Marta is my niece, but every member of our family unanimously agrees she is a special gift from above. As our family’s first grandchild, she has brought unity to strained adult relationships and unearthed the deepest depths of love in our hearts. She is the joy of our lives.
As I’ve watched her grow these past two years, I’ve been simply amazed. From a dark-haired eight-pound infant, she has developed into a tall brown-eyed blonde who likes cashews, Barney, singing, drawing and pasting stickers. She knows all her colors (blue is her favorite), numbers up to 10 in both English and Spanish, and all the animal sounds. She knows when we are teasing her, and she teases right back with her impish smile. When she is happy, peals of baby-laughter ring throughout the house.
And most amazing of all: she loves. Nothing awakens more tenderness in my heart than when Marta reaches her little arms out and says, “Up,” to be held and gives me a little baby kiss. In such moments, I wonder, “How could anyone refuse this darling little girl, so guileless and innocent, so genuinely affectionate? How could anyone choose not to welcome such a beautiful soul?”
The sad fact is that Marta’s parents could have chosen not to welcome her. Her mother could have exercised “a woman’s right to choose” when she was pregnant; had she done so, our darling Marta would not be with us today. And the world would be a lonelier and colder place.
“A woman’s right to choose.” Every time I hear that phrase, I cringe, knowing what it really means. Translated, it means “A woman’s legal right to murder her baby.” It means abortion. But we never hear that translation on the nightly news or read it in the secular press; we don’t hear it from political candidates; and we certainly never hear it from pro-abortion and feminist groups such as Planned Parenthood or NOW.
Why? Why do we couch the ugly reality of child-killing in sugar-coated terminology? Why do we call abortion “a woman’s right to choose?” Why not just call it what it is: abortion?
I don’t know all the answers, but I have some inklings as to what they might be. One is our “convenience culture.” We live in a prosperous, highly technical society where speedy results and instant gratification are the norm rather than the exception. We want what we want now, not a year later. Babies, who take years to grow and develop into self-sufficient adults, are incompatible with instant results. They require protection, care, and a lot of just plain hard work. The effort that must be expended to raise a child flies in the face of instant gratification, and many recoil from it.
Closely related to convenience is the false idea of complete personal autonomy. I believe this idea emanates in large part from U.S. history, where we are taught from our earliest years that our country’s chief virtues are “liberty,” “independence,” and “freedom.” The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the Liberty Bell in Philadephia, and the lyric “the land of the free” in our national anthem all bespeak ideas which are deeply ingrained in our national consciousness. Babies are at odds with these values: they are totally dependent, and they restrict our liberty and freedom.
Another reason we call abortion something other than what it is stems from the unrealistic expectations created by the media and entertainment industries. From cartoons to commercials, from soap operas to sitcoms, from movies to videos, we are bombarded by images that do not reflect reality. Modern technology has given us the ability to project scenes and situations that defy the laws of nature and are alien to people’s daily lives. This cannot help but create a distortion of reality in our own minds. When we turn on the television, we see people having all kinds of sex without the inevitable consequence: a baby. At the same time, we do not see the devastating results of choosing to kill a baby.
Finally, we deny the reality of abortion for a very simple reason: Tell a lie long enough and loud enough, and eventually people will believe it. We have heard the phrase “a woman’s right to choose” for so many years, and from so many sources, that we now believe abortion is simply a matter of choice rather than the gratuitous taking of an innocent human life. When we see pictures of the bloody result of abortion, we are angered — not because a baby has died, but because we have believed the lie, so the truth makes us uncomfortable.
The defect in our national character that believes lies and denies truth is a dangerous one. A nation that can no longer discern reality is destined for destruction. A nation that murders its own children cannot survive.
As I prepare to celebrate Marta’s birthday tonight, I hope that her life — and the lives of all the other children whose mothers did not choose to destroy them — will one day pull the blinders from our eyes and help us to see truth clearly once again.
