Show me a dead fetus ad I’ll show you my middle finger

Don’t you hate it when this happens? You are walking home, minding your own business, when… Don’t you hate it when this happens? You are walking home, minding your own business, when someone shoves a graphic photograph of an aborted fetus in your face.Well, that’s what happened to me last week. I was walking through Squirrel Hill when I crossed the intersection of Forbes and Murray and encountered an angry-looking woman waving a 3-by-5-foot poster of a bloody, boogery-looking fetus.

“What is that?” I thought. “A melted Cabbage Patch Kid?”

Nope, dead freaking fetus.

Then I noticed a dozen or so more angry-looking people holding up the exact same poster. They were strategically positioned around the intersection, ensuring that no passerby avoided the ghastly image.

You may have seen this merry troupe around. They call themselves Face the Truth America and they are a locally based anti-abortion group that, from what I can gather from their Web site, exists solely to startle pedestrians with nasty pictures.

“Well,” I thought. “If their freedom of speech allows them to make a vulgar display in public, so does mine,” and promptly marched down the street, shoving a middle finger in the face of each of these sickos.

I usually do not respond to people expressing views counter to my own by flipping the bird. People have a right to their views and have the right to stage public demonstrations to express those views. However, Face the Truth crossed the line from exercising their right to free speech to being an outright public nuisance.

The group created an eyesore. There is a reason why cities pass anti-graffiti ordinances and require adult bookstores cover up their windows. There are things people do not want to and should not have to see when they walk down the street, and an aborted, bloody fetus is pretty high on that list.

Also, while these images are disgusting to adults, they must be unimaginably frightening to children. On the day I encountered Face the Truth, they were a few yards away from the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh where, according to the Center’s Web site, you’ll find “babies being snuggled,” “young ballerinas pirouetting” and “aspiring athletes perfecting their jump shot.”

In addition to being repugnant, Face the Truth’s posters are untruthful — or at least misleading. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that researches sexual and reproductive health, almost 90 percent of abortions occur sometime during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, when a fetus weighs between three and 14 grams. Most aborted embryos look nothing like the whopper on Face the Truth’s posters.

In fact, the only lawful abortions of fetuses — a fetus being what an embryo becomes at the third trimester of pregnancy — are in instances in which giving birth would risk the life of the woman. Except in those cases, the type of procedure implied on Face the Truth’s signs is already illegal.

The group’s Web site insists the photograph that appears on most of its paraphernalia is not a fake and even gives the story of the fetus pictured, a story more f-ed up than anything Chuck Palahniuk has ever written.

The story of “Baby Malachi” goes like this. A group of anti-abortion activists found an aborted fetus frozen in a jar outside a Houston, Texas clinic — yes, apparently the clinic decided to put this particular fetus in a jar, freeze it and then throw it out. The activists then got a gynecologist to piece the fetus back together and photographed it. The fetus has been christened Malachi, meaning messenger, and has become a staple of signs and posters at anti-abortion rallies.

And I always thought the Phillie Phanatic was a stupid mascot.

Recently, photographs of coffins holding the bodies of soldiers coming back from Iraq have surfaced and been published in newspapers. As a nation, we’ve had to ask ourselves: is it respectful to these soldiers that we view their flag-draped coffins?

Now imagine a group of anti-war protesters parading around with posters showing corpses of United States troops lying on the battlefield. Most people would rightly consider such a display immoral, offensive and terribly disrespectful to those who have lost their lives in the Iraq conflict.

If Face the Truth wants to convince others that an unborn fetus is a person to be respected and honored as any other person, they are going about it the wrong way.

This group’s Web site indicates that their sole purpose is to parade around with gruesome images in public. They do not lobby elected representatives, host speakers or work to educate people in any sensible way.

If any member of Face the Truth America is reading this, I encourage you to find some productive, reasonable and polite way to express your views. If you continue this asinine method of trying to shock and frighten others, well then, my middle finger awaits.

Nick Keppler realizes that a mature person would just ignore Face the Truth, but then, you’ve probably realized that Nick Keppler is by no means a mature person. E-mail him at pnk6@pitt.edu.