Yesterday I was listening to the pro-choice argument of a person I knew, the whole: “I don’t like abortion but I think I don’t have a right to forbid someone from having one.” argument. The gentleman who volunteered his thoughts sounding so reasonable so tolerant, asked my opinion on the subject.
I had been talking about covering the protest downtown and hadn’t specified my own position on the matter. So I answered him directly that I was pro life.
He asked me in return if I felt I had the right to forbid a woman from having an abortion? My answer was equally blunt: Yes.
Although throughout history that would not be a controversial answer, today it is positively anathema. The type of answer one doesn’t give in polite company.
As he recovered from his surprise, not only from my answer but from the matter of fact way I gave it, I asked the bottom line question: “Is abortion the killing of a human life?”
That is when the gentleman started to hem and haw about when life began and when it should be protected, hen it has value. I pointed out that the government had no problem protecting a bald eagle’s egg unhatched, why not a human?
This is the cut to the chase, the argument that we have ceded to the determent of millions for the sake of politeness and inoffensiveness.
Bottom line: If abortion does not end a unique human life then there is no reason to forbid, restrict or even consider it the least bit of controversial. The filming of it would not be an issue the sight of the “bodies” should be no more odd than a trip to the butcher shop and psychologically it should be no more traumatic than any other simple surgery. There would be no reason to want to reduce abortion, after all it’s just another same day operation, in fact we would want to encourage it for the monetary savings to the public.
When people talk about abortion as a “tragedy“, as something that should be “safe, legal and rare” as something we all “want to reduce” they reveal that they know the truth behind it, that we are talking about human life. We are ending a human life for the sake of convince, hardship or panic. We are willing to let it go, discarding it like any other piece of unwanted property, just so long as we don’t have to talk about it.
Like a town the day after a lynch mob strikes or a person at a party of a plantation owner who visits the slave quarters in the evening, we know something is wrong, but we don’t want to embarrass our neighbors and friends by saying a word.
Because once we say that word, we acknowledge reality instead of feigning ignorance. Once we KNOW then we are committed to make our choice. Do we stay silent and hope it goes away or do we act when that action will make others uncomfortable to the point where you are the target? In a society where being “judgmental” is the highest sin that takes more bravery than many people think they have.
It is for that reason why Planned Parenthood opening a office in a small city with a high unemployment rate, an action that should gather no attention at all gains national coverage and protesters. It is why as many people turned out on a snowy day on short notice in Fitchburg (pop 40k)to oppose Planned Parenthood as did in the entire city of San Francisco (pop 744k) to support abortion a mere week ago.
Within sight of the parking garage where the pro-life protesters held their signs. Less than a block away sits a monument to Captain Ebenezer Bridge and the forty-two men who when confronted with an uncomfortable reality on the 19th of April in 1775 made a decision to march putting their lives and reputation against one of the greatest powers in the world.
I’ll wager almost none of the protesters know Ebenezer Bridge’s name, but unbeknown to them, they are his successors carrying on that same Fitchburg tradition of confronting an uncomfortable reality for the sake of their children.
Update: A double thanks to Adrienne’s (Catholics) Corner for both the link and the donation to the CPAC/I’ll do it myself Tucker fund.
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