After another crazy week, I haven’t had time (or access) to blog at all. But I wanted to post this video from Abort73.
Warning: it’s disturbing. The images and video present the haunting truth about the vast injustice of abortion. We’ll be showing it this Sunday night at R3:MIX…
Stacey wanted my opinion about whether or not Geoffrey should see it and didn’t want to watch it herself. I didn’t really either, but did so anyway. You can’t help but react viscerally and emotionally to the video, of course. But on any level of substance, my only reaction is that the sole argument of the video is, “It’s a baby.” It makes the argument well, I suppose, in a graphic manner which concedes more than I think we should ever concede to the baseness and sensory brutality of culture. (We’re never going to out-do our society when it comes to shock value, so I’m not sure it’s a journey we should even begin.)
But the deeper problem is that other than a handful of whack jobs on the fringe, nobody on any “side” of this issue denies that it’s a baby. In other words, it “wins” an argument nobody is disputing. I’m not sure I see the value in that.
hmmm….I didn’t see it that way at all. I knew from a medical community perspective that the vast majority of people believe it’s a baby. So I guess I didn’t see any ‘it’s a baby’ mantra in it.
What I saw was brutality of convenience. The reality of slaughtering 13.1 million children. And the indescribable weight that 13.1 post-abortion women must bear in various ways (psychological, emotional, spiritual…) And though not everyone is like me, I can’t help but think about the dads that have lost their children to ‘convenience’ and/or ‘choice’.
I think we all agree that it’s a baby. What we don’t agree on as a society is exactly how to end it. Or that it even should come to an end. IMO, the reality (brutal as it is)is something a lot of the ‘whack jobs’ hammer on. I’ve never been a big fan of that, but the Abort73 website has made me rethink some things.
How, as Christians, do we stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves? And really make a difference? I don’t know. But I do know it’s been increasingly easier for us as a society to look away rather than wrestle with a solution.
One of the segments from their website is that the medical community, especially the nurses are not told it is a human. They are told it is a blob of tissue. One of the nurses while recounting her education says that they were always taught that this is not a human.
THis is not a universally held opinion that this is a human, it is argued that this is a blob of tissue by more than a few on that side of the argument.
I had our oldest child watch the video so that he would know the ramification of the actions of over 13 million women has done to our country.
It is a vile sin (infanticide) in the eyes of our God and is morally degrading to all life.
“you’ll save the whales, you’ll save the seals, you’ll save whatevers cute and squeals, but you kill that thing that’s in the womb, would not want no baby boom” (1982 Bad Rap by Steve Taylor)
Jimmie, that is not what is taught these days in any course of medical study. Period. I have lots of friends and family members who are part of the medical community and that is simply not taught anymore. It once was, but that was decades ago.
Further, if you actually wish to understand those who hold a different perspective, actually read those who support a pro-choice perspective. At times they say some very strange things, even pitting mother and infant against each other in a struggle to the death, but very few (and none of the more prominent ones) claim any longer that a fetus is not an infant.
Further, surveys of the broad spectrum of Americans with all sorts of thoughts on the political question of legal abortion show that the common person believes the fetus to be a baby.
I find the closer parallel to be Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and others speaking against the practice of infant exposure. (And yes, Tertullian also spoke against abortion, but infant exposure was the more common practice.) The issue was not whether or not it was a baby. Nobody denied that. At issue was the value of a baby, especially when held against the needs of the adults.
Frankly, I think our failure to engage the real discussion simply marginalizes anything we might otherwise contribute. I didn’t grow up within the Christian evangelical subculture in the US. If you think things like this have made any meaningful impact or change in direction in our broader culture, you’re self-deluded. Abortion is more a part of our culture now than ever. Most people our age and younger can hardly imagine a country without legal abortion.
We further marginalize ourselves with outrageous and inflammatory statements about abortions of convenience. Those statements are almost entirely untrue. (Yes, I’m sure there are some people who are or become so desensitized that they feel nothing about undergoing an abortion. But that’s an extraordinarily small percentage.) Abortion is something people undergo because every other alternative seems horribly worse. That was the pressure and perception I had to fight as a teen parent. And it is what I’ve heard time and again from others. The stories are heart-breaking. Nobody “wants” an abortion. And we need to stop making statements like that.
The only thing I took from the video was some numbers and then a graphic depiction of the corpses of fetuses at various stages of development. If there was any other point but to make the case that a fetus was a baby, I completely missed it. I suppose the video might shock those who have led some sort of sheltered (probably religious) upbringing. My main reaction was disgust. How is our use of the corpses of the slain in that manner any better than the way they were treated in their death?
And I also find it pointless. I suppose it will serve to make those who are already determinedly anti-abortion more fixed in their position. But is has no other persuasive power.
Scott,
We will viscerally disagree and neither will be able to understand the other on this topic.
It does not mean we are not brothers in Christ.