By Dave Andrusko
“By looking for earthquakes to describe changes in the political landscape, the effects of erosion and drift are easily overlooked, even though the end results can be at least as substantial.” —Greg Adams: “Abortion: Evidence of an Issue Evolution.”
Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine you are an archeologist working at a famous, well-excavated site. You’ve been there for some time, when, seemingly out of the blue, you start making significant finds every 15 feet or so.
First, you’d be pleased, then you’d think about the responses of most of the handful of specialists who were the only ones who were more than casually aware of the site. With monotonous regularity, they had insisted all along that what you’d found so far was trivial – – and that if there was anything of significance in the locale, it would have long ago been unearthed.
But with the latest diggings, honeycombed with amazing artifacts, suddenly a larger, more comprehensive picture of the site came into focus. What you had discovered previously is now seen in a new light as well. Clearly, you are onto a major scientific discovery – – clearly, that is to you, but not to the habitual naysayers who’d always insisted the expedition was a waste of time.
Wedded to a position that was growing more untenable by the hour, these “experts” reacted as they always had: by offering lame, beside-the-point excuses in an attempt to explain away what you had unburied.
You’d expect that from people whose thinking had long since fallen into an inescapable rut, or who may have had ulterior motives. But once news leaked out, what about those coming fresh to the evidence?
How would those not loaded down with the burden of defending an entrenched position for decades evaluate the discoveries, old as well as new? Would they be more receptive to the same old talking points (shouted perhaps a little bit louder), or to the discoveries’ soft but clear message?
This may, at first glance, seem a stretch, but I honestly think this is where the abortion controversy stands today.
In the abortion context, “insiders,” such as you and me, on one side, and the we’ve-never-met-an-abortion-we-wouldn’t-condone crowd, on the other side, have been privy to a thousand different discoveries made since 1973. Unbeknownst to most people, there are two dimensions to this, both damaging to anti-life forces.
On the one hand, there is a far greater appreciation of (and familiarity with) the marvelous complexity of the preborn child. On the other hand, a growing unease, if not shock, as Americans learn to their horror that the Abortion Industry is so entrenched in its fanaticism it opposes even measures to be sure an unborn baby’s heart has ceased to beat before they tear her apart.
Even prior to 1973, no sophisticated medical tests or full-color four-dimensional ultrasounds were required to know that pregnant women carried living human beings. Those “discoveries” didn’t require a shovel to unearth. They were there, plain as day, for all to see.
But in the last few decades, an appreciation of what world-renowned geneticist the late Jerome Lejeune once called the “symphony of life” has increasingly become part of our common cultural literacy.
Not so long ago knowledge of the unborn’s shared humanity was limited to a select group, rather like the audience that could afford to attend a concert at Carnegie Hall.
Now, it’s akin to watching “Great Performances” on PBS. Thanks to medical technology, we can all enjoy the music.
Not so long ago the little ones were dismissed in elite circles as little more than stowaways, if not pirates. We now know that the developmental journey of unborn children is as thrilling as any voyage to a South Sea island written by Robert Lewis Stevenson.
Which is merely to say that maintaining the old dismissive orthodoxy is a far tougher sell when a baby’s first picture is an ultrasound, held to the refrigerator door with a small magnet, and admired daily.
Seeing really is, if not believing, a way station to questioning pro-abortion propaganda.
You may know there was an entire school of thought that argued that a major reason the old Soviet Union fell was because computers, e-mail, and fax machines undermined the regime’s rigid control of information. Once the corruption endemic to the Soviet State could no longer be hidden, the empire collapsed.
This is precisely the fate befalling the Abortion Establishment.
The collective impact of numerous pro-life initiatives—especially the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the ban on the dismemberment of living unborn babies, and the sheer inhumanity of refusing to treat abortion survivors—supplementing by an almost magical medical technology are working hand-in –hand to uproot lies and plant truth in its place.
Today, with a Biden-Harris administration in place and working its evil ways, we can be forgiven if we miss all that is going on both on and beneath the surface.
Please don’t!