An ill-planned assault.

Imagine that you are a woman who had an abortion ten years ago. You've suffered the consequences of your actions, you've grieved the life of the child you can't touch and you bear the scars of that abortion in a multitude of ways. Heck, you're even a pro-life advocate, and this year you'll be at the March for Life in Washington D.C. Good work, mama! The pro-life community is behind you, and we love you so much!

You're marching, you're surrounded by the love of people fighting to end a holocaust, you're prayerful and so full of the Holy Spirit. And then someone taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey there! Remember that baby you aborted in '02? The one you love and pray for? It's your lucky day! We've got pictures of the your baby, right as the abortion was happening! And even better, it's on the Jumbotron behind you!"

Can you even imagine the agony? Thousands of women, marching for the children they've lost, many intentional, many unintentional. Thousands of men, marching for the children they've lost, marching for the choices they convinced someone to make, the actions they forced someone to take, the lives they were helpless to save. Thousands of children and teens, marching to fight for their peers, siblings, parents and future. Thousands of people full of love, confronted with images of the deaths of the lives they're trying to save.

That is exactly what the March for Life will be enduring this year, at the hands of a "well-meaning" pro-lifer. 

Women know. Women know just about everything on the subject of life. We're hard-wired to know. There is a reason that there are resources for post-abortion healing. There is a reason that women suffer PTSD even after the earliest abortion is performed. There is a reason that I lie awake at night thinking of the tiny baby we never met, lost to miscarriage. There is a reason that months after Claire was born, I still feel tiny kicks and wonder if my mind is playing tricks on me. There is a reason I jump awake in the middle of the night, knowing that a baby is about to cry. There is a reason that young women who've never been pregnant feel an actual, physical ache at the sight of a pregnant belly. We know. The intuition a woman has for the life she carries is phenomenal and other-worldly. The scientific advances that have been made in the field of maternal-fetal studies will blow your mind. We don't need to see the pictures. We know.

Some would say, "Well, people need to see this. They need to know what's happening."

Do they really? Do you really think they don't know? They know. The facts are irrefutable. Hitler knew. The Rwandans knew. The Bosnians knew. When genocide is happening, people know. They know how gruesome and painful it is.

When you assault the eyes, they close reflexively. If you want to open eyes, you need to aim for the heart. To change hearts, pray.

The babies on that Jumbotron died without dignity. After their deaths, we honor their short lives the best way we know how; by making sure it doesn't happen to someone else. Those innocent children have been restored in Heaven, and as pro-lifers we MUST protect their dignity by keeping these pictures from harming others. This isn't the pro-life movement I'm proud of. This is harmful and undignified. The Pro-Life Movement stands for the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, and the babies, women and men we're trying to heal and protect don't deserve this.