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December 16, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Shown above is a new idea for a T-shirt (same wording front and back).

Since the word “abortion” no longer packs much punch, the more graphic expression “torn to pieces” has been used. (This is along the same lines as the old suggestion that we stop asking politicians “How do you stand on abortion?” and start asking them “How do you stand on prenatal dismemberment?”)

But note that the T-shirt is a positive affirmation of the viewer's life, of his or her escape from violence. Thus it stands a better chance of being heard than would a negative accusation, an attack, or a photo of a dismembered child. 

The word “YOU” gets the viewer personally to identify with an unborn child once in danger of being aborted. Once the viewer has been led to celebrate that personal escape, consistency and fairness should require him or her to help other children escape from abortion.

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Most importantly, the T-shirt gets across the idea of the dynamic continuity (identity) of life before and after birth. For some reason, many people have trouble seeing embryos and fetuses as human beings, but very few have difficulty in understanding that ​every born human used to be an embryo and then a fetus. (Who can deny that each one of us is a grown-up embryo?) In other words, the pro-life argument is at its strongest when presented retrospectively, looking back to the time when we were each preparing to be born, as this T-shirt does. 

A less ​hard-hitting use of this personal and retrospective approach would be a T-shirt with just these words: “I'm glad YOU got to be BORN.” ​(The words “got to be ​born” are better than simply “were ​born” because the words “got to be” impl​y  a lively striving prior to birth​, which is a dynamic lacking in the word “were.”​) ​

Nothing in these T-shirt ideas is copyrighted, so feel free to use them as you wish. For more on the theory behind the shirts, click here and select the 2015 guest column from the monthly First Things entitled “Facing the Unborn,” or the in-depth 2014 study from the quarterly Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal entitled “Construction vs. Development: Polarizing Models of Human Gestation.”