Efrat CEO Dr. Eli Schussheim
Efrat CEO Dr. Eli SchussheimEfrat PR

The municipality of Tiberias has removed a billboard advertisement for the Efrat organization, which discourages women from aborting their babies for non-medical reasons. The sign, which was apparently deemed to have offensive content, said: "It's easy to have an abortion; it's hard to live with it."

The chairman of Efrat, Dr. Eli Schussheim, told Arutz Sheva that he was offended by the way the sign was removed, and that he is considering how to react, while consulting legal advisors.

"I would have expected the mayor of Tiberias to call before doing something like that," he said. "There was never anything like this. In the past, there were attempts to disqualify a commercial we put on the radio, but we won the legal battle and two years later, the commercial was back on the air.

"There are all kinds of feminist women's organization that are trying to harm us," he added, "but we are the real feminists. Out of 64,000 women whom we have convinced to avoid an abortion, there is not one who does not thank us."

Schussheim said that the initiative and funding for the sign came from a non-religious person in central Israel whose wife had an abortion 18 years ago. The woman has been unable to have children ever since, and suffers from recurrent depression. The man consulted advertising professionals who came up with the slogan.

Signs similar to the one removed in Tiberias have been in place for two years throughout Israel, Schussheim added, although they are not as large as the one in Tiberias.

"Abortion is not child's play," he explained, "and unfortunately, in the various official committees that are convened to approve abortion requests, it takes exactly two minutes to approve an abortion, which is precisely the time it takes to convene the social worker and other people in a room and have them sign the form.

"Women are not told what the meaning of an abortion is," he added. "People do not understand that every abortion leaves behind sorrow and emotional scars, and that is what we are trying to prevent. Not a day goes by in which we do not receive a letter, email or phone call from women who had abortions, who regret it and are emotionally traumatized."