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'Baby
in a Bottle' Might Provoke Second Look at Abortion
By Dr. Laura
Jewish World
Review,
4/13/00
IT ALL BEGAN with a letter from a Catholic, widowed grandmother of
seven grandchildren. It was a request for me to help (via my radio
program) a Christian minister and
a high school science teacher get a 5-month-old unborn baby in a jar out of
a high school in Deeming, N.M. According
to a Jan. 30 article in the Albuquerque Journal, this fetus was displayed
in a jar on a shelf with other animal specimens in
a storage section of a classroom.
The grandmother, who sent me the article and the request for help, also sent
a copy of a letter to the editor of the newspaper from a physician defending
the presence of this "specimen" as necessary for scientific study
within the classroom.
I weighed in. At first, I talked about the ever-diminishing appreciation,
respect and reverence for human life, especially the lives of children, born
and unborn.
In spite of early protestations to the contrary, abortion has become a commonplace
alternative birth control technique rather than the serious, sad, sometimes
necessary, but evil, last resort to terminate a pregnancy resulting from
incest or rape,
or in other genuinely dire situations, such as the illness of the mother.
I believe this attitude is the necessary precursor to the general acceptance
of Peter Singer's appointment to the esteemed chair of human ethics at Princeton
University. Singer believes families ought to have the right to terminate
the life of their newborns, up to age 1 month, if the child's medical condition
is so serious as to fundamentally compromise its own or the family's long-term
happiness.
Interestingly, as I began to verbalize these ideas, my position shifted.
At first, I too interpreted the "baby in a jar" as yet another example of the
denigration of human life. But then it occurred to me that part of the problem
is we really don't want to know the truth. We don't want it in our faces. It's
too vivid, too compelling, too raw and upsetting. Instead, in order to justify
the increasingly cavalier attitude toward the unborn, we prefer our truth in
the abstract. The "baby in the bottle" ends all that. It's
comparable, I think, to the problem facing this country about pornography,
which is also
becoming more and more prevalent and insidious. The actual depictions in
pornographic literature, videos, etc. are so debased that mainstream print
and television
cannot show them. So the average American is not fully informed about how
bad it really is or what our children are being exposed to.
It occurred to me that I might create a program to bottle aborted fetuses,
and label and display them in every Planned Parenthood lobby in an attempt
at full
disclosure for women seeking an abortion. From what I read in the press,
Planned Parenthood does not support legislation to enforce generally accepted
medical
guidelines for giving people "full and informed" consent. In the
case of abortion, this would involve a 24-hour waiting period after viewing
materials
that clarify the progress of the pregnancy and learning the details concerning
the procedure, as well as the risks and potential long-term effects associated
with it.
I invited my radio audience to comment on these thoughts and ideas, to let
me know how they felt about babies in bottles on display in schools and abortion
clinics. The responses were impassioned and well-thought-out. Seventy-two
percent agreed that fetuses should be displayed; 28 percent disagreed.
In general, those who disagreed did not have a problem with the concept of
presenting displays but suggested that "plastic models could be created that looked
very lifelike." Generally, the "no" votes expressed profound concerns
that such displays would show a "blatant lack of respect for human life."
Terry asked: "Could your humanization plan backfire? Looking at such
things as deceased human bodies tends to build up a sort of immunity to compassion.
There may well be shock value that would cause someone to think twice, but
where
would we stop? We might have all kinds of grotesque adornings cluttering
up our society simply for their shock value. Then, we would stop being shocked
and just
be callous. Numb."
I would agree with Terry if these displays were widespread and associated
with entertainment -- videos, art exhibits, movies, television, commercials
and
so forth -- rather than in an educational context such as an ethics or biology
classroom
or abortion clinics.
Pro-life activists wrote to tell me that they use the shock value approach
with pro-choice people at abortion clinic protests. They make the issue very
real
by displaying actual aborted babies to abortion activists. Toni reports that
the sight quiets the crowd immediately. "They are speechless in the face
of the reality," she wrote. "I think everyone should see these little
innocents. How on earth will we ever change people's minds unless we change their
hearts?" How indeed?
Baby
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