Our Society must SEE the PERSONS behind those Labels
Psalm 39:13-16: For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made …. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
Jeremiah 1:5: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.
Luke 1:44: For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
Social psychologists have shown that the words we use to describe what we see are not just idle placeholders - they actually determine what we see. Labels, (positive or negative), when employed skillfully are very powerful tools in changing realities. When negative labels are applied to human beings, it tactfully removes the personal identification of those thus labelled, and they are eventually seen and treated like objects (things). All those who have committed atrocities against fellow human beings have always skillfully used labels. Evidences abound in the cases of the Auschwitz Holocaust; slavery; maltreatment of women and blacks; abortion, and so on. While many have almost grown used to the denigrating labels used for unborn babies, it appears they no longer see the persons behind those labels. Proverbially, when a crime is committed repeatedly and no action is taken against its perpetrators, it eventually becomes a tradition. Carol Tavris and Elliot Arouson in their book, Mistakes are Made (But Not By Me), 2007, aptly capture this reality. According to them, “small ethical deviations can over time add up to an ethical chasm”.
However, in our present case, it is not about “small ethical deviations”, it is about persons massacred daily in great numbers through abortion at the altar of pro-choicers -those who, for convenience, decide which of the babies live or die because they are viewed as ‘things’ or ‘diseases’ that must be got rid off at all costs. This feticide or do I say ‘babicide’ (killing of babies in the womb) is considered justifiable in many countries of the world, especially, in the west and some of the so-called third world nations because of the labels employed for these unborn children.
Since the inception of abortion debate in the ‘50s, agitation against the baby in the womb has ranged from changing the meaning of reproductive or conception related words to dehumanising or depersonalising the baby through labeling or semantic distortion. These dehumanising efforts serve to ‘anasthetise’ people’s affection and compassion for the unborn. Under normal circumstances, convincing an average citizen to commit a violent act or to murder a fellow human being is extremely difficult. It becomes easier to do when the victim is no longer seen as fellow human being, but as a ‘thing’. Until now, the classical definition of fertilisation is “the union of ovum and sperm” and this marks the beginning of human life and the beginning of pregnancy. In other words, human life begins at fertilisation. Today, many medical texts define pregnancy as “beginning with implantation of the zygote to the uterus.” With this understanding, any intervention carried out on the tiny little baby before implantation is justified since there was no human being that deserved protection. What existed was a ‘thing’. It is ironical that proponents of abortion use the Latin word ‘fetus’ but denies its meaning of being an unborn baby or an unborn child http://www.conservativetruth.org/archives/marymostert/10-06-02.shtml.
As mentioned earlier, many things simply cannot be achieved when it is clear to everyone what is going on; obfuscation is essential. Consequently, abortion (killing of unborn children) is called by different names mainly out of a desire to hide the truth about its nature - killing. In different international documents, it is defined in terms of “right”. Thus, “right to the freedom of choice”, “right to the free choice of pregnancy”, “right to interruption of pregnancy”, “right to the free choice of the interruption of pregnancy”, “right to choose to terminate pregnancy”. Others include, “right to make personal decisions”, “right to integrity of the person”, by including the period of pregnancy in it; “right to make decisions and to physical integrity’, right to “freedom from motherhood”, right to “control one’s own body”. In these curious terminologies, someone certainly dies - the baby, the child. Other phrases like “pro-choice”, “reproductive choice”, “voluntary interruption of pregnancy”, “safe motherhood”, “menstrual regulation”, “menstrual extraction”, “removing”, “washing off”, “flushing out” are also euphemistically employed to mean abortion. An abortion clinic is frequently described as “reproductive health center”. These terms are freely scattered in various international documents, feminist literature, and the constitutions of various nations, and is massively disseminated by the media. We have also grown used to hearing an abortion procedure re-described as “termination of pregnancy”; “removing the product of conception” or simply, “the procedure”.
The worst of all is that the growing child in the womb is euphemistically labelled “mass of tissue”, “grouping of cells”; “product of pregnancy; “material”, or the technical term ‘fetus’ in order to distance us from the reality of what is actually happening to a living and vulnerable human being within the mother’s body. In other words, designations such as "material" and "tissue" not only function to conceal the harsh reality of intrauterine killing, but also serve as convenient expressions for justifying the experimental exploitation of aborted remains. For instance, human embryonic kidney (from aborted babies) are used today by some companies to produce flavour chemicals (http://www.lifesitenews.com/blog/confused-about-the-pepsi-fetal-cell-issue-here-are-the-facts/); stem cell research using aborted babies for developing medicines for curing various ailments is still going on. Unfortunately, the most fundamental right of all, the right to life, is ignored by the media, effectively erasing it from the public discourse and thus from public thought. The propagandists know very well that to change the way people think, just change the words. The purpose of adulteration of words, therefore, is to conceal an unpleasant truth or a serious moral problem behind an acceptable-sounding word or phrase. To apply life-affirming labels on unborn children would have helped to stop legalisation of abortion, but the advocates chose the opposite because they want their convenience untouched to the detriment of the lives of countless unborn children.
The society must see the persons behind those depersonalising labels. The persons are the unborn children. The argument that personhood begins with the possession of certain human attributes like rationality, viability, and the like, and thus subjects of rights, are deliberate efforts to cover up man’s inhumanity to man. If one understands this argument well, it follows that all unborn children and already born children before the age of reason are non-persons, therefore, not subjects of rights, especially the right to life. Pro-choice groups and governments that have laws in place which state that unborn children are not legally recognised persons do not see as heinous fetal stem cell research or fetal experimentation, abortion, sexual and reproductive rights (another name for abortion, sterilisation, and contraception). In some countries, abortion on demand is legal at any stage of pregnancy, which is, up to the moment of birth (http://www.wrtl.org/abortion/legalforninemonths.aspx), thereby manifesting the insensitivity of such laws.
It is disheartening when Christians, including Catholics espouse such notion. However, the good news is that Blessed John Paul II has provided Catholics with a magna carta on the sacred value of all human life – from conception to natural death: Evangelium Vitae (1995). The document could be described as the compendium of the Church’s teaching on the sanctity and dignity of the human person. The Pope, in the third Chapter of Evangelium Vitae, presents the doctrinal core of the encyclical. He authoritatively confirms Catholic teaching on the value and inviolability of human life. By reaffirming a traditional principle: "The commandment ‘You shall not kill’, he reiterates the absolute value of human life when it refers to the innocent person" (#57). By "innocent" the pope means an individual who has committed no crime; he or she is weak and defenseless. The unborn children have these characteristics. The Church continues to guide the moral life of the society, drawing her teaching from the Scripture and Tradition, especially from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who came so that we may have life and have it to the full (cf. John 10:10). Deliberate killing of babies in the womb can never be justified: it is wrong anywhere, anytime.
Until our society begins to see the persons hidden in those labels used to describe God’s lovely creatures – the unborn children; until it sees the dehumanisation, denigration, and depersonalisation inherent in such semantic manipulations, the insensitive killing of these children will continue to be justified. Our future generation deserves better than death. Remember: “a person is a person no matter how small”. Those who understand the language of the culture of death should not relent in their opposition until this obnoxious practice is wiped out of people's mentality, thereby establishing firmly the culture of life ethic. Our unborn children should enjoy their right to life and protection.
For Personal Reflection:
- Have you ever reflected on the wonder of your being?
- Do you think that a baby in the womb is also wonderfully and fearfully made?
- What is the difference between the unborn child conceived in wedlock and that conceived out of wedlock. Which of them deserves to live?
All human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred, because the human person has been created in the image and likeness of God.
Human life is sacred, because:
1. from its beginning it involves the creative action of God
2. it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end.
The deliberate murder of an innocent is gravely contrary to:
1. the dignity of the human being
2. the golden rule
3. the holiness of the Creator.
The “golden rule” is written down in Mt 7:12 “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.”
Direct abortion must be qualified morally as a criminal practice gravely contrary to the moral law.
The embryo must be defended in its integrity because it must be treated as a person from conception.
http://www.catholic-catechism.com/level_164.htm
