The Bizarre Taboo Against Describing Abortion

A common tactic deployed by opponents of certain issues is to graphically describe the impacts of that topic for their audience, thereby imparting imagery they hope will result in folks changing their ways. Animal rights groups, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), are famous for using this approach in trying to gross out non-vegetarians. Consider a 2012 campaign entitled Meet Your Meat, featuring Alec Baldwin as narrator and depicting graphic footage of livestock being raised, slaughtered, and butchered. So as to heighten our sense of curiosity or disturbance, Baldwin begins the video by warning us, “What you are about to see is beyond your worst nightmares. But for animals raised on modern, intensive production farms and killed in slaughterhouses, it is a cold, inescapable reality.”