{"id":172420,"date":"2017-10-07T09:08:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-07T13:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=172420"},"modified":"2022-12-07T11:32:11","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T17:32:11","slug":"how-one-photo-of-preborn-baby-helped-make-future-generations-pro-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/how-one-photo-of-preborn-baby-helped-make-future-generations-pro-life\/","title":{"rendered":"How one photo of a preborn baby helped to make future generations pro-life"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Many of us have worn it, and others have surely seen it — the iconic pro-life “Precious Feet” pin. But what’s the story behind this symbol?<\/p>\n

In the early 1970’s, Dr. Russell Sacco, a urologist from Oregon at the time, was aware of abortion<\/a> prior to\u00a0Roe v. Wade<\/em>\u00a0because of those who were speaking out on the topic. “I knew as a doctor that abortion kills children; they kill human beings,” he stated in an interview published<\/a>\u00a0on Vimeo.<\/p>\n

Dr. Sacco said he began reading “anatomical books,” and when the Supreme Court ruled that murdering the preborn was “legal,” the doctor became, in his words, “furious.”<\/p>\n

It was shortly after this that Sacco met a pathologist who was also anti-abortion. This pathologist “… was supposed to take the children that had been killed and destroy the bodies. But he told me that he didn’t do that; he just didn’t like to do that.”<\/p>\n

\"\"

Dr. Sacco’s image of aborted baby<\/p><\/div>\n

Dr. Sacco said that this pathologist had preserved the babies’ bodies in a bucket of formaldehyde, which he showed Sacco. “… [I]n the bucket were about seven or eight infant bodies. It was a little bit shocking for me to see that but, there they were.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Sacco asked<\/a> the pathologist if he could photograph the babies “so that I could put it on slides and I could go around and give talks on how we should save and protect the prenatal children.”<\/p>\n

\"\"

Dr. Sacco’s image of aborted baby<\/p><\/div>\n

Dr. Sacco said he took out “one body at a time” to photograph them. Then, he\u00a0catalogued each child and their estimated ages.<\/p>\n

“Then, one of the ones I decided to take was one that I would hold just the child’s feet between my fingers,” which Sacco says he did for scale.\u00a0“So, I put my fingers on that so that you could identify the size of my hand – then you could identify the feet of the children.”<\/p>\n

After developing the film, he discovered that the images of the feet were “better than I had thought.\u00a0I really thought that… maybe God did that one for me.”<\/p>\n

The image, which Dr. Sacco refused to copyright so it could be used worldwide, has been referred to as “Tiny Feet,” “Little Feet,” and “Precious Feet.”<\/p>\n

\"\"

Dr. Sacco’s picture of aborted baby feet<\/p><\/div>\n

But it was in Dr. Sacco’s meeting with Dr. John Willke<\/a> that this photograph became famous.<\/p>\n

Willke has been described by some as the father of the pro-life movement; he founded Cincinnati Right to Life in 1970, and later joined National Right to Life’s board. In 1991, he founded the Life Issues Institute and served there until his death in 2014. A tribute published<\/a> by National Right to Life says Willke, a devout Catholic, “helped form the foundation of right-to-life educational efforts through the development of the ‘Willke slides’ on fetal development and abortion…”<\/p>\n