Cartier Watches and Abortions

This is a brief aside from my work on New West, mainly because I'm having a bit of trouble working with the flag. 

I am extremely interested in how organizations within the pro-life movement use graphic design and visual communication. In particular, I believe that the movement appears to use graphic design as a means to convey a particular moral lifestyle, a moral viewpoint rather than a particular rational argument. (The visual trope that appears most often is the image of the baby; rarely is there ever an image of an embryo or a moral argument of why a pro-life person believes that life begins at birth.)

This seems to be in line with contemporary advertising; advertising increasingly attempts to create an internalized image, a lifestyle rather than an argument (eg, "Buy Method because your lifestyle is chic and green," rather than "Buy Method because we list all of the chemicals and ingredients on our bottle and you can rest assured that there are no unnatural chemical substances." [which, by the way, Method does not list their ingredients -- look to Seventh Generation for that one])

An increasingly popular argument among pro-life activists is that legalized abortion engenders an amoral lifestyle and ultimately, an amoral society. Again, this seems extremely contemporary -- that an entire lifestyle can wrap around one object or idea. A watch is promoted as being part of a life filled with luxury; an abortion is promoted as being part of a life filled with sin.

Anyway, this is sort of a brief outline of a series I would love to do later on pro-life organizations and their use of graphic design. There's such a wide gamut of pro-life organizations. On one end, there's the Consistent Life movement, which has earned quite a (negative) reputation amongst the hardcore pro-lifers. On the other end, there's Operation Rescue, which we all know and love from various media reports suggesting some sort of link between them and violent attacks on abortion clinics.