortion activists (I doubt), political climate or just me being unlucky.