The Proof
We do not advocate for the use of victim imagery lightly. We recognize it can be upsetting or polarizing within the movement and within the public sphere. However, we do continue to recommend it to be used because it works better than any other single tactic we have come across due to its emotional persuasiveness, as well as its ability to scale.
In this section you can read about a study we did that confirms that.
On Abortion Victim Imagery
Victim Imagery as a Strategy to Change Culture on Abortion
What is Abortion Victim Imagery (AVI)?
Abortion Victim Imagery is the use of photographs, video, and other media (animations, drawings, artwork, etc.) that graphically displays the brutality of abortion by showing the bodies of the victims of abortion. The goal of AVI, when used properly, is to humanize the unborn victim of abortion and to bring awareness to the general population regarding the brutal manner in which they were treated.
Several organizations including the Center for Bioethical Reform, Created Equal, Protect Life Michigan and the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform have pioneered the use of AVI in the pro-life movement, resulting in tens of thousands of mind changes and hundreds of lives saved.
Historical use of Victim Imagery
The use of victim imagery in general has a long and storied history in virtually every successful social reform movement. There is hardly any significant reform movement that has had an impact on changing the course of history that did not utilize victim imagery.
The historical case for the use of victim imagery centers on the human psyche being inclined to decision making not merely on facts (possibly not even on facts at all), but rather on emotion and connection to other human beings. In addition, it forces the average person to confront the reality of the injustice, thus breaking through apathy and indifference by manufacturing the social tension required for decision making.
William Wilberforce ending the slave trade in the British Empire was largely driven by his use of imagery (sketch drawings, paintings, etc.) as well as his practice of forcing wealthy Britains to confront the stench and sight of slave trade ships while in harbor.
Lewis Hine dismantled the American child labor industry by taking powerful photographs of children covered in soot and toiling away in factories. He distributed them across newspapers around the country and spurred legislative action in a few short years.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an expert in using victim imagery during the 1960’s American Civil Rights movement. He would routinely bring photographers to high profile protests, expecting clashes with the police and ordering the photographers not to intervene, but to rather take photographic evidence of the excessive response and brutality of police in the South. The images of dogs being unleashed on peaceful protestors, or fire hoses pummeling young Black men stirred sympathy and support around the nation for Dr. King and his movement.
Examples of Historical Victim Imagery
The Study
Purpose
This study was designed to help the larger pro-life movement understand the possible effectiveness of the use of victim imagery in changing popular opinion on the issue of legalized abortion in the U.S. The primary questions we sought to answer included:
Does seeing AVI images result in increased positive or negative feelings towards abortion?
Does viewing AVI have a more significant impact on a person’s opinion regarding abortion than viewing basic anti-abortion text based apologetics?
Does viewing AVI have different impacts on different demographics’ views on abortion based on gender, race, education, etc.?
How does viewing AVI affect an individual's perception of pro-life people and the movement at large?
Does viewing AVI impact society’s opinion of legislative restrictions on abortion?
Ideally the insights gathered in this report will help the pro-life movement consolidate around a strategy that most effectively changes public opinion on abortion.
Audience
On February 7th, 2024, we distributed a ten question online survey to 1,220 U.S. Adults. Of those 1,220, we had 20 respondents opt-out of the survey when they were warned that the survey would ask questions about abortion and could display the images of human fetuses that had been legally aborted in the U.S.
The respondent demographics are below. We weighted survey results based on age and gender to reflect the U.S. Census. Demographic data below are raw counts, pre-weighted, while all other presentations of data are after appropriate weighting.
The margin of error for this study was 3%.
Methodology
The survey was offered to participants online in all states except Michigan, due to conflicting polling that was occurring around the time we were conducting this poll. We received results from 24 states, representing all U.S. Census Regions.
Participants were asked if they would like to complete the survey. Once they opted in, they were presented with a statement that warned them that the survey (1) would ask about abortion and (2) may show them graphic images of aborted fetuses. At that point they had to consent to proceeding with the survey. Of the 1,220 participants who originally opted to take the survey, only 20 (1.63%) opted out of continuing the survey when presented with the warning.
All remaining respondents were then divided into two groups: AVI and Non-AVI. The participants were not informed of this division. In total, there were 603 participants in the AVI group (50.25%) and 497 participants in the Non-AVI group (49.75%).
Both groups of participants received the same survey. However, while taking the survey, questions 3 - 10 were accompanied by one of three images per group. The AVI group cycled through one of three images of aborted children (see “AVI Group Images”), while the non-AVI group cycled through one of three images of pro-life messages (see “Non-AVI Group Images”).
Survey Questions
Question Purposes
Questions 1-2 are to establish people's basic views, before influence from any images, regarding abortion. This helps put them in the proper frame of mind and establish their “identity” prior to seeing images related to abortion.
Questions 3-5 are to compare whether introducing AVI results in increased support or opposition towards specific abortion restrictions compared to respondents that do not see AVI.
Question 6 is to gauge attitudes towards abortion in each group, removed from the question of policy related to abortion.
Questions 7-8 are intended to help us see whether AVI may increase the perceived "humanization" of unborn children, even if it does not immediately translate to policy support differences.
Question 9 is intended to help us understand if there is a difference in the basic identification people make regarding their abortion beliefs between the two test groups. Does one group more confidently fall on the “left” side of 5, meaning more pro-life, or vice versa?
Question 10 is to see how people associate pro-lifers with the use of images (positively or negatively) and how that compares to their support/opposition to policy changes and abortion in general.
Key Findings
Abortion Victim Imagery Impacts People’s View on Abortion
We found that AVI produces strong negative feelings towards abortion in all demographics across ethnicity, age, political ideology, education, and belief on the morality of abortion. Further, it produces a significantly stronger negative feeling towards abortion than the use of non-AVI messages alone.
Abortion Victim Imagery Does Not Work Against the Pro-Life Movement
The hypothesis that the use of AVI repels people from the pro-life position has been demonstrated to be untrue. While negative feelings towards pro-lifers do increase when AVI is used, that increase is not present in the majority of respondents, and it is clearly eclipsed by an even greater increase in negative feelings towards abortion. This shows that we may experience a moderate increase in negative feelings towards pro-lifers using AVI, but it does not repel people from the pro-life position itself.
Abortion Victim Imagery Aids in Legislative Support for a Total Ban
When AVI is used, support for a near-total abortion ban increases by over 6% compared to non-AVI messaging. Further, it appears to make individuals even less tolerant of any legalized abortion, including more “moderate” bans between 6 and 20 weeks of gestation.
Detailed Insights
The Effect of AVI on Attitudes Towards Abortion
The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the introduction of abortion victim imagery, compared to non-image pro-life statements, can result in an increased negative perception towards abortion. The survey results indicate that the introduction of AVI has a significant negative effect on a respondents attitudes towards legalized abortion in the U.S.
Below we can see the results of question #6, where we compared general support of abortion between the two groups.
Respondents who viewed AVI were significantly more likely to say AVI made them feel less supportive of legalized abortion in the U.S. Nearly 50% of people communicated less support for abortion with the introduction of AVI, making “less supportive” the most common response to AVI compared to “unchanged” (36%) and “more supportive” (16%). In contrast, respondents who viewed non-AVI pro-life statements were most likely to say the images left their feelings about legalized abortion “unchanged” (45%) compared to “less supportive” (32%) or “more supportive” (23%). These results were highly statistically significant with a p-value of less than .0001.
Additionally, those who viewed AVI were more likely than those who viewed non-AVI to communicate much less support for abortion. Those who viewed AVI were less likely to say they felt “much more” or “slightly more” support, less likely to say their support was “unchanged,” and more likely to say they felt “slightly less” or “much less” support. Notably the largest difference between the AVI and non-AVI groups was whether they felt “much less” support, with 11% more of the AVI group saying so.
In total, there was a 17.62% decrease in support for abortion when AVI was used compared to non-AVI. Of that decrease, most (10.81%) was due to individuals feeling “Much Less” supportive of abortion.
Significantly, there was a 9% decrease in people having an unchanged opinion about the issue, and an increase in both of the “less support” options. The drop in “unchanged opinion” towards abortion between the AVI and non-AVI group is statistically significant with a p-value of less than .0192.
This demonstrates the effectiveness of AVI at changing the minds of abortion supporters. It may also point to an ability to break through apathy and force individuals to make a decision regarding their support or opposition towards abortion.
Importantly, survey results indicate that AVI significantly decreased support for abortion for both respondents who consider abortion necessary, whether moral or not, and respondents who were not certain of their abortion beliefs (the two most common answers to question 6 about abortion beliefs).
Figure 7 below breaks down answers to question #6, focusing on what percentage of respondents indicate that upon seeing their group's image (AVI or Non-AVI image) they felt “less support” for abortion.
The two groups of people that AVI most impacted were those that felt abortion was necessary and those that were uncertain of their abortion beliefs, with an increased opposition towards abortion of 23.57% and 30.72% respectively.3 The drop in support for abortion in these two groups more than doubled when AVI was used, and was highly significant with a p-value less than .00015.
These two groups of respondents (necessary and uncertain) account for over 50% of all respondents, indicating AVI has a significant impact on what is commonly referred to as “the mushy middle” of the American population regarding their views of abortion.
Note: for the purpose of explanatory analysis, in the remaining sections of this paper, we will refer to individuals who affirmed abortion as “morally right and justified” as strong pro-choice respondents, and those who rejected abortion as “morally wrong and unjustified” as strong pro-lifers. Those who were uncertain, or viewed abortion as necessary, regardless of morality, will be referred to as the “mushy middle.”
The Humanization of Unborn Children
A primary belief of organizations that frequently use AVI as part of their mission is that they seek to bring humanity to the otherwise forgotten victims of abortion. The theory is that abortion thrives when the victims remain “less than human” and anonymous. By bringing their faces and bodies to the public, we can restore some of their humanity and conjure feelings of sympathy for the unborn and discomfort towards abortion. The belief we wanted to test was that if we can make the world see unborn children as human beings, similar to us, they would be more likely to drop support for legalized abortion. In this study, we found that viewing AVI frequently resulted in decreased support for abortion.
First, we sought to test whether the use of AVI would increase the belief that a fetus experiences pain when an abortion is performed. The question did not provide any biological evidence for or against fetal pain, or when that capacity may develop.
The use of AVI has a significant impact on people’s belief in fetal pain. As you can see below, when AVI is introduced, the number of people that affirm fetal pain increases by over 14%. This is highly significant with a p-value under .0001. Most of that shift is attributed to people switching their response from “NO” to “YES”, indicating AVI alone can change someone’s understanding of fetal pain.
If we again focus on the “mushy middle” of respondents (i.e. those that indicated abortion was necessary or were uncertain about it), nearly twice as many of those respondents affirmed a belief in fetal pain when AVI accompanied the question compared to the non-AVI group.
When asked about whether unborn children deserve equal rights as born children, the survey found a negligible difference in responses between the two groups. The non-AVI group responded “yes” 43% of the time, compared to 41% of the time with the AVI group. The difference of approximately 2% is within the survey’s 3% margin of error.
It seems that the use of AVI compared to non-AVI pro-life statements does not increase the likelihood someone will identify the unborn child as equal in rights compared to a born child. However, their significant shift in their understanding of fetal pain still may indicate an increased understanding of the humanity of the unborn, even if it does not yet extend to granting equal rights to the unborn child.
Perceptions of Pro-Lifers that use AVI
Some pro-life individuals and organizations are concerned that the use of AVI repels people from the pro-life movement, and/or causes people to have intense negative feelings about pro-lifers. If true, the use of AVI may make it more difficult for us to engage and persuade the public regarding abortion.
These survey results suggest a several key takeaways:
Most people did not have negative feelings towards pro-lifers who would use these images (though a plurality did).
There was an increase in negative feelings towards pro-lifers using AVI compared to the non-AVI of approximately 10%.
Any increased negative feelings towards pro-lifers within the AVI group was also accompanied by an even greater increase in negative feelings towards abortion.
Importantly, the most significant increased negativity in the AVI group did not primarily arise from the “mushy middle,” but instead from those who already viewed abortion as morally right or morally wrong.
The most common responses towards the idea of pro-lifers using AVI were negative, but in no group were the negative responses the majority. In addition, the strongest negative feelings did not come from the “mushy middle” of respondents, but instead came from the extremes of the abortion debate (strong pro-life and strong pro-choice individuals). As the target of persuasion should be most directed towards those in the middle of the issue, we should take note that they had the least intense negative feelings towards AVI of any group.
Of course, the question still remains: if someone develops negative feelings towards pro-lifers using AVI, does that impact their view on abortion itself? Does AVI possibly make people more pro-choice or resistant to the pro-life position?
This survey found that negative feelings toward pro-lifers using AVI is not associated with support for abortion. Even when limiting results to individuals in the AVI group who expressed any negative feelings towards pro-lifers, we find that 47.37% of them also have negative feelings towards abortion itself, compared to just 15.30% that expressed positive feelings towards abortion. This is compared to respondents that were in the non-AVI group, who still expressed negative feelings towards pro-lifers using non-AVI images, only having increased negative feelings towards abortion 31.91% of the time.
Considering that overall, 49.53% of all respondents in the AVI group (those that felt any feeling towards pro-lifers) expressed less support for abortion when presented with AVI, that is just a 2% difference when we compare individuals who felt negatively towards pro-lifers to those that did not. That difference is statistically negligible.
The use of AVI seems to result in a 9.52% increase in negative feelings towards pro-lifers using it. However, it also leads to an increase of nearly 18% in negative feelings towards abortion. This is highly significant with a p-value under .00001.
Further, let’s look at the non-AVI group. Of that group, 30.72% of respondents reported a negative feeling towards pro-lifers based on seeing a non-AVI image. In other words, compared to the non-AVI group, only 10% more AVI respondents reported negative feelings toward pro-lifers. Yet almost 18% more AVI respondents reported negative feelings toward abortion itself.
That may or may not be significant to our strategy. The key is understanding whether there was a significant difference in people’s attitudes towards abortion to justify their increased negative view of pro-lifers.
When we look at that data, we see that of people who did not see AVI and were upset with pro-lifers, only 26.49% of them also expressed more negative feelings towards abortion when seeing non-AVI messages.
However, people who were exposed to AVI and had negative feelings towards pro-lifers as a result also felt negatively about abortion 47.37% of the time. Only 15.30% of the AVI group that expressed negative feelings towards pro-lifers for showing those images had increased support for abortion.
Therefore, it seems that roughly 30% of people will be upset at any pro-life message. However, we can change an extra 20% of people's minds if we are willing to let them think less positively of us. Since we are a social reform movement, not a marketing company trying to sell a product, the conclusion seems clear: pro-lifers should be willing to sacrifice people’s approval for the sake of changing minds and saving lives.
Further, we can gain additional insights into the efficacy of AVI and feelings towards pro-lifers who use it by examining it in light of different demographics.
There are a few key conclusions to draw from the demographic splits above:
Men tend to be moved by any pro-life message (AVI or otherwise) more easily than women. They experience around a 3% greater increase in negative feelings towards abortion than women, regardless of the image or pro-life message presented.
Minorities tend to have less negative feelings towards pro-lifers that use AVI, while having greater negative feelings towards abortion when they see AVI when compared to White respondents.
AVI tends to have a lesser effect on people as they age, with the strongest feelings against both pro-lifers that use it and abortion itself typically coming from the youngest age brackets.
Across every demographic (age, gender, and ethnicity), we see a clear message that AVI makes people feel more negatively about abortion. Even when they also feel more negatively about pro-lifers who use AVI, it does not negate their negative attitudes towards abortion.
Note: One future opportunity for study would be to answer how individuals who did not consent to viewing AVI would have felt about abortion and pro-lifers who use AVI. We only experienced a 1.6% refusal rate, indicating that the overwhelming majority of people would consent to AVI if offered. However, we do not clearly answer how someone who did consent would have answered the survey if they were not asked for consent first and instead were presented with AVI by surprise.
AVI Translating to Legislative Support
An additional major objective of the study was to understand if merely presenting AVI to an individual would have a greater impact on their support for pro-life legislation than the use of non-AVI messaging. The results of this part of the study were mixed and deserve more attention in future studies to better understand why.
As you can see, virtually every proposal in each group was met with similar levels of support as the questions progressed. Support for a ban within the AVI remained within 2% variability, and support within the non-AVI group stayed within 4%, both being near the 3% margin of error.
However, support for abortion bans was higher in the non-AVI group for all three proposed forms of legislation. To better understand this result, we must look at who was indicating they supported this legislation or not within each group.
Exposure to AVI did not translate to significant increases in support for a near total abortion ban because pro-life people opposed bans when presented with AVI. This result is extraordinarily counter-intuitive and needs to be replicated to understand better.
As you can see above, when presented with AVI, a strong pro-choicer was over 10% more likely to support a total abortion ban, and a mushy middle individual was approximately 4% more likely to do so. However, support for a near-total abortion ban dropped by over 40% within the group of respondents that in the previous questions indicated that abortion was morally wrong and unjustified.
That was the sole cause of AVI not having an overall positive effect on support for abortion bans. Let’s reproduce a similar chart to earlier, but remove people that indicated that abortion was morally wrong in the beginning of the survey to illustrate this point.
This again creates a complicated picture. While the use of AVI produces a significant shift in support for a near-total ban on abortion, it also produces a shift in opposition for bans that take place only later in pregnancy. There are a couple of ways this could be explained:
If AVI produces a significant negative feeling towards abortion, there may be a group of people that would support a total ban, while opposing a heartbeat or 15-week ban because it allows too many abortions. They may be so uncomfortable with abortion upon seeing AVI, they are hesitant to allow any at all.
The latter two pieces of proposed legislation did not include a rape/incest or life of the mother exception explicitly. This could have caused some support to drop off because people did not want to support any ban that did not make that explicitly clear.
But it does not appear that the lack of a rape/incest or life of the mother exception had an impact on support for these bans, considering non-AVI groups showed a similar lack of support for bans with and without these exceptions. Additionally the non-AVI group did increase support for bans at later gestations, even without explicit exceptions. Exceptions do not appear to be driving major differences in acceptance of the bans.
Therefore, what can be concluded is that AVI has a significant positive effect on the level of support for near-total abortion bans. However, while non-AVI support rises for more moderate abortion bans, AVI support does not, most likely because they view legalized abortion at virtually any stage as something they would not lend support to.
The Impact of AVI on a Person’s Basic Abortion Opinion
Question #9 asked the respondent to rate how strongly they support abortion throughout the pregnancy for any reason. We wanted to gauge whether the use of AVI would cause one group to “default” to a strong pro-life inclination, i.e. a lower value on the 1-10 scale, with 1 being strong opposition and 10 being strong support.
We found that both groups still had both extremes (people that answered 1 or 10, indicating the most possible support or opposition). However, the median response for the AVI group was “5”, compared to “6” for the non-AVI group. In addition, the lower and upper quartile of responses were both lower in the AVI group than the non-AVI group, indicating a measurable general decrease in their comfort with abortion throughout pregnancy when seeing AVI.
In addition, when we look at the breakdown by group and include the gender split, we observe that men were most likely to self-identify as more opposed to abortion throughout pregnancy when AVI was used, though women also became less supportive by reducing the upper quartile value by one.
Finally, when we examine this same question by education level, we learn that AVI appears to have a larger effect on the most educated individuals’ self-identification. Individuals who had completed a postgraduate degree and were in the non-AVI were by far the most radically supportive of abortion throughout all 9 months with their upper quartile at 10 and a median of 7 (the highest of any group).
However, when respondents with a graduate education in the AVI group were presented with that same question, the upper quartile dropped by 2 points, lower quartile by 3 points, and median down to 6. While they still leaned pro-choice, there were very few ratings of 10 in the AVI group, and many more low ratings (1-3) in this highly educated group.
Conclusion
We Must Invest in AVI
As a movement, we are falling critically behind in the fight for public opinion, as seen by recent election, legislative, and ballot losses. We must change public opinion, and do so faster. AVI can significantly impact peoples’ views of abortion, and can do so with little time, effort, or expenditure.
We are not aware of equivalently effective methods of changing public opinion on abortion, much less methods that can do so for comparatively little cost. We therefore suggest pro-life organizations invest in the propagation of AVI.
While individual conversations may be the most persuasive, we cannot scale that tactic to millions of Americans. While mass media and TV advertising allows us to scale to millions of people, we generally cannot use victim imagery in these methods, meaning we sacrifice nearly 50% of our effectiveness at changing public opinion.
The solution is the mass distribution of Abortion Victim Imagery through a diverse menu of distribution channels. Every state, every city, every street. The reality of abortion must be confronted daily to see our dream of a world without violence towards unborn children realized.
We Must Partner AVI with Effective Persuasion Methodology
While an image alone has been proven to be effective in this study, as well as those done by the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (CCBR), there is also a consensus amongst organizations that regularly use AVI that ideally AVI is coupled with a 1:1 conversation with an individual, though with the drawback of lack of scale.
That is why we must ensure we use persuasive, empathetic apologetics while using AVI. Separately these two components still add value individually, but combined they can have a maximum impact.
We Must Separate Political Identity From Abortion Belief
The translation from negative feelings about abortion to support for significant abortion bans has been difficult to make. Even in this study, many of the individuals who felt strong negative feelings about abortion did not necessarily translate that to supporting an abortion ban.
While not examined in this study, in our experience this is likely due to abortion fitting within a larger political identity. A progressive democrat who is uncomfortable with abortion will have no political community if they advocate for abolishing abortion. They will quickly be rejected by their progressive party for their abortion stance, and also rejected by the pro-life movement (in general) due to their otherwise progressive politics.
We need to develop messaging and tactics that help people separate their political identity from their belief on abortion, just as Americans were able to do regarding civil rights and increasingly regarding the LGBTQ movement. We also need to ensure that as a movement, we intentionally create room for those who make that break from their larger identity to support the pro-life cause.
We cannot win even with 100% Republican support or 100% Christian support. We need progressives, atheists, minorities, and more to build a coalition that can sustain the coordination and funding of the abortion industry and its lobby.
We Must Recognize Our Role As Reformers, Not Marketers
In the end, many of you may still have strong hesitations regarding the use of AVI. I want to encourage you to think about two important points.
First, discomfort with AVI is expected, not unusual. Every time we use AVI or see a new image of abortion, we feel that same discomfort. We should feel repulsed and upset when we see a small human that has been treated with such extreme violence. However, we mustn’t let our discomfort be confused with ineffectiveness. AVI can both be uncomfortable and the most effective thing we can do.
Second, if you are oppositional to AVI, be sure not to let feelings be confused with facts. Between Protect Life Michigan, Created Equal, and the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (along with dozens of other groups), we have had hundreds of thousands of conversations with a mind change rate of over 30%. We have also published multiple studies demonstrating the effectiveness of AVI. Finally, we have hundreds of examples of lives that were saved by the use of AVI on college campuses across North America.
If you want to argue against the use of AVI, we encourage that, but do so with the evidence that the pro-life movement deserves. Use data from polling or years of conversations to make the case, not anecdotal or emotional arguments. If you cannot find the data to support that position, I encourage you to consider the possibility that the reason is because AVI truly does work, and is more effective than alternative pro-life tactics on their own.
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