RUTHIE BLUM: A PICTURE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3200
This week, a photo that went viral on the Internet became a news feature in media outlets across the globe. It is a shot of a caesarian delivery in an Arizona hospital, taken by the husband of the woman on the operating table.
What it shows is the hand of a not-yet-born baby girl clutching the finger of the obstetrician performing the C-section. This would not be so astonishing if she had already been removed from her mother. But the infant was still inside the uterus — reaching out from the abdominal incision to grab hold of the doctor’s hand.
It is because of the fabulous freeze frame of the unusual sight that so much attention has been given to the picture. Many people have said that they would nominate it for an artistic award. Others have been amused by the fact that the mother happens to be a professional photographer, yet it is her husband who captured the precious moment on camera.
But one thing that is missing from all the coverage is the significance of the special scene that generated mass heart wrenching.
For the past few decades in the United States, the issue of whether a woman should have the right not only to terminate any pregnancy at will, but to do so at no cost to her pocket or conscience, has been so prominent that it sways presidential elections. Over the past ten years or so, abortion has been defined, redefined, and debated to the point at which it now includes discussion — and even approval in some circles — of permitting it at any stage of a pregnancy, including in the third trimester. It is thus that partial-birth abortions have come to be called “pro-choice decisions,” rather than infanticide.
Indeed, language is such a powerful tool that it can and does obfuscate even the most obvious moral truths. And the way terminology is employed is crucial to understanding the human capacity for adjusting reality to suit one’s personal situation.
You see, during these very decades of bitter fighting over the question of when life begins — and in whose hands ending it constitutes murder — something else spectacular was taking place simultaneously. Innovations in the fields of medicine and science were enabling barren couples to conceive children in a number of different ways. Suddenly, too, single women, gay men, and anybody else who previously could hardly contemplate, let alone carry out, the act of having children were now presented with a whole new set of parental options.
So common and coveted has the use of technology become that anyone in the process of procreation plasters his or her fridge with the latest ultrasound pictures, and sends sonogram footage via email to family members for their loving reactions.
“Oh look,” they all coo. “She’s sucking her thumb!”
“He’s kicking up a storm in there,” they laugh. “That’s a soccer player, all right!”
It never ceases to amaze me that the same people who call unwanted pregnancies “fetuses” — and who assert that abortion does not constitute the taking of a life — shift their terminology as soon as they are creating such a life on purpose. In other words, the definition of a “baby” is dependent on whether its parents want it or not. When they don’t, it’s just a cluster of cells. When they do, it is a full-fledged child, whose gender is known and whose in utero progress is documented in photo albums.
My own position on abortion is that it is a sin which I am grateful for never having been in a position to be tempted to commit. I preferred to be dealt my cards, and hoped I’d be able to play them honorably. It is for this reason that I did not want my obstetrician to reveal the results of prenatal tests performed on my own babies; later on, I had enough trouble trying not to kill them when they reached puberty.
As for when life begins: I like to say that it’s when the children leave home and the dog dies. But I really know that it begins at the very beginning, when the “cluster of cells” — with all the genetic traits it will have from cradle to grave — starts to grow.
The couple in Arizona whose photo is still circulating on the Web named their daughter Nevaeh, which is “heaven” spelled backwards. It is questionable whether this derived from their sense that she would enter the world with a celestial message. But she sure did convey one. “I’m here,” she announced, thrusting her arm through her mother’s womb. “It’s where I’ve been all along.”
Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket
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