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The Spectacle Blog
The announcement that the Food and Drug Administration wants to insist cigarette packs contain what the Washington Post calls “gruesome pictures” of what happens if one smokes cigarettes may raise an interesting — and for the pro-choice crowd — unwelcome question.
Cigarette smoking is, of course, a choice. It’s your body, if you choose to smoke, smoking is perfectly legal. You might even say that cigarette smokers (and I am not one) have a right to privacy.
But the Obama administration clearly doesn’t see it this way, and so, in the head lines this morning is the news the government wants to warn potential smokers away with the use of pictures. Pictures that are, in the words of the Post, “gruesome.” Images “that could include emaciated cancer patients, diseased organs and corpses.”
Well, now.
The other day I drove past a home along a main highway where the homeowner is locally famous for his opposition to abortion. What makes him so well known? Every day of the year — say again, every single day rain or shine — this man has a small billboard pitched on his front lawn warning against the evils of abortion. The signs change daily. Yesterday, the sign in question was a large color photograph of an aborted baby. Suffice to say, the photo was…to borrow from the Post…”gruesome.”
Which raises the question.
If the federal government is now going to be in the business of putting on cigarette packs graphic photos of what happens if one smokes, how long will it take before there is a move in the pro-life community to require abortion clinics to have photographs of aborted babies in their waiting rooms? “Gruesome” photos of the type seen yesterday on this pro-life activist’s front yard by all passing traffic?
Just asking.
View all comments (25) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Jeffrey Lord
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/11/11/fda-cigarette-pictures-opening
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Humphrey Dumfries| 11.11.10 @ 11:59AM
It would seem that there is a correlation between abortion and suicide:
The suicide rate among women who had abortions was six times higher than that of women who had given birth in the prior year and double that of women who had miscarriages.
http://www.google.com/search?q.....1I7GGLL_en
mejamom| 11.11.10 @ 3:22PM
The FDA has no control over a "group." Abortion isn't food or drugs. The pro life people who resort to grusome images to get their message across are only using advertising techniques and they will never have the legal right to advertise inside a private business; an abortion clinic.
A good parody would be packages of high sodium, fatty snack food made to show pictures of obese people, enlarged hearts and clogged arteries.
Jeffrey Lord| 11.11.10 @ 3:53PM
Mejamom...
Selling cigarettes, like providing abortions, is a private business. Selling GM cars used to be a private business.
The point is that the FDA is the government....and the government, as some people are learning to their sorrow, can appear in any form at any time to do anything it wants...unless, of course, enough people un-elect the government.
Which has begun to happen.
Joseph J. Pippet| 11.11.10 @ 3:58PM
???
Amie B Newman| 11.11.10 @ 4:49PM
What?!
"Selling cigarettes, like providing abortion, is a private business."
Abortion is a medical procedure performed by physicians in hospitals, private practices and health centers. If you want to call abortion care a private business, you may as well call of all health care a private business. In fact, the largest provider of abortions is Planned Parenthood - a not-for-profit organization. If you call abortion care a "private business" you may as well call providing gall bladder surgery, vasectomies, and more the same. It's a medical service not at all akin to selling cigarettes.
If you want to start talking about offering up gruesome images then why wouldn't we offer up what it looks like when you perform brain surgery? Or when a surgeon removes a kidney? Should we provide images of what it looks like to do a heart transplant, maybe? In many cases this is a decision made by the patient and her or his doctor - as is abortion. So, what's the difference?
I'm not sure what this post is meant to convey but I do appreciate the creativity involved. For what it's worth, I don't agree with providing "gruesome" images of people who have become sick as a result of smoking cigarettes. However, your comparison between this and abortion is just completely irrelevant.
George S| 11.11.10 @ 5:55PM
Abortion is not a medical procedure -- there is no treatment or intervention of disease. The abortions that are medical procedures which require life saving interventions occur in emergency rooms or hospital surgical units. The ones done by choice in walk-in clinics are no different than outpatient procedures such as cosmetic surgery or lasik vision correction. That is, you make the choice -- not your doctor (how many abortion providers talk you out of it?). However, removing a kidney or brain surgery is not an elective procedure. No doctor would ever do that voluntarily (it's even against the law to sell your kidney).
Now, what is the difference in buying a pack of cigarettes or getting face lift? None -- they are both voluntary economic decisions that you can either take or leave. You can leave kidney and brain surgery, of course, if you have no problem with the consequences. Most people do; no amount of exposure to gruesome pictures will scare them from life saving surgery.
You analogy is way off, to put it mildly.
Brubaker| 11.11.10 @ 7:23PM
You studiously avoid confronting the point of this article: Forcing women (and men) to view the reality of abortion may cause them to decide against having an abortion.
The fact that you and other abortion proponents so steadfastly oppose any such effort strongly suggests you agree -- and fear that result.
Abby| 11.12.10 @ 7:41AM
The difference is that abortion is the only "medical procedure" that's primary purpose is to kill a life.
Brad| 11.11.10 @ 6:23PM
Given (and it is proven) that abortion does increase the risk of breast cancer, it is entirely appropriate to compare abortion (and abortionists) to the tobacco companies.
Old Bull| 11.11.10 @ 8:20PM
Fascinating that not one of the commenters gets the real point: is this the kind of thing that government should even be doing? Why are supposedly rational people sitting around a table and discussing this? And pulling down $150K salaries for doing so? Is there no end to the nanny state mentality?
If abortion is such a hot-button for you people, let's pick something else: really "gruesome pictures" of car wrecks, to go in the glove box of every new Government Motors car, showing what happens to careless drivers. That'll really get them to slow down!
Laura Hollis| 11.11.10 @ 8:26PM
It seems like some of you don't get Mr. Lord's point, or are trying to create a smokescreen around it. The government IS selectively choosing not only to regulate the interactions certain commercial enterprises have with their consumers, but is in some cases requiring those enterprises to actively cast their product in the worse light possible.
I am a former smoker, and am all for people quitting, but no one has any excuse for not knowing that smoking causes cancer. And so the government forcing tobacco companies to show lung cancer patients on their product containers is no different than demanding that car companies show people who have been beheaded in the windshields of vehicles in accidents. (Maybe the Obama administration will require Ford to do that, since Ford is trouncing both Government Motors and Chrysler at the moment.)
One of the posters here says, "Why not show brain surgery?" Why not, indeed? And there are specialty channels on cable where one can, in fact, observe actual surgery of all sorts, up close and personal, as well as whiskey distilling, building construction, and sausage-making. Will the so-called "pro choice" crowd clamor for TLC to start showing abortions?
I think not, and this is not the only example of the hypocrisy of the Left on this issue - just the most recent example.
Minors cannot receive so much as an aspirin at school without a parent's consent, and get suspended for bringing plastic utensils in their lunchboxes. But school officials are somehow permitted to stick teenage girls in a cab and whisk them off to abortion clinics. (http://www.komonews.com/news/local/88971742.html)
Physicians and pharmaceutical companies are required by disclosures laws to provide information about all of the possible complications of a procedure or medication, no matter how remote or unlikely. But no such requirement in in place for abortion.
And despite the nauseating number of abortionists who have committed egregious cases of malpractice, the pro-abortion crowd studiously avoids having even the level of regulation or oversight that one would require of a company selling potato chips.
In fact, even a company selling things as harmless as potato chips now has to worry about the salt police, the trans fat police, and the Happy Meal stormtroopers, in addition to the absurd and convoluted justifications courts find for imposing liability for obesity, hypertension, and bratty children.
Those of you who profess indignation at the parallels Mr. Lord is drawing are just being obtuse.
Frisbee| 11.11.10 @ 8:48PM
Abortion should be illegal.
Frisbee| 11.11.10 @ 9:35PM
I've heard the statement "If you don't like abortion, then don't have one". But that is the wrong analysis. Like "If you don't like stealing, then don't steal". It's stupid. Stealing and abortion should be illegal whether you like it or not.
It should be "If you don't want to be dismembered, then don't advocate dismemberment".
Or, " If you support abortion, then be aborted".
The problem with abortionism is the same as with racism. They deny or reduce or obscure the humanity of the victim.
george kimball| 11.11.10 @ 10:07PM
Smoking isn't a private matter when there are heavily subsidized treatments and facilities, which is to say all of them. When smokers feel like paying the entire freight for their habit and not sticking it to the taxpayers, THEN it is a private matter.
Similarly, insurance companies should charge astronomical rates to smokers and overweight people, who are responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of health care spending.
Whoever pays the piper calls the tune - but I doubt that images of diseased lungs would have any real effect. Let insurers charge real money to people who don't take care of themselves and then we'll see changes. It is nuts to force healthy people to pay for slobs.
Margie| 11.12.10 @ 1:04AM
I have an idea for the Looney Tunes over at the FDA.
Why don't you just take a piece of the actual diseased lung and slip it inside of the cellophane in each pack of cigs sold?
Yes indeed and the way it can be done is that each person in the Unites States can indicate on the backs of their driver's licenses if they want to be a "donor" of their diseased body part.. or not.
Smokers can donate their lungs, drinkers can donate their livers, and fast food eaters can donate their clogged arteries.
Little slices of tissue can be sealed in an envelope and then affixed to the product that caused them to be diseased. Lungs on cigarette packs, livers on alcohol bottles, clogged arteries on Big Macs, heh, what a Happy Meal that would make.
And just think of the new Government Jobs this could provide! Just picture the myriad of assembly lines.
Where does it all end?
OK~ it's late. Good night and better make sure to be well.
Marshall Kane| 11.12.10 @ 2:22AM
george kimball,
"Smoking isn't a private matter when there are heavily subsidized treatments and facilities ... Whoever pays the piper calls the tune - but I doubt that images of diseased lungs would have any real effect. Let insurers charge real money to people who don't take care of themselves and then we'll see changes. It is nuts to force healthy people to pay for slobs.
By your logic what action IS a private matter? Who is to decide which activities/habits are too risky? Show me a detailed log of anyone's daily life and I'm sure I can nitpick behaviors that could be deemed "unhealthy." Do you stress on your knees jogging? Well, I don't want to pay for your knee surgery. Do you workout at a germ infested gym? Do you take non-FDA approved vitamin supplements? Do you have an asthma causing cat? Are you a malnourished vegan? Do you sleep on an orthopedic pillow? Do you screen all potential partners for STDs? On that note: is sex a "private activity?" Should a responsible married person foot the bill for the care of promiscuous singles?
Uh oh....here's a doozy for you: considering the high risk of STDs among young gay males, suppose we revise your words a bit:
"When *promiscuous gay men* feel like paying the entire freight for their *lifestyle* and not sticking it to the taxpayers, THEN it is a private matter."
I'll stop there - lest the health nazis like Mayor Bloomberg get any more crazy fascist ideas, like bringing back sodomy laws.
gwkimball| 11.15.10 @ 4:49AM
Marshall Kane,
You appear to have missed the point rather spectacularly, which is that people should not be allowed to pass the costs of their own choices onto others. 'I like it, you pay for it' is pretty much a negation of personal and social responsibility. Bad drivers pay high insurance premiums - so why shouldn't people who choose unhealthy behaviors? As to allocation of costs, that is what actuaries do.
Your example of gay males is apparently written satirically - but it is self-satire. Why should others pay the potentially enormous cost of a horrendous disease when infection can be prevented easily through education? The prevailing attitude of the left has been that to criticize gay anything is to be homophobic. Therefore, we are to bear the social cost of AIDS so that gays don't have to take on the burden of using condoms even when they choose to be wildly promiscuous (thousands of partners in bathhouses)? How many gay men have died as a result of this inane idea?
Calah | 11.18.10 @ 5:34PM
Awesome. I particularly love, "Are you a malnourished vegan?"
FastJohnny| 11.12.10 @ 8:59AM
How about close up pictures of crushed remains of humans from car crashes on all alcoholic beverage labels and beer cans?
Bob MD| 11.12.10 @ 10:35AM
Abortion, ironically, is considered part of "reproductive health" by the American public health community, which is leftist in orientation (the American Public Health Association just had Cornel West ranting about "social justice" at their annual meeting--video probably on web site). As it has been the case since its nineteenth century origins, public health is a movement of social control--and sometimes this is for the good (sanitation, inspections, etc.) In our culture, it has become a secular religion. Smoking is now the ultimate sin. "Choice" is a blessing. The issue of photographs exhibits the movement's many ironies.
Mar| 11.12.10 @ 12:56PM
An abortion is to reproductive health as a lobotomy is to mental health.
gaba| 11.13.10 @ 4:41PM
I must say, few sites compare to this one for intelligent, mostly thoughtful 'comments'. Hopefully enough to change a few hearts.
Peggy Loonan | 11.18.10 @ 5:26PM
The govt may require the display of graphic images of alleged aborted fetuses at say Planned Parenthood at the same time it requires so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC's) to display grahic pictures of what ILLEGAL abortion looks like to remind us all that illegal abortion as a public policy never works, maims and kills women and doesn't save "babies." And to remind all of us there is a better way to lower the number of abortions and that would be by lowering the number of unintended pregnancies.
http://www.lifeandlibertyforwo.....orial.html
Peggy Loonan, founder and executive director of Life and Liberty for Women peggy@lifeandlibertyforwomen.org