Light, sight, and the big lie

“…in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily…” Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X^[1]

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
Abraham Lincoln

Bringing people the real facts is what the Center for Medical Progress has been doing in releasing their recent videos documenting Planned Parenthood’s allegedly illegal involvement in procuring baby body parts for medical research. The videos are chilling, not because of the exposure of any lawbreaking, but because of the callous attitude towards unborn human life demonstrated.

Light is good…sight is good. If undercover videotaping is what it takes to reveal hidden truths that need to be known, then I’m all for it. I’ve often felt that it’s the hiddenness of the developing child in the womb that allows for the promotion and acceptance of abortion. When we see with our own eyes the beating heart, the tiny developing limbs and organs, it’s much more difficult to sanction an activity that intentionally kills this little living human being. In the cultural struggle against abortion we really need a womb with a view.

Following are snippets from some of the posts I’ve already written on this subject. Perhaps if enough of us keep bringing up “the real facts” we’ll make a real impact towards once and finally exposing “the big lie.”

 

Because abortion is not a reproductive health “choice.” That’s the fog hiding or distorting the truth that abortion is a deadly deed done on a living child. It happens to be performed within a woman’s body, but it’s not done to her. A life is snuffed out, but not hers. An innocent life. A helpless life. A child…forcibly and intentionally killed.

It shouldn’t matter that at 2 or 4 weeks gestation it’s not a cuddly-looking cherub, and resembles a tadpole more than a human. That’s the beauty and miracle of life. How else do you suppose that a new human should be produced? Could new life begin as a fully-formed, aesthetically pleasing, 7 lb. 9 oz. infant body? Human reproduction is no less miraculous than that would be, but much more practical, and beautiful.

Yet these helpless, innocent, fully-human but hidden children are every day poisoned, suctioned out, dismembered, and stabbed, with no one to defend them. Just google “abortion procedures” for yourself, and persevere through the fog. Don’t allow the cold, clinical terminology, like “cerebral material,” cloud the harsh reality that tiny babies are being violently killed in ways that purveyors of blood and gore in the film industry take great delight in portraying for their audience. And if they were done on a living child outside the womb, would bring charges of murder.

 

The unborn children being killed in the womb deserve a voice as much as, if not more than, their mothers do. Abortion is, and will always be, about the right of one human being to live, pitted against the claimed right of another human being to deny that right. All the real and tragic consequences of unplanned, unwanted, or imperfect reproduction do not offset the fundamental injustice of taking an innocent life.

 

The pro-choice argument I hear most often is that restricting abortion is infringing on a woman’s right to control her own body. This comes across to me as conveniently and intentionally side-stepping the obvious fact that when a woman is pregnant she is no longer one body but two. It’s how we reproduce…the two become three, or four, and sometimes more. So controlling her body is one thing; controlling the body within hers is quite another.

I’m really not sure how you can defend this argument. You would have to somehow show that the living, growing mass of cells within the uterus is part of the woman’s own body, or that it is an alien invader with no more right to live than a cancerous tumor. Any honest evaluation of the living zygote must conclude that it cannot belong to the woman’s body if only for the fact that it is often the opposite sex. And it also must conclude that the living being is decidedly human with its own unique DNA. It is a separate and distinct, living, human, being. How can you simply dismiss that as of no consequence in your insistence that this is all about the woman’s body?

 

We are all members of the human race, but in different stages of life. We move through them as we grow, looking very different in our final stage, if we live long enough, than we did in our initial one. A body that was once very small, smooth-skinned, slightly chubby, with a head one-quarter the size of its body, draws its last breath with a head one-eighth of a much larger body that has become wrinkled and worn.

And as we age and grow, some identifiers stay with us….human, female, Caucasian. Others change…newborn, infant, toddler, preadolescent, teenager, adult. But we find the exact same thing if we track our growth from the moment of conception. Human, female, Caucasian…as a zygote, I was all of these. And many of you were too. Then, as we grew…embryo, fetus, and newborn. Baby. And from conception, a child of two other human beings.

…The abortion rights lobby is working very hard to distinguish “fetus” from “baby” so as to somehow soften the horror of killing it. They would like us to believe that a fetus and a baby are mutually exclusive…one cannot be both at the same time. Common sense, and science, speak loudly against that. They need to promote the distinction because only then can they hope to defend their position that a fetus is expendable, and can morally be put to death for almost any reason.

A fetus is a hidden, but very human, preborn child. Innocent and defenseless; dependent on her mother to feed and protect her until….until birth? No…till much longer after birth. Being “viable” does not initiate humanity because an infant continues to be defenseless and dependent even though she can breathe on her own. And exiting the womb does not make a child suddenly human simply because he is no longer physically attached to and encased within his mother. It merely changes his location.

 

[1] “Project Gutenberg of Australia – Mein Kampf tr. James Murphy”. Archived from the original on 24 July 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-23.