THE CHOICE IS YOURS
This article originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of the New Oxford Review, and is reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2010 New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley CA 94706, U.S.A., http://www.newoxfordreview.org/.
A husband and father of three children, Arland K. Nichols is the Associate Director of Converging Roads: Bioethics, Health Care and Catholic Teaching, and an instructor of morality and bioethics at Pope John XXIII High School in Katy, Texas. He speaks and writes frequently on topics related to the culture of life, marriage, and bioethics.
“Betrayal” is a powerful word, the poignancy of which is not easily or adequately articulated, even on the pages of an unabridged dictionary: “To deliver into the hands of an enemy by treachery or fraud, in violation of trust; to violate by fraud or unfaithfulness.” To capture the full meaning of betrayal requires literary and historical knowledge or lived experience. Consider the gut-wrenching betrayals of the likes of Sir Thomas More by Richard Rich, William Wallace by Robert the Bruce, Othello by Iago, Julius Caesar by Brutus, Jesus Christ by Judas Iscariot. These stories and events capture the full meaning of betrayal in a way that a dog-eared page in Webster’s cannot.
A woman eighteen weeks pregnant was lying on the operating table before a young female doctor. By coincidence, the doctor was also eighteen weeks pregnant and would, in a matter of months, welcome her child into the world. Turning to the patient, she dutifully began the surgery that had been scheduled — an abortion. This physician, by means of a popular pro-abortion blog, described the graphic and shocking details of her experience:
I realized that I was more interested than usual in seeing the fetal parts when I was done, since they would so closely resemble those of my own fetus. I went about doing the procedure as usual…. I used electrical suction to remove the amniotic fluid, picked up my forceps and began to remove the fetus in parts, as I always did. With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick — a fluttery “thump, thump” in my own uterus….There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a “thump, thump” in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely…. It was an overwhelming feeling — a brutally visceral response — heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics…. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.
This disturbing “raw moment” reveals the macabre reality of what happens in abortion clinics throughout the world. Every ounce of this doctor’s body — and her baby’s body — reeled at what she was doing, remonstrating that her actions were evil. This physician’s experience reveals that the child she carried in her womb was a conscious and sentient human being. So too, then, the child whose life she took. No euphemism bandied about in the abortion “debate” can completely obscure this reality. Abortion is not “preventative health,” “a choice,” “a woman’s right,” “reproductive medicine,” or “health care.” It is one thing and one thing alone — murder of the most gruesome sort. And yet, this doctor and mother’s experience did not hinder her from continuing to dismember and kill not only this one but other innocent, vulnerable, and dependent human beings. She writes, “Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy; in fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.”
To think that this mother continues to directly participate in the murder of innocent children dependent upon the nurturing and loving care of their mothers is perfidious, incongruous with the truth, and irresponsible. In short, her freely chosen actions are the epitome of betrayal. Knowing what she knows, one cannot help but wonder how she can gaze upon her child, or make eye contact with the mother of her next victim. There is no rational choice here — only a blind commitment to ideology and a stubborn refusal to accept the innate dignity of the child she is killing. It is difficult to imagine a more poignant example of betrayal than this physician-mother’s choice to continue performing abortions. She continues to betray women. She betrays the healing profession. She betrays her own motherhood. She betrays innocent human life. Here is the betrayal of humanity itself....
In the abortion industry, rare is the person who encounters the nefarious reality of abortion and has the integrity to walk away. For some, however, the truth does in fact set them free. Such is the story of Abby Johnson, the former executive director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas. While assisting an ultrasound-guided abortion, Abby abjured her pro-abortion ideology and became an ardent defender of life in the womb. In a November 7, 2009, interview with Fox News, she described her decisive encounter with reality:
My job was to hold the ultrasound probe on this woman’s abdomen…. When I looked at the screen, I saw a baby…about thirteen weeks…. I saw the probe going into the woman’s uterus. And at that moment, I saw the baby moving and trying to get away from the probe…and I thought, “It’s fighting for its life.” Then all of a sudden, I mean, it was just over…and I just saw the, I just saw the baby just literally, just crumble, and it was over….
Abby has not been indifferent to her experience of watching a preborn child desperately fight for survival when threatened by those entrusted with his care. Through ultrasound she has recognized that abortion is not the mere removal of tissue, but the killing of a developing human being who is vulnerable and utterly dependent upon a nurturing and loving mother. Abby responded with integrity when she came face-to-face with the procedure she had been promoting for years. It is not surprising that Abby’s new prolife convictions have led to her persecution by the press, by her former employer, and even by members of her own church. Now, rooted in her own personal experience of the long-established scientific fact that pregnant women are mothers who carry living human children, she is facing her persecutors square on and with great conviction. She has become an outspoken advocate for the unborn — a model of integrity.
The most urgent and increasingly common form of betrayal in society today is cooperation in abortion. This is most evident with embryonic stem-cell research, procured abortion, abortifacients, and in vitro fertilization. Our cooperation can be direct participation in this act of betrayal, or we can cooperate in, or benefit from, abortion indirectly. We can do so by either action or omission: actively fostering the culture of death or failing to build a culture of life. In order to become men of integrity, we must make every reasonable effort to avoid evil and do good on behalf of innocent life....cont'd here
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